Naperville recently won another accolade to add to its very lengthy list: America’s Second-Best City to Live in as rated by Niche, a company that ranks communities and schools nationwide.
Second-best? Really? How insulting!
Perhaps Niche doesn’t know who they’re dealing with here. Naperville was named the Safest City for Women in America in 2014 and the Best Place for Early Retirement by Kiplinger in 2013. Money magazine has ranked Naperville among the best cities in which to live every other year since 2004 (awards for cities of Naperville’s population range are made in even-numbered years).
So how does Ann Arbor, Mich., beat us in Niche’s eyes? Certainly not in the area of public safety – Niche itself ranked Naperville tops in safety in both 2015 and 2016. After all, we have Dick Tracy himself keeping an eye on our Riverwalk.
And Naperville’s original “Officer Friendly,” a night shift police officer who donated his daytime hours to teaching safety lessons to local school children, was later elected mayor and served 20 years. George Pradel was such a beloved figure that he had his own bobblehead doll and was once introduced at a Naperville Chinese School gathering as “our own laughing Buddha.”
Naperville is home to at least three Chinese schools and an Asian cultural center. Our parks district has two cricket pitches and sponsors a cricket league. The west branch of the DuPage River, which winds through our bustling downtown, is kept sparkling clean by 9,000 glitter-encrusted mussels.
(I wonder if Ann Arbor’s waterways give refuge to glitter-encrusted water-filtering river creatures?)
The Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists in 2005 named Naperville the city outside Chicago with the largest number of drunken driving arrests, which is a good thing for everyone (even the drunken drivers, who are saved from potentially harming others or themselves).
Even when public works construction projects tie up city streets, we can be proud: We have won Project of the Year awards from the American Public Works Association Chicago Metropolitan Chapter in 2009, 2011 and 2012.
Naperville is home to a small private college with an excellent academic reputation. Ann Arbor? Well, OK, it’s home to the University of Michigan. But still…
Naperville has a landmark tower that hosts 72-bell carillon. The city even has an official city carillonneur! Does Ann Arbor have … wait … umm … yes, two carillons, both on the University of Michigan campus, where music students learn to play the instrument. Hmmm. Well, our carillon has more bells than either of theirs.
(C’mon, what are the odds of a city beating us in carillon resources? I almost didn’t even Google that!)
It’s clear that both Naperville and Ann Arbor are lovely cities. We really don’t need to compare ourselves to others to know how great we are. After all, Naperville’s award-winning website (2016 Gold Award, MarCom Awards) has prepared a handy eight-page list for us already.
(I didn’t see any awards list on Ann Arbor’s website. Not that I’m comparing.)
Naperville recently dedicated its Native Planting Pollinator Garden – nicknamed the “pollination station” – to attract more butterflies, hummingbirds and bees downtown. Fire Chief Mark Puknaitis was selected 2017 Fire Chief of the Year by the Illinois State Crime Commission/Police Athletic League of Illinois. The Naperville Public Library for 10 years has been known as the No. 1 public library in the United States for cities with populations of 100,000 to 250,000 (Hennen’s America Public Library Ratings), for three years as a Five-Star Library (Library Journal), and was named one of Chicago’s 101 Best Places to Work.
But enough with the bragging. The constant worrying about which city is besting which in these mostly meaningless “awards” lists can only distract us from our efforts to keep growing and improving.
After all, we wouldn’t want to risk losing our ranking as the No. 1 City in America with the Least Socioeconomic Stress among those of 100,000 population (American City Business Journals).
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Susan Keaton is a middle-of-the-pack freelance writer who is proud to live in a community that for 15 years has won the IEPA Certificate of Excellence Award for its Wastewater Safety Programs.