Loving where you live!

It's NOT so such about the economy. 

Rather, it is more about the physical and social aesthetics of a place. Such is what the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Gallup report in the recently released "Knight Soul of the Community 2010," a study about why people love where they live and why it matters.

The gallery at Arts on Union

Jobs, the economy and safety are NOT the top factors. In fact, higher ratings go to "elements that relate directly to their daily quality of life." These include: physical beauty, opportunities for socializing and the openness of a community to all people.

This, friends, is interesting stuff.  Policy makers continue to place priority on JES (jobs, economy, safety) and, according to this study, residents are looking at things a different way. JES matters, of course, it just doesn't rank as high as the issues of physical and social aesthetics because if you don't  have the aesthetics, you don't  have the JES.

"Over the last three years, the Soul of the Community study has found a positive correlation between community attachment and local GDP growth ... This is a key metric in assessing community success because local GDP growth not only measures a community's economic success, but also its ability to grow and meet residents' needs," the report states.

I take this information as evidence of a shift from "build it and they will come" to "clean it up, liven it up and they will come" and I think this adjustment toward aesthetics is especially important to post-industrial places, such as Pennsylvania.

What do you think?

"the Great Reset" - so many of us are in need of it!

"the Great Reset." READ IT! Please? It it Richard Florida's new book and it is well worth reading and discussing. 


Just now, I am focused on what Florida, quoting Youssef Cassis, says about locales needing new talent to replenish the location's energy level and its capacity to innovate. This is why our financial centers, New York and London, while feeling some economic pain, are still making it and WILL remain WORLD financial centers.  They are diverse and because they are diverse in social, cultural and economic ways, these places are attractive to educated, young people with a lot of good energy.


Having lived in a one industry town (coal) for a long time, and having re-located to another, I identify. Lack of affordable housing options for young singles with money and young couples with jobs, lack of cultural amenities, lack of mixed use structures does nothing to quell the brain drain. Persistent brain drain is one of the key reasons so many of Pennsylvania's post-industrial cities and larger boroughs are unable to lure and to keep the talent we desperately need. 


I think this is what Florida is saying. If not, it is what I am saying, based on what I have seen and felt and by what I work with on a daily basis.