Smartest city: PhDs, planning, and pet bakeries

Congestion has sent Bethesda into a "commercial-building moratorium." For "phase two" of development to begin, 32 percent of workers will have to leave their cars at home. But rest assured, there's a plan – and a subway stop in the middle of town.

Organized or organic, there is a certain civilized quality to life in America's most educated city.

On a quiet sun-dappled Friday evening, Bethesda looks different from much of suburban America. The streets are crowded with people strolling by restaurants and cafes, or sitting on street benches talking. In the Margaret Smith Gallery, Marla Katz is preparing food and beverages for the monthly "Art Walk," wherein 11 galleries open their doors, offering small cocktail receptions for passersby.

"Wow, we are the best educated city in the country?" she asks. "I wouldn't be shocked if we were in the top 10, but number one, that's kind of surprising."

Yet Ms. Katz herself boosts the city's figures. She moved to Bethesda after finishing graduate school three years ago, drawn to the area because she had relatives nearby and a master's degree in public policy.

Now, when she isn't working at the gallery, she lobbies for the Alliance for Children and Families – making Bethesda perhaps the only place in the world where you can buy a $30,000 Picasso from a lobbyist.

Sitting on a bench nearby, Paul and Lavinia Pasquina, who have two homes in Bethesda, look over plans for the redesign of their home in Tunisia.

Paul, a doctor, says he came to Bethesda for medical school and fell in love with it. Lavinia, born and raised in Italy, says she's happy here.

Her only complaint: "They should keep things open a little longer at night. It sometimes feels like the suburbs."

Some things, it seems, are beyond the reach of even the best planning committee.

- Laurent Belsie

ST. LOUIS - Americans believe in schooling. Better than eight out of 10 have finished high school; 1 out of 4 has completed college. But those national numbers hide a lot of local variance.

Consider tiny Huron, Calif., an hour's drive from Fresno. Not one of its 6,306 adult residents has a college degree, and only 1 of 5 made it through high school.

But surely, a seat of state government boasts a well-educated populace.

That's true for Madison, Wis., where just under half have a college degree. Montpelier, Vt., Tallahassee, Fla., and Raleigh, N.C., aren't far behind.

But in Trenton, N.J., the nation's least educated state capital, fewer than 1 in 10 adult residents has completed four years of college. Hartford, Conn. (12 percent), and Harrisburg, Penn. (14 percent), don't look much better.

Sometimes, geography and job opportunity explain high educational attainment. The nation's best-educated county, Los Alamos County in New Mexico, is home to one of America's foremost national laboratories. Small Stanford, Calif., boasts an even higher college-graduation rate than Bethesda – but it's made up almost entirely of Stanford University.

In small places, sampling error almost certainly plays a role. For example, the US boasts 13 communities where every adult apparently has a college degree. But they're mostly out-of-the-way places such as Chicken, Alaska, and Thurmond, W.V.; none of them boasts an adult population bigger than 17. And since the Census Bureau only samples 1 out of 6 households, such numbers are highly suspect.

That's too bad for Sweeney Ranch, Wyo.

With six adults, according to the 2000 census, it could have billed itself as the only community in the country where everyone not only completed college, but got an advanced degree as well.

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