Best Places to Live in 2010 Decade

Three of the Best Towns of the Future are right here in the Bay Area, and not for the reasons you might expect.

Sunset Magazine, which focuses on the 13 western states, put together its list of the best places to live during the next decade.  They drilled in on commitment to experimentation, creativity, energy efficiency, and good local food sources.

If that hippie-leaning list intrigues you -- the west is the place to be.

"Just about every major trend we’ve seen in the past decade—solar power, hybrid cars, organic produce, iPhones—was launched in the Western part of the United States," said Sunset's editor-in-chief Katie Tamony.
 
The magazine declares the Twenty Tens the "Decade of Experimentation" and says the west its laboratory.

Here's their list:

  1. Palo Alto, CA
  2. Golden Hill, San Diego
  3. Eugene, OR
  4. Corvallis, OR
  5. Lamar, CO
  6. Phoenix, AZ
  7. Pasadena, CA
  8. Denver, CO
  9. Tucson, AZ
  10. Oakland, CA
  11. San Luis Obispo, CA
  12. Portland, OR
  13. Fairbanks, AK
  14. Olympia, WA
  15. San Clemente, CA
  16. Bellevue, WA
  17. Novato, CA
  18. Boulder, CO
  19. Las Cruces, NM
  20. Boise, ID


Palo Alto gets the top nod because of its commitment to innovation and for being what Sunset calls a breeding ground for some of the biggest ideas of the decade.

Oakland's surprise standing is credited to being a hot spot of a food revolution including a trend in urban homesteading. Urban homesteading is when people turn their backyards into mini farmland for the raising of chickens and such.

Novato is getting credit for being the future of brain power.  It is home to important think tanks and invention factories like the Buck Institute of Age Research.

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