Top 5 Most Livable US Cities 2014

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by Shasta

Reed is rated poorly because they don't play the game. Year after year the school refuses to play the USNWR games.

By the way, how many schools have been busted now for fudging data to the USNWR?

Reed and Lewis + Clark are both very solid liberal arts colleges. Also, U of Portland is a decent Catholic college.

Yeah, Reed is one of the best examples of a college getting screwed for not playing by USNWR's rules (though I don't think that's a totally acceptable justification for their lack of transparency, plus they've incorporated their resulting iconoclast status in their marketing material). That said, Portland punches far below its weight when it comes to higher education.

[mello]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Housing construction doesn't really correlate heavily with population growth anyways. They're really loosely linked.

Could you or Mhays please explain this? Its very good information because the no growth NIMBY types always seem to think that more housing units equals more people. Are you saying that in the larger vicinity of construction population doesn't increase but what about in the census tract where the construction occurs? Thanks.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by mello

Could you or Mhays please explain this? Its very good information because the no growth NIMBY types always seem to think that more housing units equals more people. Are you saying that in the larger vicinity of construction population doesn't increase but what about in the census tract where the construction occurs? Thanks.

Think of the older parts of LA County, or northern Orange County. The housing stock hasn't changed that much over the last few decades, but they managed to stuff another couple million people in the same housing stock. Household sizes increased (mostly due to poorer immigrants, housing affordability issues, and ethnics who culturally prefer multi-generational housing).

No one is going to decide to not have a baby, or to not immigrate to some place, or to put grandma on the street, just because you restrict housing. People will adapt, and so larger demographic trends are largely independent of construction stats.