I don't know if any of you have ever run across Sperling's Best Places website:
http://www.bestplaces.net It's a great website where you can obtain neighborhood profiles by zipcode and compare cities as well (they only feature American cities and metropolitan areas).
There's a nifty little city chooser which tells you what would be your top 30 cities to live in within the United States, based on your importance of certain criteria (such as school, arts, traffic, crime, affordable housing, climate, jobs, etc.).
Try it yourself and share your results... and also say if the results you get agree with how you actually feel:
http://www.bestplaces.net/fybp----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are my top 10 metropolitan areas according to the website based on selection criteria I entered:
1 San Francisco, CA
2 Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
3 Long Island, NY
4 Boston, MA-NH-ME
5 San Diego, CA
6 Orange County, CA
7 San Jose, CA
8 Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA
9 Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV
10 Monmouth-Ocean, NJ
Not surprisingly, 5 of the 10 areas are in CA!
I'd personally have put Orange County first, Los Angeles second and San Diego third.