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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The OP asked for the best city from a suburb perspective. So my answer is based on that and not taking into account where the breadwinner may be working (city or suburban town).

I prefer the New York suburbs to the DC suburbs for the simple reason that most of the suburbs are organized around an original small town or village (even if it just a train station stop with a block or two of retail). It gives each suburb an identity. I like how most of the suburban towns are a mixture of the old and new and you can pick from the more urban suburbs such as lower Westchester versus the more open, more quasi "rural" (ok rural is stretching it but you know what I mean) suburbs of northern Westchester. Each town tends to have its own school district which helps to reinforce the identity of the town.

The Washington suburbs are not organized like the NYC suburbs. On the whole, they're much newer, much more "suburbanish" and don't have much in the way of local identity. There are exceptions, of course.

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Orginally from Westchester now living in Bethesda. This accurately describes Westchester (as well as the Northern NJ suburbs and Long Island) The way you really see the difference is the schools. MoCo has one school district of 140,000 students. In the NY suburbs you won't have anything like this. This does however impact taxes. If we lived in a similar house, our property taxes would be 2x-3x more depending on the house. Income taxes and car insurance are also extremely high. If you work in NYC, most people take the train into the city to commute. Driving is just a complete waste of time. Commuting costs in Metro North can run $300 - $400 a month plus parking costs. It can alos be hard to meet people as many have loved in these towns all their lives. We found this area  more open to newcomers.

We would not move back to NY because our standard of living is better here but we do miss the food![/quote]

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