New Criteria Would Change City’s Ranking
I’m bustin’ my buttons with pride, living in the nation’s 281st best place.
That’s where Spokane ranked in the 1996 Money magazine Best Places survey. That’s not so bad. We whipped the heck out of Yuba City, Calif. (299), and Rockford, Ill. (300). Those are about the only cities we whipped. The survey only goes to 300. (New Spokane motto: “America’s 19th least-livable city.”)
My first reaction was to be alarmed at this, considering the trends. Here’s where Spokane has ranked the past six years:
1991: 32nd.
1992: 47th.
1993: 131st.
1994: 218th.
1995: 232nd.
1996: 281st.
Watch out, Rockford. We’re coming to get you!
I spent upwards of 10, 15 seconds pondering why Spokane has plummeted so steeply. What has changed in our city to make life so much more miserable?
The magazine does not give details, but I got onto Money magazine’s Web site (http://moneymag.com) and winkled out a more complete list of the criteria.
It turns out that Spokane did poorly on things like home value appreciation, job growth, housing permits, medical costs and the state’s fiscal health.
Well, for crying out loud. Who cares about that? Who do they think we are? John Kenneth Galbraith? Does anybody really do a complete economic analysis when determining which city is the best place to live?
Well, sure, some people do. Smart people, for instance. But the rest of us have a list that goes something along these lines:
1. Is it far away enough from the in-laws?
2. Do they get ESPN on cable?
3. Do I, personally, have a job there?
This last category is not identical to Money magazine’s job criteria (“forecast job growth” and “unemployment rate”) but I think most of us appreciate the subtle difference between a city in which we, personally, have jobs, as opposed to one where we, personally, don’t.
Obviously, my notions of what makes the “best” city are different from Money magazine’s. So wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could set our own criteria, and then learn which city is our true metropolitan soulmate?
Then I discovered: You can. The Money magazine Web site allows you to customize the factors you think are important, and then it will rank the cities accordingly. The first thing I did was to customize it for my taste in weather. The computer churned and came out with: Richland, Wash.
Yes, that’s right, Richland, the weather paradise of the U.S.
This was followed by Boise, Yakima and Odessa, Texas. Obviously, my taste in weather can best be characterized as “lousy.” (Spokane came in at No. 39.)
So I got more serious about my search. I generally ignored economic factors, and placed a heavy emphasis on education, leisure activities and arts and culture. The computer did a ranking for me in each of those categories.
For education, the computer told me my ideal cities were: Boston, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Chicago. (Spokane came in at 84th.)
For leisure activities, it gave me: Seattle followed by San Diego, Tacoma, Bremerton, San Francisco and L.A. (Spokane was 149th.)
For arts, the computer spit out: Boston, followed by Middlesex, N.J., San Francisco, and Trenton, N.J. (Spokane failed to place.)
Finally, I entered all of the criteria for every category, and it gave me my own personal Overall Best Place:
New York City.
Never mind that New York City is my idea of a Fellini nightmare. Never mind that I’d just as soon raise my children in Chechnya. Sure, I think it’s the most exciting city in the world, but excitement is something that I prefer in doses not to exceed a week.
No doubt the computer picked New York for me because of my preferences for things cultural, but frankly, my idea of the perfect living situation is having the New Yorker magazine delivered every week to a quiet street in America’s 19th least-livable city.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review