If you're tall, dark, and herbaceous, this is your kind of town. Davis maintains a Landmark Tree List and a Master Street Tree List—as well as 31 parks, 20 greenbelts, and a 400-acre man-made wetland. To compensate for every acre of farmland built upon, developers must preserve two acres of comparable land in its place. Culture gets a nod, too: 1 percent of all capital-improvement funds is set aside for public art such as sculptures. And Central Park's year-round farmers' market, says Mitch Sears, Davis's open-space planner, is "a community touchstone."
UC Davis, which employs one out of every three residents, keeps the local scene young and diverse. Land trusts, nonprofits, and green research programs, such as the National Institute for Global Environmental Change, abound. Davis's proximity to the Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada means that anything you can do on water, snow, rock, or dirt is never far away.
In the standard American turf wars—bike vs. SUV, farm vs. strip mall—you always root for the underdog."
