Real estate blog Movoto listed the “10 Best Places to Live in Georgia,” and it’s mostly filled with towns and cities on the outskirts of Atlanta. Notably absent are any towns or cities within Atlanta “proper,” also known as “inside the perimeter (Interstate 285)” also known as “ITP.”
This, naturally has those who live ITP and think they rule the state completely up in arms, and when things happen that they don’t agree with, they do something about it: bitch about it on the internet.
Now I’m not entirely sure which side of which fence I stand on, but since I think I sometimes lean on the chaotic neutral side of the spectrum, ultimately I think I can find a bone to pick with all involved parties in this little online e-fracas.
FIRST, to those ITP whining and complaining that Atlanta isn’t a top-10 place to live in Georgia: it’s probably true. Movoto’s criteria might be a little subjective and inadvertently racially charged, but it does hit some important key points, such as crime, cost of living, median income and tax rates. Those factors considered, it’s completely true that no city or town within I-285 should be considered a top-10 place to live.
Statistically, there is more crime within the circle of I-285 than there is in any city or town outside of it. Ironically, if I-285 could magically be re-jiggered to relegate College Park and East Point to OTP status, I’m sure it would drop dramatically, but the cards have landed where they have fallen, and they’re murdering (no pun intended) the crime numbers for Atlanta proper. But it’s not just them doing it; crime is way more rampant ITP than it is outside of it. There are numerous statistics to prove this fact, and when the day is over, people typically wish to live away from areas with notably higher percentage of crime.
Simply existing within I-285 is reason enough for real estate numbers to inflate to egregious costs, and sure it’s no New York City where people are paying $1,500 for 200 square feet of living space, but considering the median cost of living in most places outside of the perimeter, and it’s a pretty dramatic difference in ratio. Long story short, the cost of living increases to an unfavorable bang for buck within ITP, than it does outside of it.
Fact: there are more people that commute from outside of the perimeter and enter the city to where they work, but for all intents and purposes, they live outside of it. That being said, people who make a lot of money and/or wish to start families, typically strive to do it outside of major cities, hence the existence of suburbs in the first place. People who have the financial means to raise families, usually take their larger salaries, and move to places like Alpharetta, Duluth, Woodstock or Peachtree City, driving their numbers up, and sinking Atlanta proper’s down.
The bottom line is that Atlanta is a decent place, but it really isn’t a top-10 place in the state to live. ITPers need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that outside of the perimeter, Georgia itself is still a pretty large state. It’s weird to think of it, and stranger to hear when people refer to Atlanta as “North,” but to those people who live down in like Valdosta and Savannah and other southern Georgia towns and cities, it’s very much a valid term, even if all Georgians love to boast that they’re all so southern.
However, the fact of the matter is that Atlanta proper has higher crime, higher cost of living, fewer schools and even less with quality teachers, and higher taxes than just about every place outside of the perimeter. Just because it’s a city that’s hip, known, has good restaurants and the ever-hyped Beltline project, doesn’t make anywhere in Atlanta a truly great place to live.
NEXT, we move onto Movoto’s list, which claims to be
unbiased, data-based, and pretty much indisputable.
- City of Canton
- Peachtree City
- City of Athens
- City of Alpharetta
- City of Perry
- City of Fayetteville
- City of Duluth
- City of Woodstock
- City of Norcross
- City of Kennesaw
- City of Gainesville
I’ve been to almost all of these places at some point, and lived in one of them for a few years too. I’ve only passed through Perry and Gainesville but they also to both be the two places furthest from the Metro Atlanta area.
But going back a little bit, I have to contrarily dispute the claim that the criteria is indisputable. Their criteria was listed as:
- Total amenities
- Quality of life (cost of living, median home price, median rent, median household income, and student to teacher ratio)
- Total crimes
- Tax rates (sales tax and income tax)
- Unemployment
- Commute time
- Weather (temperature and air quality)
These are all mostly fair things to consider when judging towns, but two in particular are extremely vague in my opinion. “Total amenities” and commute time are things that I particularly happen to think are pretty vague and subjective.
What’s an amenity? It’s still something subjective, and not necessarily things that everyone would agree as being an integral benefit to a particular location. I think the golf cart paths in Peachtree City are pretty convenient and nice to have, but to others, they’re a means to an end, since they have to use them to get from point A to point B. The massive number of shopping centers in Alpharetta might be considered an amenity to one person, but be considered a royal pain the ass to another, because it’s reason for excessive traffic and increased congestion. What if you don’t like Mexican food? Then Canton takes a ding there, as trying to say good Mexican food is an amenity there.
Amenities are subjective in nature, and the sheer lack of definition in Movoto’s list leads it to be quite disputable.
But commute time is where things get pretty dicey. I’ll remove Athens and Perry from this, but for the most part, every other city listed in the top-10 are within the unofficial region of landmass that people like to automatically declare as Metro Atlanta. That being said, every one of the remaining top-10 cities has a vast number of people who work ITP, and make grueling, 30+ mile commutes each way to get to their places of employment. Those in Peachtree City and Fayetteville have it the worst, since nobody gives a shit about those on the south end of the metro area, but the point remains that “commute time” is another disputable variable, whose results are either not heavily weighted, or have some very inaccurate numbers to them.
If commute time were a very important reason in deciding if a place were great to live or not, then pretty much every sub-city within I-285 would be top-10, the closer to the center, the higher they rank.
The funny thing about this list was at first glance, my initial reaction was that it was pretty much a listing of the places that have a fewer number of black residents. It’s not an inaccurate assessment, but it’s still an ironic, and inadvertent impression given by this list. It is factual that crime increases ITP, and that Atlanta is a pretty predominantly black city, but it doesn’t help the notion that an unofficial criteria to finding the best place to live includes, where fewer black people live.
Which got me thinking about the type of person who would put a list like this together, and it brings me to the author of the list post. A cursory glance sees a pretty young blonde girl, who looks like she’s like 19 years old, but claims to have attended St. Edward’s University, which another quick google search shows that it’s a Catholic college in Texas. Needless to say, I’m hard pressed to believe a kid from Austin, Texas is remotely qualified enough to give such definitive statements about cities in a state they probably don’t live in, much less actually visited any of the places.
Essentially, this is like a baseball argument, where people attempt to use nothing but numbers and data to quantify things, and the people that believe real-world experience and seeing things with their own eyes is as, if not more important than just numbers.
Either way, the list is most certainly disputable, not entirely inaccurate, but not exactly completely accurate. And ITPers who whine about this also need to realize that Atlanta is not Shangri-La, and to consider the source of their angst.
