NewGeography.com blogs

The Milken Institute just released its report about the country's top-performing cities. The list is heavy with the names of small and mid-size cities and also has a good deal in common with Inc.'s Best Cities list which came out a few months prior. The list of the top ten with last year's ranking is below:

1. Provo-Orem, Utah (8)
2. Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina (10)
3. Salt Lake City, Utah (18)
4. Austin-Round Rock, Texas (20)
5. Huntsville, Alabama (16)
6. Wilmington, North Carolina (2)
7. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (7)
8. Tacoma, Washington (50)
9. Olympia, Washington (37 in the 2007 ranking of small metros)
10. Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina (12)

Newgeography has run several articles about the advantages of small cities. "Why Small Cities Rock" and "Sprawl Beyond Sprawl: America Moves to Smaller Metropolitan Areas" are two of them. For an entire list click on the "Small Cities" tab on the home page.

Here's an article from the Indianapolis Business Journal that discusses how the city attracts young, educated married couples but not singles.

Never known for edgy culture, "Cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Denver trounce Indianapolis on attracting young singles." However, it's the shorter commutes and housing affordability that separate Indiana's metropolis from the crowd. “I’ve got a house and a yard and a 10-minute commute. Try that in Chicago. You can’t,” says one recent Indy transplant.

A good article to see how young people change when they get married and how their preferences on place change as well.

There's a very pretty slide show in this recent article in the New York Times showing different backyards throughout the city's boroughs. No matter how small the area, there resides an amazing level of appreciation for having one's own area of greenery.

Though many planners call for increased density, many neighborhoods are in favor of "down-zoning." You flip through this slide show and it's easy to see why.

With 84 homicides, Los Angeles just recorded its lowest number of summer homicides since 1967. Overall, numbers are down this year compared to last year - which saw the fewest homicides in the city in 40 years. Made infamous by Rodney King just over 15 years ago, the LAPD is rising to the task of stemming violent crime.

Contrast this with Chicago, a city with a million fewer people than LA, which saw 123 murders this summer. What gives?

Looks like there is a cost to all those cheap industrial goods made in China after all. This article from McClatchy discusses the problem of pollution from Asia hitting the West Coast:

"By some estimates more than 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach the U.S. annually."

That's a hard number to visualize. It does, however, bring home the global problem of pollution.