WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A new Gallup study of 26 American cities, conducted in conjunction with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, finds that residents of smaller cities such as Boulder, Colorado, and Charlotte, North Carolina, are more likely to recommend their city as a place to live than residents of larger cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit. Overall, residents in Bradenton, Florida, were the most likely to recommend their city, while residents in Detroit and Gary, Indiana, were the least likely.
Posts in ‘Overall Findings’
Smaller U.S. cities generate more loyalty and passion - Gallup.com
The top three things that make people love where they live
Matt Thompson is Knight Foundation's Interim Online Community Manager. He edits the Soul of the Community blog.
Over the past two years, we've asked almost 28,000 people from all over the U.S. how they feel about their communities. Are they satisfied with where they live? Would they recommend it to others? Is it perfect for folks like them? Are they proud to live there?
We also asked them a ton of other questions about their community. How are the highways and freeways? How well do community leaders represent their interests? How safe is it to walk around their neighborhoods? How's the local economy?
From their answers to the second set of questions (regarding different aspects of their community), we tried to figure out which of those questions did the most to predict their answers on the first set of questions (regarding their own feelings about the community). And in place after place, knowing how they perceived three key aspects of the community told us the most about how much they cherished the community overall.
3. Aesthetics
In each community, Gallup researchers asked residents two questions about its attractiveness - how they rated the area's parks, playgrounds and trails and how they rated its overall beauty and physical setting. It turns out a pretty city is a lovable city.
You might have suspected this. After all, an area's aesthetics are one of the first things we talk about when we say why we love a place. Urban design has become a huge topic nationwide over the past few decades, well-reflected in the online conversation through popular sites like Inhabitat and Worldchanging. We intuitively thrill to projects like Manhattan's High Line - turning an abandoned rail line into a public park - because we recognize that these aesthetic enhancements are important for a community's well-being.
But would you have expected that our feelings about our community's aesthetics play a bigger part in our attachment to a place than public safety or highways and freeways? That surprised me, and it suggests to me that as much as we talk about urban design and green space, we might still be underestimating its impact.
2. Social offerings
It sometimes seems as though every city in America is working on a neverending downtown revitalization project. In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on creating vibrant social cores for our communities, dense places where diverse groups of people can interact. Our study suggests these efforts are valuable.
Researchers asked residents questions about how fun and social their communities are - Is there vibrant nightlife? Is it a good place to meet people and make friends? How much do residents seem to care about each other?
Responses to these questions did a lot to indicate how attached people are to where they live. I think this is especially interesting considering the study covers residents from a number of demographics, not just the young, single urbanites that we think of when we hear words like "nightlife."
To be a top-three characteristic overall, social offerings had to be important to people of a wide range of ages, marital statuses and incomes. And in fact, it's an ascendant community trait whether you're looking at a relatively older community like Bradenton, Fla., or a relatively young community like State College, Pa. - both areas where social offerings are actually the leading indicator for community attachment.
1. Openness
The number one trait we identified as decisive in determining residents' attachment to a community was openness. To get at this trait, researchers asked whether the community was a "good place for" different groups of people - senior citizens, racial and ethnic minorities, families with kids, gays and lesbians, college graduates, and immigrants from other countries.
In community after community, residents' responses to these questions told us the most about how attached they were to their community.
Urban scholars such as Richard Florida have been talking for years about the economic benefits of tolerance - a community's friendliness to different groups of people. Our findings underscore the value of these characteristics and add some strong empirical weight.
But this leaves me with some questions. Openness might be the most significant trait in determining community attachment, but of all the areas researchers asked about, this is also one of the most personal and subjective. After all, civic leaders can fix up highways and freeways, create parks and bike trails, make housing more affordable, encourage the development of fun nightlife corridors, and work to lower crime - we have recognized public policy levers to address all of these community needs. But how does a community make itself more welcoming? Laws and policies can only go so far in addressing this perception.
Might it be that one of the community's most important traits is also the most difficult to improve?
This post is republishable under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike license.
Why a tanking economy doesn't really affect attachment
When we embarked on the second year of the Soul of the Community study, the American economy was entering a significant downturn, as you know. So one of the questions on the minds of our researchers was whether the economic decline would factor into attachment. Many of us assumed that it would play a part, and that the hardest-hit cities would see a corollary decrease in attachment.
But according to our findings, the economy didn't play a big part in folks' attachment to their communities.
We can't tell you for certain why that would be, but the research analysts I spoke to had some theories. It might be that people recognize the economy as being bad everywhere. Or they might assume that the disadvantages of moving — finding a new job, making new friends — outweigh the benefits. Or perhaps people's reactions to the economy showed up indirectly; for example, several cities saw a jump in basic services as a driver for attachment, which includes factors related to the economy, such as housing affordability and medical services.
What do you think might explain the disconnect?
Image courtesy of bitzcelt on Flickr.
What happened to social capital?
If you're like me, the phrase "bowling alone" conjures up vivid memories of undergrad sociology lectures about Robert Putnam and his popular 1995 essay. Putnam traced a decline in civic engagement to shifts in technology, including an increasing attachment to isolating media such as television and video games.
In a study about community attachment, you might expect social capital to play a big role. But two years of research have reinforced the finding that social capital isn't highly important in tying people to their communities. It was one of the drivers Gallup researchers studied, but it was low on the list of factors contributing to attachment.
Instead, researchers found a strong relationship between community attachment and social offerings (which includes the number and quality of local arts and entertainment venues). This means that what most determines a person's passion and loyalty to a place might not be whether they're bowling alone, but whether that bowling alley is a fun place to be.
From my understanding of Putnam's work, this finding doesn't necessarily contradict his research. "Bowling Alone" was less concerned with the relationship between people and their particular geographic communities, and more concerned with people's participation in democracy more generally.
Image courtesy of suzannelong on Flickr.
