EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - City Vitals – indicators to measure your city’s performance

City Vitals – indicators to measure your city’s performance - US

Introduction

'City Vitals' provides a detailed set of statistical measures for urban leaders to understand their city’s performance in four key areas: talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness. The fifty largest metropolitan areas in the United States are compared. However, the indicators can be applied to any city, whether American, European or in some place else. By simultaneously exploring each dimension, 'City Vitals' can help assess a city’s strengths and weaknesses, thus assisting city leaders in making the right strategic choices.

Description

CEOs for Cities has developed statistical measures on four dimensions of city competitiveness:

The Talented City - The indispensable asset in a knowledge economy is smart people. Cities are places where people build knowledge through education and experience. Talent is measured by educational attainment, the number of creative professionals, the migration of well-educated young adults and the number of foreign born college graduates.
The Innovative City - The ability to generate new ideas and to turn those ideas into reality is a critical source of competitive advantage. Indicators used in this report to measure innovativeness of cities are numbers of patents, the dollar value of venture capital investments, the extent of personal entrepreneurship and the number of small businesses.
The Connected City - Cities thrive as places where people can easily interact and connect. Both internal and external connections are important. Internal connections help promote the creation of new ideas and make cities work better for their residents. External connections enable people and businesses to tap into the global economy. The researchers measure the local connectedness of cities by looking at a diverse array of factors including voting, community involvement, economic integration and transit use. Measures of external connections include foreign travel, the presence of foreign students and broadband internet use.
The Distinctive City - The unique characteristics of place may be the only truly defensible source of competitive advantage for regions. Measures of distinctiveness are inherently incomplete. Every city has its own unique characteristics for which there are few, if any, statistics. Some initial measures of distinctiveness are drawn from market data about consumer behaviour and its variance across U.S. metropolitan areas.

For each of the statistical measures, ‘City Vitals’ ranks the fifty largest American metropolitan areas.

Conclusions

One key insight from ‘City Vitals’ is that there is no single recipe for metropolitan success. Cities can combine the four dimensions in different ways, building on their own strengths and weaknesses to improve their attractiveness as a place to live, work and invest into. Not all cities have the same opportunities. Not all cities should desire the same results.
The four dimensions of City Vitals— talent, innovation, connections, and distinctiveness—are important because they underpin urban prosperity. Urban areas that do well in generating and attracting talent, encouraging innovation, building connections and capitalising on distinctiveness are best positioned to improve the income of their residents and to reduce poverty, especially in the long run.
A strong urban core also plays a critical economic role. The urban centre of metropolitan areas is the focus of cultural activities, civic identity, governmental institutions and usually has the densest employment, particularly in financial, professional and creative services. Urban cores are also the iconic centres of cities, where interaction and connections are strongest.

Contact info

CEOs for Cities
Ms Sheila Redick, tel. +1 312 553 4630

Publication date

03/10/2006

Links

Download an extensive summary of ‘City Vitals’ on the CEOs for Cities website Order ‘City Vitals’ on the CEOs for Cities website

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Competitiveness