re: U.S. News 2017 Best Places to Live - #63 Baton Rouge #95 New Orleans

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Atlanta beat New Orleans, yet all the hate.

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Austin, DC, Denver, Seattle are at the top of the list. I can agree that they have a high quality of life. So does Nashville, Dallas, Minneapolis, San Francisco...all highly ranked but getting dinged various things like costs of living.

Honestly it is difficult to argue with the list based on the criteria they used. Beyond that it is more about preference. I would prefer to live in Memphis or New Orleans than in Atlanta, but that's just me. Atlanta does have a better quality of life, amenities, opportunity, etc.

New Orleans offers a lot of crime, high housing costs, low wages, and poor infrastructure. It would score poorly on this list. It also has a very high % of residents that were born and raised there. To them, you can't quantify how important being next to family is to them or not having to move to a different city.

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New Orleans is a metro region where it seems like everyone knows everyone; the area has one of the highest percentages (73.2 percent) of "homegrown" residents in the country.

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Perhaps they should get out and experience other cities instead of putting them down because it doesn't feel quite like home. Hard to deny that this is a common New Orleans trait.