The Best Places to Live 2005

THE COMMUTER

Winner: Winchester
Runners-up: Wayland, Wellesley, Weston
For the budget-minded: Dedham
No fewer than 1 in 10 workers living in Winchester takes public transportation to work. And why not, when the commuter train takes just 20 minutes to get to North Station? But nearness to the city doesn’t mean sacrificing quality of life. This leafy suburb just nine miles from Boston has big houses and plenty of open space (along with some of the area’s highest home prices). The approach from the Mass. Pike and other main highways makes the western “W towns” another safe bet for easy city access, but the closest you’ll get to an easy (and comparatively inexpensive) commute from the South Shore is southwestern Dedham.

THE DO-IT-YOURSELFER
Winner: Lawrence
Runners-up: Brockton, Plymouth, Taunton, Weymouth
After decades of being cherry-picked, most towns are lucky to have a single slab ranch left that hasn’t been redone. The exceptions are the old manufacturing cities that still have farmhouse colonials ripe for renovation. Lawrence has the biggest and best selection of houses under $250,000. On the South Shore, the large cities of Brockton and Taunton and the town of Plymouth all have their gems, while Weymouth is a good choice for multifamily houses ready for condo-ization.

THE CADILLAC CONSERVATIVE
Winner: Boxford
Runners-up: Dover, Hamilton, Wenham
For the budget-minded: East Bridgewater
If you’d rather be red than dead, the bedroom community of Boxford may be your ticket. This North Shore town’s residents turned out for Bush over Kerry in a higher ratio than any other town in Greater Boston. A property tax rate of 11.6 percent and large lot sizes add to the appeal for those invested in the notion of an ownership society. Nearby Hamilton is home to the Myopia Hunt Club, where the fox-and-hound set shows off its horoughbreds, and Wenham’s Gordon College is a hotbed of evangelism. Pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps types will appreciate the traditional values in patriotic East Bridgewater, which holds regular “support our troops” meetings in its town hall.

THE GRANOLA-EATING LIBERAL
Winner: Lincoln
Runners-up: Arlington, Newton, Watertown
For the budget-minded: Chelsea
If John Kerry is looking for somewhere to retire, he might consider settling down in Lincoln, where residents voted for him by a margin of nearly three to one in November. Here, the “L” word means what it used to mean. So what if about half the homes here sold for more than $1 million last year? The town also has a highly educated population and spends — ahem — liberally on culture. The Democratic machine is the only game in town in more proletarian Chelsea, which has the highest percentage of registered Dems (55.5 percent) of any city in Massachusetts except Cambridge.

THE COMMUNITY BOOSTER
Winner: Sharon
Runners-up: Lexington, Marblehead, Westwood
For the budget-minded: Raynham
It’s the rare Sharonite who isn’t involved with some town organization, whether it’s the Cultural Council, Friends of Conservation, or the Scrabble Club. A former resort town around the shores of Lake Massapoag, Sharon renovated a hotel into a community center that offers everything from judo to swing dancing. In the past, residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of a budget override that led to a new school addition, and the town’s website boasts about a welcoming spirit toward new residents, who have flocked to the scores of newly constructed homes. Nearby Westwood has a town pool, two libraries, and a senior center, all in a town with fewer than 15,000 people, while the joke around Lexington is that it’s only a matter of time before every new resident there runs for office.