Portland, Ore., tops list of kid-friendly big cities

If you have a child and want to live where he or she will be happiest, here are a few rules: 1) As major cities go, you could do worse than the Pacific Northwest; 2) Cities named “Portland” are good; 3) For the most part, avoid California and big cities in Georgia (Macon, Atlanta).

Those are some of the results of Zero Population Growth’s latest survey of kid-friendly cities. The Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization’s “Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card 2001” judges 239 cities on a variety of quality-of-life factors, including health conditions, safety, education, environmental cleanliness, and access to parks and libraries, to determine how those cities rank in terms of being good places to raise children. It ranked major cities, component cities (suburbs, edge cities) and independent cities (those with populations greater than 100,000 that comprise the main cities in Metropolitan Statistical Areas of less than 2 million people).

Portland, Ore., and Seattle led the list of kid-friendly major cities. Rounding out the top 10 were: Minneapolis; New York; San Francisco; Boston; Denver; Fort Worth, Texas; and Houston and San Diego (tie). The organization’s lowest grades went to Detroit, Baltimore and Atlanta.

Overland Park, Kan., led the way in the ranking of component cities, followed by Livonia, Mich.; Naperville, Ill.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Plano, Texas; Independence, Mo.; Aurora, Ill.; Thousand Oaks, Calif.; Sterling Heights, Mich; and Lakewood, Colo. The lowest grades went to Portsmouth, Va.; Fontana, Calif.; and Moreno Valley, Calif.

Burlington, Vt., led the independent cities ranking, along with Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Madison, Wis.; Fargo, N.D.; Green Bay, Wis.; Portland, Maine; Lincoln, Neb.; Manchester, N.H.; and Stamford, Conn.; Fresno, Calif.; Flint, Mich.; and San Bernardino, Calif., finished last.

For more information, or to see the complete rankings, visit www.kidfriendlycities.org/2001.