And the Winners Are:

BEST SMALL CITY
Sarasota, FL

There are 35 miles of pristine white sand beaches just minutes away from Rose and Richard Elliott's three-bedroom home in Sarasota, Fla. But you'd never know it by talking to them. "Of course, there are beaches," says Elliott, 52. "But we hardly ever go to them. There's just so much else to do down here."

Sarasota may be the ultimate beach town, with its sun-kissed location on the Gulf of Mexico, more than 200 sunny days a year and an average year-round temperature of 71°F. Yet there are plenty of other reasons why we named it the best small city. The county -- which includes Venice, Northport, Longboat and Siesta Keys -- has its own symphony, ballet and opera companies. The 1,800-seat Van Wezel Performing Arts Center lures productions like the Broadway road company of Chicago. The Ringling Museum of Art -- established by circus baron John Ringling, who settled in the area in the 1920s -- has an extensive collection of American and European art. Like sports? Just an hour away there's the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers and arena football's Storm.

Sarasota also offers a triple treat: The lifestyle is very affordable. The median home price is a mere $126,000. Says Gary Brey, a Florida top producing agent with Re/Max Premier Services: "This is the kind of place where you can get an incredible, brand-new home for $200,000." The schools are outstanding, and the job market is brisk. Sarasota County's public school students in key grades outscored 95% of their peers in the state. And perhaps most of all, the city posted job growth of 5 percent in the past year, ranking it among the top 25 metro areas in the country. During the next decade, it's expected to see a 30.5 percent increase in jobs, putting it at No. 7 in the U.S. Many of those jobs are in the retail and service sectors -- Sarasota is a thriving tourist destination -- but they are also in other industries.

    It's so desirable that communications executive Nicholas Branica commutes to his job in Charlottesville, Va. rather than uproot his wife Tonie and his two daughters, Christina, 11, and Nichole, 8. Branica settled in a six-bedroom beach house in Siesta Key when he took over Sarasota-based Key Voice Technologies, a telecommunications firm. When Branca became CEO of another telecom firm, Charlottesville-based Comdial, he never thought of leaving Sarasota. "We can jump in our boat and drive around the keys to fish or watch dolphins; we can watch manatees at the beach," says Branica, 47. "You couldn't get us out of here with a nuclear explosion."