Delaware is a popular vacation and resort location all year round for many reasons. But when you're in the market for a new home in the Diamond State, you aren't just looking for an attractive building to occupy, you're looking for a city or town that suits your recreational proclivities and offers the the chance to make sufficient income to support your activities.
Delaware's compact proportions give its cities and towns additional flexibility to find their place on a list of places with a good work / life balance. Most areas, if lacking in one desired attribute or another, are near enough to some other town that has the coveted attribute. For the purposes of our list however, we needed to disregard this advantage and look at places that have it all. To do so, we looked at three factors to judge our candidates by:
Source: en.wikipedia.org
It's not enough for a city to be spangled with a high concentration of pricey events and activities such as opera houses, exclusive clubs, and high tech movie theaters- although such features do help a city score high. To excel in this category, a town should also offer free and low cost entertainment like park grounds, coastlines, and quaint but inexpensive diners and other offerings that won't break the bank. Towns with the best score in this area offer a mixture of these.
It goes without saying that an area that's less expensive to live in is going to offer residents more flexibility for recreation, free time, and peace of mind in general. Affordable living also grants an improved freedom in the area of one's choice of occupation. If a person can afford to take up less profitable work that is more enjoyable and satisfying- a low cost of living may contribute to that. However, a high cost of living may force a person to take up more lucrative and less enjoyable work. Towns that ranked high in this area had low costs of living, however towns with exceedingly low costs of living tend to suffer in the quality recreation category.
A high number of interesting, innovative, and high paying employers is a major contributing factor in propelling towns toward the top of our list. Towns with a greater variety of large employers, and employers with good reputations for positive employee retention and satisfaction ranked well on our list.
Due to the subjective nature of the qualitative difference between urban and rural living, we had to remain neutral on this account. It is a great perk to living in Delaware that both types of environments are in good supply. But there's just no comparing the two against each other. Some people prefer to get outdoors and go hiking, engage in off road motor sports or what have you. Others prefer the bustling intrigue of more city-like environments. For this reason, we encourage you to depart from our rankings where these factors sway you in one way or another.
The state capital is the second most populous city in Delaware for a reason. The Monster Mile race track, Dover Downs Casino, and the largest shopping mall outside of Wilmington go a long way to make Dover a very enjoyable town. With the Air Force base, and a very strong city and state government presence as well a number of successful large businesses, Dover is a very good place to secure reliable, profitable, and satisfactory employment.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Harrington is also home to a raceway and casino. The Harrington Casino is probably the most popular facility of its kind in Delaware, and the raceway in Harrington is better suited to destruction derby's and sprint car races than the Dover Monster Mile- making the Harrington track more appealing to motor sports fans who like to see the dirt fly. The casino is a major employer in this town, as is the Harrington Health center. The health center offers many attractive discounts to employees, which by itself- goes a long way toward making life more sustainable.
Among the most inexpensive, and most attractive beach towns in the state, Lewes' public school districts is a major employer in the area. Lewes is locally well known for its insouciant and laid back, casual sensibilities. It offers many acres of park and recreation space replete with miles of winding woodland trails. Just inland of the beautiful and popular Cape Henlopen nature reserve, Lewes is a very attractive recreation spot and offers one of the most sought after real estate markets in the First State.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Newark also offers a great deal of attractive outdoor activities. There’s been a great effort to make the community a more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly place, with the opportunity for folks to enjoy car-free living and still have the ability to get around easily. It's a very friendly place for walking as every road is lined with an accompanying sidewalk. Newark has many fine employment opportunities including the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology, a not-for-profit organization which employs over 24,000 highly trained individuals.
Delaware's most populous and largest city is also home to the finest, most compendious, and attractive real estate market in the state. Wilmington can boast of the greatest amount of employment opportunities of any city in the state with a host of large and respected business organizations. As the most populous city in the Diamond State, Wilmington is also the greatest place to consume fine art, high culture, five-star cuisine, and regular sports events. This sibling city to the famously historical Philadelphia, has many fine employers such as the innovative transportation firm, Koncordia, the award winning healthcare provider, HealthCore Inc, and Brightfields- a progressive environmental compliance consultancy group.
