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Poll: Orange County Best Place to Live in US
16:10 Dec 11, 1996 EST

NEW YORK (Reuter) - Crime-ridden, rundown, traffic-choked Washington, D.C., a place that recently put a general in charge of its schools, was rated the fourth best area to live in the United States Thursday by a respected survey.

Ranked number one in the latest edition of ``Places Rated Almanac'' was Orange County, California, despite its recent brush with bankruptcy and the impositions of user fees for such things as parks. Placing second was the Seattle area, despite its rainy climate, and third place went to Houston, Texas, whose heat and humidity have been compared to Calcutta.

David Savageau, co-author of the almanac with Geoffrey Loftus, said Washington placed fourth because of the high quality of its suburbs, although he conceded that the city itself had severe problems.

``We rate places on nine factors -- cost of living, jobs forecast, transportation, higher education, health care, crime, the arts, recreation and climate,'' he said.

He added that while the U.S. capital ranked low in all those categories except transportation and the arts, its suburbs ranked high in every category. The Washington area also has the most promising outlook for jobs between 1996 and the year 2000, he said.

Also placing on the top 10 list were the Phoenix area, Minnesota's twin-cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Atlanta, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, San Diego and Philadelphia.

Savageau, whose close to 500-page guide has been widely praised as a manual for the 8 million Americans who make major moves each year, said each place on his top 10 list had problems as well as promise.

``The Twin cities are super places to live if climate was of no concern. If you took away the cold it would be number one instead of number six,'' he said.

He added, ``When people think of Philadelphia, they often think of the central city and its urban problems but the area is outstanding for education. One out of every 10 doctors in the United States has been trained at a medical school in Philadelphia.''

While Savageau said his book did not compile a 10 worst places to live list, there were certain places he would avoid, including two towns in Oklahoma -- Enid and Lawton -- that he said were losing population; Elmira, a city in upstate New York that he described as ``a post-industrial place in trouble in the snow;'' and Mansfield, Ohio, ``a nice little town between Columbus and Cleveland that is going nowhere.''

He is also not fond of Dover, the capital of Delaware, ''which is hard to get to and doesn't have much going on when you get there.'' He also singled out Lima, Ohio, as a place where ``you can see the pollution in the air.''

As for New York City, the nation's largest, the city that never sleeps, the town where ``if you can make it here, you can make it everywhere,'' Savageau has mixed emotions.

``It either has the highest ratings in our categories or the lowest. It is an abnormal metro area and it is losing jobs.''

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