10 best towns for raising a family

When you're looking for the right place to live, your judgment is based upon a variety of factors, including where you are in your life. That hip downtown loft, which you find delightful as a young single, probably won't work for a family of four.

These days, we're reading a lot about how young people and empty-nesters are flocking to urban cores, choosing city life over suburbs. But what if you're looking for a nice place to raise a family? Not only is a high-rise condo not necessarily an ideal environment, but the neighborhood schools also often are not places you'd want to send your children for a good education.

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Family Circle has compiled a list of the 10 best towns for families, based on affordable housing, good neighbors, green spaces, strong public-school systems and "giving spirits." The towns are showcased in the August 2012 issue of the magazine.

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To create the list, the magazine and a research firm compiled a list of 3,335 towns with populations between 11,000 and 150,000. From those, they pulled areas with a strong concentration of family incomes between $55,000 and $96,000. They then looked at housing affordability, school quality, health care, green space, crime rates and financial stability.

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Here is Family Circle's List of the 10 Best Towns for Families:

• Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.
• Lake Oswego, Ore., a suburb of Portland.
• Vail, Ariz., a suburb of Tucson.
• Fishers, Ind., a suburb of Indianapolis.
• Ballwin, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.
• Louisville, Colo., 20 miles from Denver.
• Longmeadow, Mass., in western Massachusetts near Springfield.
• Fort Mill, S.C., 20 miles from Charlotte, N.C.
• Zachary, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge.
• Oak Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.

What do you think about these choices? Are those the criteria you would apply in seeking a family-friendly community?