5 Iowa cities are 'Best Places,' if you can find them

Iowa is home to five of the 100 Best Places to Live, according to the website livability.com, another public relations boost for our state -- if you're persuaded the authors could find the cities on a map.

The website ranks small and midsize cities based on economy, health, housing and other factors. Geography, however, is not a strength of the Livability metrics.

For example, Des Moines, which ranks 82nd, is listed as being in Warren County.

This revelation will likely surprise 204,000 people in the state capital, most of whom have believed they were based in Polk County, where the city incorporated in 1851. In fact, Des Moines is the Polk County seat.

In fairness, Des Moines does include a section of northern Warren County, which may be all it takes to get listed as Warren County on the Livability list. One might suspect the list was assembled by an overzealous Warren County development type because West Des Moines (No. 57), too, is listed in Warren County. Though the city straddles Polk, Dallas, Warren and Madison counties, the city's government offices are firmly in Polk County.

Livability seems quite confused by West Des Moines as a whole. The picture used to illustrate the suburb is of the west side of downtown Des Moines, taken from the State Capitol steps — which is clearly in east Des Moines. Somewhere, an East High School booster is spitting out his morning Mountain Dew at the irony.

Cedar Rapids, ranked 65th, is accurately located in Linn County by the website. So at least Iowa's second-most populous city is in the right place.

Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, is the highest-ranking city on the list at No. 10. It's certainly a good place to play college football, especially if you're Iowa State University, which beat the Hawkeyes last weekend in the annual contest between Iowa's two largest public universities.

That victory is perhaps just enough salve to ease the pain of Ames' rank below Iowa City. Ames is 30th.