Cities Ranked & Rated
More than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. and Canada
Chapter One
The Places
Ideally, Cities Ranked & Rated, 2nd Edition, would examine all places to live in the U.S. and Canada;
however, the resulting book would be too thick (and expensive) to serve anyone's purpose well. So, as in the first
edition, we limit our task to the places where most of the population tends to congregate and where most
economic and cultural activity occurs-that is, within the major population centers in the U.S. and Canada. Cities
Ranked & Rated, 2nd Edition, examines more than 400 places to live-375 in the United States and 27 in Canada. The
375 U.S. places are classified as Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or MSAs, defined shortly. According to the latest
U.S. Census population estimates, MSAs represent just under 84% of the total U.S. population. The 27 Canadian
population centers, identified by Statistics Canada as Census Metropolitan Areas, or CMAs, are similarly defined but
have a higher po ... read full excerpt from Cities Ranked & Rated: More than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. and Canada ebook
