Building a More Meaningful 'Best Cities' List

M II A II R II K · #1 Posted: **Oct 3, 2012, 5:25 PM**

The Ingredients of 'Complete Communities'

Oct 01, 2012

By Richard Florida

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job...munities/3440/

PDF Report: Are We There Yet?

Quote:

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How do we gauge our progress toward more equitable, affordable, sustainable, and walkable communities? A new study, "Are We There Yet? Creating Complete Communities for 21st Century America," released today by the nonprofit Reconnecting America, seeks to do just this, identifying a series of metrics and rankings to measure America's progress toward creating more "complete communities."

- The report also identifies "opportunity areas," which it defines as places most primed for movement toward becoming more complete communities. The study evaluates metros across four key dimensions — living, working, moving, and thriving. Providing detailed data and rankings for 33 specific indicators, it grades all 366 metro areas on each of the four dimensions (see page 89/90 of the study for complete listings).

- One can quibble with the specific metrics — and the report notes its metrics are merely a start and much more needs to be done — but what is important about the study, and what I especially like about it, is that it seeks to systematically measure several key dimensions of more prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and livable communities, beyond just economic performance. In doing so, it underscores the need for ongoing, larger-scale efforts to develop shared open data that can track the key dimensions of community performance and help inform more effective strategies, policies and practices to strengthen and enhance our cities and communities. Count me in.

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The table below shows the grades for America's largest metros (those with more than 3 million people). The last column adds the overall score we calculated for these 17 metros by assigning a simple numerical value to each letter grade (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1)

Honolulu, San Jose, Denver, Portland, Oregon; Trenton-Ewing, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; Missoula, Montana; and Spokane, Washington, are among the smaller metros that got straight A's.

mhays · #2 Posted: **Oct 3, 2012, 7:14 PM**

Seattle gets screwed because we lack fixed-guideway transit, including by a lot of cities with much worse transit, pedestrian, and bike mode shares. They count mode shares but less so apparently.

More to the point, I live in Seattle so we should rank high!

Tom In Chicago · #3 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 4:13 PM**

Laredo, TX?!?

. . .

AviationGuy · #4 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 4:20 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

Laredo, TX?!?

. . .

You might want to read the report first and understand why the criteria they used indicated that there's a lot of opportunity. Also, opportunity means different things to different people, many of whom are happy just to have a job.

photoLith · #5 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 4:36 PM**

Im surprised Houston would be listed so low for thriving and working. I understand why living is a D obviously. But this city has one of Americas most thriving economies right now out of any major city. Theres more jobs now here then there was before the recession. Now there are some very liveable urban neighborhoods here, like The Heights where I live and parts of Montrose are very walkable. But overall, this city is a bitch to get around in and if you dont have a car youre screwed basically.

M II A II R II K · #6 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 5:19 PM**

Laredo, TX

A B B B = 13

Troll · #7 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 5:20 PM**

SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > Things In America Arranged Into Lists

glowrock · #8 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 5:25 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoLith

Im surprised Houston would be listed so low for thriving and working. I understand why living is a D obviously. But this city has one of Americas most thriving economies right now out of any major city. Theres more jobs now here then there was before the recession. Now there are some very liveable urban neighborhoods here, like The Heights where I live and parts of Montrose are very walkable. But overall, this city is a bitch to get around in and if you dont have a car youre screwed basically.

Yes, Houston is one of the very, very few metro areas with more jobs now than pre-recession. Others include Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and oddly enough, Pittsburgh!

Aaron (Glowrock)

BevoLJ · #9 Posted: **Oct 4, 2012, 7:13 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoLith

Im surprised Houston would be listed so low for thriving and working. I understand why living is a D obviously. But this city has one of Americas most thriving economies right now out of any major city. Theres more jobs now here then there was before the recession. Now there are some very liveable urban neighborhoods here, like The Heights where I live and parts of Montrose are very walkable. But overall, this city is a bitch to get around in and if you dont have a car youre screwed basically.

It might be the type of jobs Houston has grown? While it does seem to have a lot of white collor growth in things like health and education, Houston also seems to have tons and tons of its jobs have been blue collar industries like in mining, manufacturing, transportation, and logistics.

I didn't read all of that PDF (only a tiny part of it, maybe later) but what I did read, it seems blue collar jobs that need to be more spread out and likely in the burbs with much less transit would probably grade a lot lower than white collar jobs in like finance or such.

Tom In Chicago · #10 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 4:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by AviationGuy

You might want to read the report first and understand why the criteria they used indicated that there's a lot of opportunity. Also, opportunity means different things to different people, many of whom are happy just to have a job.

I read the report. . . I understand the criteria. . . I've been to Laredo many many times. . . the fact that it's on the list at all is completely incomprehensible. . .

. . .

Tom In Chicago · #11 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 4:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Laredo, TX

A B B B = 13

Useless. . .

. . .

jcchii · #12 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 6:46 PM**

That's funny

mhays · #13 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 7:27 PM**

Maybe it's like the Census Bureau confusing Salt Lake City and San Francisco in its recent report on metros and downtowns, resulting in SLC being falsely reported as high on the list all over the media, including by people who should have BS detectors like Atlantic Cities. The Census Department issued a correction at least...maybe these guys will too.

AviationGuy · #14 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 8:35 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I read the report. . . I understand the criteria. . . I've been to Laredo many many times. . . the fact that it's on the list at all is completely incomprehensible. . .

. . .

Having read the report, I see how they came up with the high score. The problem with objective criteria is that these kinds of results can happen. Is this a place I'd move to? No. I've seen very nice areas in Laredo, and it's a thriving and interesting community of primarily Hispanic border culture, which I love. Still, it's not my kind of town by any means. But for many, it provides opportunity, particularly economic, and that's what matters to those residents, not whether someone in Chicago or Austin cares about the community.

MolsonExport · #15 Posted: **Oct 5, 2012, 9:20 PM**

Anything...

Quote:

By Richard Florida

is

Nomayoplease · #16 Posted: **Oct 6, 2012, 8:05 PM**

When i saw Detroit on that list i had acid reflux....

Urban Zombie® · #17 Posted: **Oct 8, 2012, 3:06 AM**

I'm assuming Stockholm's rating is ABBA...