--- title: How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way | TIME description: James Rouse had an idea for a planned community. Fifty years later, Columbia, Maryland is MONEY's #1 Best Place to Live in America. canonical: https://time.com/video/el1Spg4I/ og:title: How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way og:description: James Rouse had an idea for a planned community. Fifty years later, Columbia, Maryland is MONEY's #1 Best Place to Live in America. og:url: https://time.com/video/el1Spg4I/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/el1Spg4I/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way twitter:description: James Rouse had an idea for a planned community. Fifty years later, Columbia, Maryland is MONEY's #1 Best Place to Live in America. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/el1Spg4I/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way [Watch (HLS stream): How America's Best Place to Live Got to Be That Way](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/el1Spg4I.m3u8) (2:39)  _Published 2016-09-20. James Rouse had an idea for a planned community. Fifty years later, Columbia, Maryland is MONEY's #1 Best Place to Live in America._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:49 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Money's #2 Best Place to Live 2017](/video/5ayzhYgH/) ### Money's #2 Best Place to Live 2017 [MONEY's Best Places to Live Launch](/video/39tOqwJM/) ### MONEY's Best Places to Live Launch [MONEY's Best Places to Retire](/video/CT0oNUGL/) ### MONEY's Best Places to Retire --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Columbia, it was the idea of James Rouse. He had done a lot of work in cities and he was beginning to look at the suburbs. He said there should be a better way. So, Columbia is a better city. It is a better way. [ MUSIC ] Before anything was put down on paper, Jim Rouse made a speech. It was on the future of cities. He drew on some of the best minds in the country at that time and he brought them together as a work group. What we said to them was that we wanted to explore the optimums of urban life. We wanted to talk about the best possible education system, best possible health system, what about employment, what were the causes of victory, what were the causes of defeat in the human sense in the urban environment Diversity was one of our founding principles. Remember, 50 years ago there were a lot of places where interracial marriage was still illegal. Where if you, no matter what your race was, you might not have a place to be able to call home. So for Columbia we embrace and celebrate diversity. Inclusion. Jim Rouse said, you have to find new ways to measure greatness of a city. We have this amazing past based on such important core values. One was to respect the land. We believed it was possible for man to build his settlements without desecrating the land. We preserved all the stream valleys, all the flood plains, all the steep hills. The second goal was to build a real city, not just a better suburb. It was our goal to produce as many jobs as there were workers here. We wanted people of all income levels. We wanted to be very open, racially. And our third goal was to produce an environment that was felicitous for the environment and growth of the man, the woman, and the family and that led to the basic plan of small neighborhoods Columbia is our choice, the people who are here are choosing to be here and choosing to make this place what it is. And you have to have people engage, right, and invested in that. And that's what makes this so different, we have more people who are invested in making this place better than we do than people who are not. 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