Every year, hundreds of thousands of homebuyers are moving to the country’s most booming metropolitan areas. For those that don’t want to deal with the traffic and other hassles of big-city living, there are the suburbs. These smaller cities and towns offer proximity to everything their larger neighbors have to offer, while often being safer and less crowded.

To rank these cities, we relied on a set of criteria used to measure how safe, affordable and — ultimately — livable they are. We looked at the top 25 most populous cities in the country and then determined the three largest suburbs of each city for a total of 75 suburbs. Then, we ranked each suburb across several criteria, which included:

• Amenities (shopping, dining, entertainment, etc.)
• Cost of living (percent above or below national average)
• Crime (percent above or below national average)
• Education (student-to-teacher ratio compared to national average)
• Employment (income and unemployment compared to national average)

Once we had that information — from sources including the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics — we were able to see how each city did in the individual criteria — on a scale of 1 to 75, with 1 being best — and also on average to give them an overall score.

http://realestate.msn.com/10-best-suburbs-2013