Creative Class

The 2007 edition of the Milken Institute’s top performing metros is out. Here’s the top ten.

1. Provo-Orem, Utah
2. Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina
3. Salt Lake City, Utah
4. Austin-Round Rock, Texas
5. Huntsville, Alabama
6. Wilmington, North Carolina
7. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas
8. Tacoma, Washington
9. Olympia, Washington
10. Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina

What do you think? Does this list jibe with your own thoughts and indicators of America’s top-performing places?

Here’s something interesting…

So Maclean’s did a nice article about a recent study measuring “Learning,” from the Canadian Council of Learning. The name of the article is “Canada’s Smartest Cities.”

But I wondered about the difference or connection between Smarts and Learning, so I did a search of the meaty 45-page report – and found zero (nada, zilch, l’oeuf) instances of the word “Smart.” The authors were plainly sensitive to the issues surrounding labeling something as “smart.”

I’ve wondered about this frequently. Is it elitist to value higher education?  By celebrating smartness, are we in essence devaluing those who have not had the opportunities or chosen the path to higher learning?

I confess, I enjoy being around smart people. I find a strong connection between well-educated people and those who are open, tolerant, inquisitive, far seeing, and inclusive. But I’ve also found some of the most maddening people in well-educated professionals – rude, selfish, entitled, unsympathetic, and petty. (They make me want to hang out in a trailer park, or some other low-rent neighborhood where anything goes.)

I still think that the educational attainment of city or community is one of the best measures of a place’s quality of life.  Generally, better-educated citizenry make tougher and better decisions for the future, and see value in making a community better for all, not just their peers.

Maclean’s magazine contacted me last month to ask for my comments about a recently released mega-study of “lifelong learning.” The subject of the piece was the 2008 Composite Learning Index (CLI), from the Canadian Council on Learning.

Here’s a link to the Maclean’s article, which has some insightful quotes from CCG’s Kevin Stolarick, and some boring ones from me.

The Maclean’s article is a good overview of the ambitious CLI study, but it’s really worth a look in its raw form. Here is the home page for the Composite Learning Index, and the 2008 report itself.

Your time is valuable, so let me just give you my thoughts about the study, having done many similar ones over the last 25 years or so.

• First, it’s huge in scope - too big, in my opinion, for any valuable insight. By covering so much, it dilutes its results by including sometimes conflicting measures.
• The study attempts to quantify “learning” in large and small cities and towns across Canada, nearly communities in all. In an apparent effort to value everyone everywhere, all types of learning are included such as use of the Internet; recreation and sports participation; buying and reading printed matter; attending live performing arts; travel time to nearby museums, libraries, and business/civic associations; expenditures on social clubs; attending church; volunteering and socializing with other cultures; as well as the more common measures of high school and university graduation rates and student test scores. These are all valuable metrics, and all worthy of their own study. By mashing them all together into one index, some insights are undoubtedly lost.
• Many of the metrics are based on estimates of household expenditures for various metrics. I did not find a list of specific sources, but in my experience household expenditure data is based on a national model, and adjusted for each geographic area, usually on the basis of income. It is unlikely that individual differences between communities are revealed, except as a function of income. Rich places spend more, poor places less.
• Some measure of the quality of the resources should be attempted, not just the proximity to libraries,  schools and universities, museums and art galleries. It’s much different having access to a world-class museum with rotating exhibits, instead of a small-town one-room museum with the usual few bones, muskets, baskets, and pottery (charming though they are.) Use annual attendance figures or budgets to estimate the quality of the experience, or average entrance scores to rank universities.
• There are four major segments of the study, based on the type of learning – Knowing, Work Experience, Community, and Personal Development. These would best remain segregated. It’s appealing to combine them all into one super-score but, like mixing many colors together, insights are lost.

All in all, the CLI is a wonderfully ambitious attempt to quantify “learning” and provide a road map for the future. But a Swiss Army knife is rarely the best tool for the job, or even any job. By dividing the components of the study into more meaningful sections, better insights may be gained.

Have a look and tell me what you think. Do their rankings fit with your experience?

Best, Bert

Paris is tops; London, next; with Barcelona in third. Berlin. Amsterdam. Munich, Stockholm, Prague, Rome, and Athens round out the top 10 European city brands, according to this new ranking (via Planetizen).

What do you think?

Immigrants to Canada appear to be heading west, and gaining economically from the move, according to a new report from the Association of Canadian Studies. The Globe and Mail reports:

While Toronto remains overwhelmingly the dominant hub for newcomers, its proportion of Canada’s total annual immigrant intake dropped to nearly one-third in 2007 from half in 2001. In contrast, the numbers settling in western cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon have increased every year in the past five years.

In 2005, the average annual income for an immigrant family in Calgary was $102,118, which is $33,000 more than in Montreal, $22,000 more than in Vancouver and $12,000 more than in Toronto … The average income was $92,932 in Regina and $91,356 in Saskatoon … The wage differential between non-immigrant families in Toronto – who earned on average $139,926 a year – and those born elsewhere was 55 per cent. In contrast, the gap narrows to 33 per cent in Calgary, where non-immigrant families earn on average $136,380, and 19 per cent in Edmonton. In Regina and Saskatoon, non-immigrant families actually earn 1 per cent less on average than their immigrant counterparts.

A great article from an upcoming issue of Macleans magazine on “Canada’s Smartest Cities” research done by the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) indicates which cities offer the most opportunities – with Ottawa and Victoria topping the charts. Calgary is labeled as the country’s most cultured city with Guelph taking the prize as the most caring city. Check out the rankings and experiment with the interactive mapping of more than 4,700 cities conducted by the CCL here.

Why should you care how smart your city is? According to the CCL, having more opportunities for lifelong learning can mean “higher wages, better job prospects, improved health and a more fulfilling life.

The CCL’s index is created with data from 25 indicators, which in turn are grouped into four pillars of learning, originally developed by the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The four pillars are: Learning to know, Learning to Do, Learning to Live and Learning to Be.

Thumbs up to Bert Sperling and Kevin Stolarick for their insights provided in the article. Oh, and watch out Canada… Who’s Your City: The Canadian Edition is coming to a bookshelf near you in March of next year, chalk-full of analysis and rankings on Canadian cities.

What do you think makes a city smart? Is it cultural opportunities, volunteer activities, workplace training? Or are there other elements that rank high on what you believe a smart city should be?

A new, international version of the popular board game ‘Monopoly’ is out next week.

The new version of the game has 22 international cities included. The most heavily represented nations are (drum roll please!) – Canada and China. Three cities each from each of those two nations are among 22 selected by more than five million fans of the game who voted online for the best cities.

Of these, Montreal received the most votes and will be paired with Latvian capital Riga as the most expensive property group on the board. Next in rank are Capetown, Belgrade, and Paris. Last-placed of the 22 was Poland’s Gdynia and no German, Indian, Russian, or Scandinavian towns made the list.

Click here to see if your city made the cut. What cities do you feel are missing from Monopoly’s new international edition? Which places would you include?

Canada is upping its game in the global competition for talent, liberalizing immigration for students and skilled workers. As the Globe and Mail reports, the country

is creating a new fast-track immigration route for skilled foreign workers and students who’ve already proved employable in Canada: an effort to prevent an erosion of talent as global competition heats up for higher-value labour.

Unlike existing programs, the Canadian Experience Class immigration stream will make work experience in this country a key criterion for vetting applicants. It will also allow temporary foreign workers and students living here to apply from within Canada rather than having to leave first. It’s expected to grant permanent resident status to 12,000 to 18,000 economic immigrants in the first year, a figure that’s forecast to rise to 25,000 annually over time …

The goal is to improve the quality of immigrants and retain the most valuable workers and educated students: arrivals who’ve already proven they can integrate into society and meet labour market needs. “If we’re going to compete internationally for the best and for the brightest, we need to improve the way that we attract and retain those who want to work in their fields and contribute to Canadian society,” federal Immigration Minister Diane Finley explained.

In Flight, I argued it would be just these sorts of incremental improvements in competing for global talent – by Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and northern European countries, as well as the ability of the BRICs to lure back emigres – that could begin to undermine the U.S. lead in global talent. And with the situation in Iraq, the sub-prime meltdown and credit crisis, not to mention a watershed election, the U.S. seems incapable of addressing this issue.

Do you think the U.S. will be able to turn the corner on this one, or will some combinations of other nations inexorably undermine its long-standing talent advantage?

Next week’s Economist Magazine has a great feature on the world’s most competitive cities.

New York is the world’s most competitive city, according to the Global Urban Competitiveness Project. The study ranks 500 cities on their ability to attract and use resources to generate wealth. The cities are assessed on nine measures, including income, economic growth, innovation, jobs, prices and the presence of multinational firms. The report found that the gap between the best-performing cities and the worst is widening. Indeed, there is a fairly large gap between the top two cities, New York and London, and Tokyo in third place. Cities in Europe and North America are richest, but China has the fastest-growing ones. Asian cities also score highly in patent registrations and attracting multinational companies.

Not surprising that NYC, London, and Tokyo – the ’superstar cities’ – top the list and are going in the right direction. But what about the others? Emerging cities such as Dubai which would not have been found on this list a few years ago are climbing the ranks. What do you think it would take to get your city on this list?

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?