Carefree, AZ

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• Top 6 Suburbs of Phoenix

  Currently #6 · score 0

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• Scottsdale, AZ

  Scottsdale has built its identity substantially around desert resort tourism and golf, with dozens of golf courses and luxury resort properties spread across the city's roughly 185 square miles, drawing visitors and seasonal "snowbird" residents from colder climates specifically for its combination of Sonoran Desert scenery and reliably warm winter weather. Frank Lloyd Wright established Taliesin West, his winter home and architecture school, in the desert foothills at Scottsdale's northern edge in 1937, and the sprawling complex, built directly into and from the surrounding desert landscape, remains an active architecture school and a National Historic Landmark open for public tours. Old Town Scottsdale preserves the city's original early-20th-century commercial core, now dense with art galleries, restaurants, and nightlife that draw both tourists and locals, a walkable historic district that contrasts with the golf-resort and gated-community development spread across much of the rest of the city. Scottsdale's combination of a major desert resort and golf-tourism economy, a direct architectural legacy through Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and a well-preserved walkable historic downtown has made it one of the most nationally recognized and visited suburbs anywhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

• Paradise Valley, AZ

  Paradise Valley sits between Phoenix and Scottsdale in the shadow of Camelback Mountain, and the town has deliberately maintained some of the lowest housing density and largest minimum lot sizes of any municipality in the entire Phoenix metro area, a zoning approach that's kept its roughly 13,000 residents spread across large, walled estate properties rather than conventional suburban subdivisions. Camelback Mountain, whose distinctive silhouette is said to resemble a kneeling camel, sits largely within the town's borders, and its Echo Canyon and Cholla trails are among the most heavily used hiking routes anywhere in the Phoenix area, drawing hikers directly up a mountain that also happens to be ringed by some of the most expensive residential real estate in the entire state. The town has become a favored home base for professional athletes, entertainers, and business executives specifically seeking the combination of desert-mountain scenery, large private lots, and proximity to both Phoenix and Scottsdale's amenities without the density of either larger city. Paradise Valley's combination of some of the lowest residential density and largest lot sizes of any Phoenix-area municipality, direct Camelback Mountain access, and a concentration of celebrity and executive homeowners has made it one of the most exclusive and consistently expensive small towns anywhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

• Tempe, AZ

  Tempe is home to the main campus of Arizona State University, one of the largest public universities in the country by enrollment, and the school's roughly 80,000 students on the Tempe campus alone give the city a genuine college-town energy and a substantial share of its overall population identity. Tempe Town Lake, a two-mile artificial reservoir created in 1999 by installing inflatable rubber dams across the normally dry Salt River bed, transformed what had been an empty riverbed into a genuine waterfront amenity, hosting rowing, dragon boat racing, and a lakeside park system that's become one of the more distinctive pieces of public infrastructure anywhere in the desert Southwest. Mill Avenue, Tempe's historic main commercial street running directly toward the ASU campus, has developed into one of the more walkable and consistently active nightlife and dining districts in the entire Phoenix metro area, sustained substantially by the university's large student population. Tempe's combination of hosting one of the country's largest public universities, a genuinely inventive piece of desert waterfront infrastructure in Tempe Town Lake, and a lively, walkable college-town commercial district along Mill Avenue has made it one of the most distinctive and consistently youthful suburbs anywhere in the greater Phoenix area.

• Gilbert, AZ

  Gilbert was, for much of the 2000s and 2010s, repeatedly cited as one of the fastest-growing towns in the entire United States, expanding from a population of roughly 5,700 in 1980 to well over 275,000 by the mid-2020s — a growth rate that's transformed what was once a small farming community into one of the largest municipalities in Arizona while it continues to formally retain "town" rather than "city" status. The Heritage District, built around Gilbert's original early-20th-century downtown, has preserved the town's historic agricultural-era commercial buildings alongside newer development, giving longtime residents a walkable historic core amid the vastly larger master-planned residential development that's grown up around it over the past several decades. Gilbert's public schools have consistently ranked among the strongest in Arizona, a reputation that's been a significant driver of the town's sustained population growth, as families relocating to the broader Phoenix metro area have specifically targeted Gilbert's school district boundaries when choosing where to buy. Gilbert's combination of one of the most dramatic sustained growth rates of any American municipality in recent decades, a preserved historic downtown in the Heritage District, and consistently top-ranked schools has made it one of the most closely watched examples nationally of rapid, large-scale suburban growth in the desert Southwest.

• Chandler, AZ

  Chandler has developed one of the most significant concentrations of semiconductor manufacturing in the entire country, anchored by Intel's Ocotillo campus, one of the company's largest chip fabrication facilities worldwide, a presence that's given the city a substantial high-tech manufacturing employment base well beyond the more typical retail and service-sector jobs common in many Phoenix-area suburbs. That semiconductor and broader technology manufacturing cluster has drawn additional major employers to the area over the following decades, reinforcing Chandler's identity as one of the more significant advanced-manufacturing hubs anywhere in the Phoenix metro region, sometimes cited alongside similar clusters in Texas as part of a broader Sun Belt semiconductor manufacturing expansion. The city's historic downtown, centered on a preserved early-20th-century town square, has been revitalized alongside the newer corporate and residential growth surrounding it, giving Chandler a walkable historic core distinct from its larger identity as a technology-manufacturing center. Chandler's combination of a globally significant semiconductor manufacturing presence through Intel's Ocotillo campus and a preserved, revitalized historic downtown has made it one of the more economically consequential and industrially significant suburbs anywhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.