Fairfield Named Number One

Fairfield is the No. 1 town in Connecticut.

After years of finishing in the top few towns, Fairfield has taken first place in Connecticut Magazine’s “Rating the Towns” article on which Connecticut town is the best place to live.

The system rates 169 Connecticut cities and towns by economy, leisure, crime, education and cost of living by breaking them up into different population-size groups.

Fairfield came in first for public education, second for crime and economy, fourth for leisure, and fifteenth for cost of living, which gave it the push Fairfield needed to surpass last year’s winner, Greenwich, which scored a mere two points lower.

So did the University and its students have any effect on the results?

Fairfield does gain an advantage by having Fairfield University, for the leisure section takes into account local colleges and universities. It also helped Fairfield that the Quick Center hosts many leisure events.

Luckily for the town of Fairfield, the majority of crimes that Fairfield students commit do not fall in the categories of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, or motor-vehicle theft, which factor into the crime category.  Therefore, the raid at Bravo will not hurt the town of Fairfield in its pursuit to be crowned number one.

For a town that is known to have such strained town-gown relations, Connecticut Magazine was able to avoid having such relations negatively affect Fairfield’s rating.

Sophomore Emily Kupper said on the town win,  “I think Fairfield University would help because its a well-respected University that enriches the community, emphasizing quality education. A college town is a positive atmosphere.”