National Geographic Magazine is out with its list of the ‘50 next great adventure cities’ (h/t Zoe B).
Selection criteria included both outdoor offerings and urban settings with job variety, cultural activities, and available green space. Sarah Tuff and Greg Melville from NGM write that: ” We looked for innovative towns that aren’t just prime relocation spots for now, but also smart choices for the future… Not only do the selected towns have the action, they’ve also got a plan.”
The top 12 picks, moving across the country are as follows
West Coast:
Seattle, Washington
Hood River, Oregon
San Francisco, California
Rockies:
Missoula, Montana
Ogden, Utah
Carbondale, Colorado
Central:
Grand Marais, Minnesota
San Antonio, Texas
East Coast:
Brattleboro, Vermont
Boston, Massachusetts
Islamorada, Florida
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Some familiar names on NGM’s list that mesh with our own rankings from Who’s Your City include San Francisco and Boston. What do you think about these adventure towns? Do you feel that any others should have made the cut? Would any of these cities be on your list of places to visit this summer?
August 12th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I have visited Brattleboro numerous times. The downtown is uncommonly healthy given the size of the town and the lack of a local college or ski resort. The building stock is historic brick (from the late 1800s?), in good shape and nearly full use. Businesses include a good local bookstore, a large and healthy food coop, a large adventure outfitter, many cafes, and a high-end fabric store (telling, since no one would describe local fashion as couture). Walmart is available across the river in New Hampshire. The cost of housing seems reasonable. There is a lot of Victorian housing stock, ranging from fixer-uppers to well-tended. Amtrak stops by between Boston and Montreal. It is a place where old-time Vermont values and flatlander money coexist in seeming harmony. Downside? The public schools are mediocre at best. And I’ll bet that local teenagers find the place a bore.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Kinda disappointing as a list. There doesn’t seem to be any methodology that I can see.
Two years ago I teamed up with surfing superstar Laird Hamilton to present our ranking of the 50 largest metro areas by their adventure quotient.
We measured the number and quality of sites for surfing, wind surfing, rafting, kayaking, canoing, cycling, rock climbing and hiking; the number of triathlons and marathons; resources such as the number of ski and surf shops, rock gyms, and recreational equipments stores.
San Francisco was the big winner, with Boston (#2), San Diego (#3), Sacramento (#4), Los Angeles (#5), Denver (#6), Seattle (#7) Portland (#8), Charlotte (#9) and Philadelphia (#10).
At the bottom were Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Louisville (KY), San Antonio, Memphis, St. Louis, Birmingham, Houston, Kansas City, and Miami.
Since San Antonio was one of NG’s top picks and one of our cellar-dwellers, I was curious to see what their editors found so adventurous in and around the city. Their suggestion? – “Rent a bicycle and pedal through the arts district.”
O…. Kay….
August 13th, 2008 at 1:58 am
This is a cool article from Spacing Magazine’s archives about the city as an adventure. I’d also be interested in the methodology used as well. I like the criteria that Bert uses, but they all have a very strong inbuilt financial bias. The average person that I know can’t afford very many of the activities listed. Moreover, these are all ORGANIZED activities. Though organized activity and adventure are by no means mutually exclusive, I definitely don’t think about adventure in the city as paintball or something like that.
When I think about adventure in the city, I think about the ability to go out and be stimulated in ways that I couldn’t predict before I left my place and my ability to engage those unpredicabilities or stay my course if I so choose. Obviously walking out of my place into a war zone is unpredictable, but I can’t engage that safely. A suburban space that’s 100% planned is the other extreme, but there’s middle ground.
Say I’m an average citizen of an urban space – how often are there things going on that I can be engaged by? If I wanted to leave my place one day without a plan, could I come home having learned something and enjoyed myself, with some good stories to recount about my day? Do I need a gym membership to have fun in my city?
What exactly do we mean by adventure?
August 13th, 2008 at 2:57 am
For our study, we were looking at outdoor adventure, with a definite bias towards pretty extreme physical activity. The intellectual and cultural stimulation of a city certainly qualifies as adventure, but that wasn’t where we focused.
Thanks for reminding me that all adventure doesn’t have to be solely physical.