At urbanSCALE, we deliberately use a positive definition of the word “urban” in all of our endeavors. Far too often, the terms urban, inner city, and downtown conjure up images of dark, dangerous environments that are filled with criminals, drug dealers, and the down-trodden of our society. For most cities, these images are way off base and don’t reflect reality. The truth is that America’s large cities and their surrounding urban regions are the driving force of economic development, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
We have developed the urbanSCALE rating system to measure how urban a city is according to 10 scales (or traits) of vibrant cities. Each of these 10 traits includes many variables that have been created through comprehensive analysis and data collection. For each trait, the highest ranking city – or most “urban” city for that trait – receives a score of 10 and the remaining 99 cities receive a score less than 10 based on how they measure up to the most urban city for that trait. In the end, the average scores for each city from all 10 traits are combined to calculate the average score of the 10 traits, giving each city its “urbanSCALE” score. We have conducted this full urbanSCALE analysis for each of the 100 largest U.S. cities, but the 10 traits and the principles behind them apply to all cities, regardless of their size.
The 10 traits are listed below, each with a link to a separate page for that specific trait. Each page includes a set of questions that describes the types of variables used to measure that particular trait and the full list of urbanSCALE ratings for that trait for all 100 cities:
Data used in the urbanSCALE rating system comes from numerous sources including:
- U.S. Census Bureau American Fact Finder
- U.S. Census Bureau Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics OnTheMap
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Emporis
- Center for Neighborhood Technology
- Zipcar
- Car2go
- Google Maps
- Esri
- U.S. Green Building Council
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
- National Center for Education Statistics
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Times Higher Education
- The Transport Politic
- 100s of individual city, county, and state government websites
- Dozens of data points from customized mapping analysis
