Soul of the Community

From Crain's Detroit Business:

A Gallup study released today found that residents’ emotional attachment to the Detroit area has actually increased slightly in 2009, in spite of the economy.

The Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is funding a three-year “Soul of the Community” study in Detroit and 25 other areas where its founders owned newspapers.

Gallup has found a significant correlation between residents’ emotional connection to where they live and the GDP growth in those 26 communities.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Michigan's economy may have continued to tank the past 12 months, but metro Detroiters feel better about the region and more optimistic about the future than they did a year ago.

About 1,500 metro Detroiters interviewed by the Gallup polling organization as part of the second year of a three-year quality of life study gave the area improved marks for a variety of issues that drive resident attachment to a place, which is considered one indicator of economic growth.

The study -- which surveyed residents in the Detroit metropolitan statistical area of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Livingston and Lapeer counties -- cited three main factors that emotionally attach residents to the area: openness (how welcoming a place is), social offerings (fun places to gather) and aesthetics (physical beauty, including parks, playgrounds and green space).

From MLive.com:

Metro Detroit residents are a little more optimistic about their community this year, but most remain unattached and pessimistic, according to Gallup's annual Soul of the Community study.

Fourteen percent of residents in the Metro Detroit statistical area -- Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Lapeer and St. Clair Counties -- said they were attached to the region for 2009, up from 12 percent last year.

From the Detroit News:

Why do you live where you do?

In other cities, this might be an academic question. In Metro Detroit, the mounting challenges to existence make the question more urgent. With Detroit's "tragedy" splashed on Time magazine's cover, its plight the subject of constant media scrutiny, there's never been a more poignant moment to try to understand why we live here.

But the answers don't come easily.

A study released this morning --"Soul of the Community," commissioned by the Knight Foundation and conducted by the Gallup polling organization -- examines the mindsets of 26 American communities, trying to ferret the unseen forces that compel residents to attach and stay in their areas, to love where they live.