Fast Company on Fast Cities:
To find them, we started with data from Carnegie Mellon assistant
professor Kevin Stolarick, the numbers guru behind Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class,
which helped define what makes great cities tick. We relied on CEOs for
Cities’ CityVitals survey, authored by Joseph Cortright of Portland,
Oregon–based Impresa Inc.; sustainability data from SustainLane; and
insights from the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.What makes a Fast City? It starts with opportunity. Not just bald
economic capacity, but a culture that nurtures creative action and
game-changing enterprise. Fast Cities are places where entrepreneurs
and employees alike can maximize their potential–where the number of
patents filed is high, for instance, or where the high-tech sector is
expanding.The second component: innovation. Fast Cities invest in physical,
cultural, and intellectual infrastructure that will sustain growth.
"The real forces for change in America and around the world are the
mayors and the local communities," says Florida, now a professor of
public policy at George Mason University.Finally, Fast Cities have energy, that ethereal thing that happens
when creative people collect in one place. The indicators can seem
obscure: number of ethnic restaurants, or the ratio of live-music
lovers to cable-TV subscribers. But they point to environments where
fresh thinking stimulates action and, by the way, attracts new talent
in a virtuous cycle of creativity.Sifting through the data, we identified 30 Fast Cities around the
globe, which we’re presenting in nine categories, from Creative-Class
Meccas to Green Leaders. We’ve also noted 20 locales on the verge of
Fast City status, plus 5 Slow Cities–and 5 too fast for their own good.
Click here for the Fast Cities list; here for cities on the verge; here for slow cities; here for too-fast cities. Interactive maps here and here And a slide show here.
