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Home >> Quality
of Life >> Rankings
Rankings
Are rankings important? They can be for individuals who are looking to move or for site location consultants trying to find that right place for their client. Fortunately for the Bloomington-Normal area, the rankings all indicate that the Twin Cities are a great place in which to move your family or your business. With high rankings in many categories important to individuals and businesses alike, Bloomington-Normal is a metro area with a lot to offer.
The following rankings are for the Bloomington-Normal Metropolitan Statistical Area (McLean County) unless noted. They range from quality of life ratings to economic well-being ratings. Please follow the links provided to view the actual rankings.
Bloomington was recently placed on CNNMoney's list of the 100 Best Places to Live. CNN Money ranked the cities according to ease of living, health, education, crime, park space, arts and leisure and economic opportunity. Bloomington was the only city in Central Illinois to make the cut.
Bloomington-Normal received a high ranking from Golf Digest. Bloomington-Normal was ranked No. 5 out of 330 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States. The magazine judged the MSA's according to access to golf, weather, value of golf and quality of golf.
As mentioned on the Quality of Life page in this Web site, the book Cities Ranked & Rated listed Bloomington-Normal as No. 42 out of 400 metro areas, placing the small metro area of the Twin Cities above many larger cities. The book cited the area’s small-town atmosphere, stable economy and educational attainment as pros of living in the Twin Cities. The authors of the book, Bert Sterling and Peter Sander, spoke with The Today Show about the methodology of their rankings and some of the results. The ranking for Bloomington-Normal can be found at the end of the document.
Expansion Management is a monthly business magazine intended for company managers and executives. Its goal is to “provide readers with honest and factual comparison information on cities, states, regions and countries that will enhance their ability to make quality site location decisions.” Two rankings from Expansion Management bode very well for the Bloomington-Normal area. Expansion Management rated Bloomington-Normal as one of 72 metro areas with a five-star quality of life, giving the community high rankings in areas such as standard of living, quality of schools and traffic and commute. In its yearly Mayor’s Cup Challenge, Bloomington-Normal ranked 34th, which means it was rated as the 34th best place in the U.S. to relocate a company. A few factors that attributed to a place’s attractiveness for business were business climate, logistics infrastructure and quality of life at a reasonable cost.
Quality of Life: Mayor's Cup:
Each year, Forbes compiles a list of the best places for business. It breaks the listings down between large and small places. Out of 168 total small places listed, Bloomington-Normal ranked high at No. 15, making it the 15th best small place for business in the country, according to Forbes. Some of Bloomington-Normal’s higher ratings were in job growth, crime rate, educational attainment and advanced degrees. Bloomington-Normal’s complete profile from Forbes is included below.
Richard Florida is an economist who wrote the book The Rise of the Creative Class, in which he examines the growing role of creativity in our economy. In Florida’s view, “places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don’t.” He believes the key to economic growth lies in translating the power of the creative class into “creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses, and regional growth.” The Twin Cities ranked competitively in Richard Florida’s creativity ranking. Most noteworthy is Bloomington-Normal’s creative class share of the workforce, which resulted in a No. 1 rating for Bloomington-Normal’s creativity rank.
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit independent economic think tank. It created a Best Performing Cities index that ranks U.S. metropolitan areas based upon their economic performance and their ability to create, as well as keep, the greatest number of jobs in the nation. The index rated 200 of the largest cities and 118 smaller cities. Out of the 118 smaller cities, Bloomington-Normal’s overall ranking was 40. The Twin Cities’ highest rankings were in high tech sector output growth and the number of highly concentrated high tech industries. Bloomington-Normal also scored very well on five-year wages and salaries growth and five-year job growth.
An article on the CNNMoney Web site compiled year 2002 unemployment rates for metropolitan areas throughout the country. It found that Bloomington-Normal had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 2.7 percent (U.S. Average = 5.7 percent), and only 12 metropolitan areas had lower rates. Bloomington-Normal’s universities and colleges were a big boost for the area. According to the article, “college areas, meanwhile, take the prize when it comes to having the lowest unemployment. They are not only insulated from the rest of the economy, but they actually benefit from times of high joblessness. ‘When the labor market is poor, more people go back to school.’”
As stated on its Web site, the POLICOM Corporation “is an independent economics research firm based in Palm City, Florida, which specializes in analyzing local and state economies. Through its research, it determines if a local economy is growing or declining, what is causing this to happen, and offers ideas and solutions to improve and enhance a local economy.” POLICOM analyzed the economic strength of 361 metro areas. Bloomington-Normal ranked 97th with only one other Illinois metro area ranked above it (the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metro area) and seven Illinois metro areas ranked below it. In addition, Bloomington-Normal ranked higher than such well-known metro areas as Ann Arbor, Mich.; Boulder, Colo.; Albany-Schenectady-Troy, N.Y.; Roanoke, Va. and many others. Bloomington-Normal’s rank can be found in the document on page 5 (on the right) and page 6 (on the left).
This last ranking is unique. Even the authors of the ranking admit that there has never been a ranking of its type before. The Progressive Farmer looked at 600 rural counties and ranked them by health care, education, climate, pollution index, crime index and tax burden to find the best places to live in rural America. Intangible characteristics were also considered, such as quality of life, leisure and cultural pursuits and scenery. McLean County made it into the top 100 counties at No. 60. The statistics provided by the ranking show that McLean County has a lower crime rate than the national average and better air quality than the national average.