“We’re ranked 100th!”
Last month we showed how local Montgomery County politicians love to selectively crow about and promote “best list rankings” from select news sources when these news “orgs” pump up a certain city or area in MoCo. Back then, it was the unincorporated area of Silver Spring, which Fortune Magazine claimed was #3 in the “Best Places to Live for Families” list. Immediately, Council President Evan Glass (representing MoCo “At Large”) promoted the “ranking” on social media, as if to claim this was a result of his awesome leadership.
But as we showed, the description of a bucolic, safe and easily traversed Silver Spring by Fortune staff writers was dubious, at best. The writers clearly haven’t traveled around the Washington, DC area on a weekday during rush hour and seemed to claim that DC and surrounding environs were just a hop, skip and a jump away from Silver Spring – despite the massive traffic problems that beset the region and Maryland beltway around Silver Spring exits nearly every day. If there is a single point of failure at the beltway or near the American Legion Bridge headed to Northern VA (where the jobs are), traffic will be snarled for miles and miles.
These Fortune staff writers also probably haven’t ridden the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) metro in many a fortnight. The metro has experienced such a rise in crime on its transit system that it sought help from area police departments and off-duty police officers this past spring.
Recently, just this past May, another interesting list and comparison of urban areas and cities (big and small) was published for 2023, this time by the Milken Institute, a think tank that has been doing this research and comparison for years and years. Curiously, we don’t hear any MoCo politicians like Marc Elrich or CM Evan Glass crowing about the rankings on this report. Why is that, one wonders? Is it because we’re only ranked 100th?
The Milken Institute provides a comprehensive overview of its methodology for the rankings here. It also displays the following infographic to show how it weighs various statistical measures, and the general categories they fall under:
You can read more about the methodology at the link above but here is another quick snippet:
To provide a comprehensive assessment of cities’ performance and the economic well-being of their residents, the BPC index also includes measures of access to economic opportunities. The two measures of housing affordability included in the BPC index capture the extent to which cities have successfully provided a high supply of affordable housing to guarantee their attractiveness in the eyes of future generations of workers. The percentage of households with access to broadband internet captures cities’ abilities to provide the essential digital services their residents require to access high-quality jobs, health care, and other determinants of economic prosperity.
Maybe you disagree with their complete methodology and how it is weighted towards tech jobs, etc. Fine. What can’t be denied is the consistency with which Milken Institute staff has been doing this research year after year and the way in which Milken Institute is trying to compare apples-to-apples in isolating sizes of metro / geographic city areas the way they do.
So, how does the “Silver Spring – Rockville – Frederick” metro area stack up versus other city / urban area peers that are similarly ‘large’? Let’s see (image below is taken from https://milkeninstitute.org/best-performing-cities):
Tier 3 (mediocre). Ranking? 100th. In 1st place and of similar size was Provo-Orem, Utah. Closer to home, Raleigh, North Carolina appears at 3rd place.
How about peers in Florida, “backwards” Florida with its “many problems” and “anti-history book banning” policies according to our local (partisan) politicians like CM Will Jawando? The Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL area comes in Tier 3 as well, but is ranked 63rd overall. Far ahead of MoCo. Tallahassee, Florida – home of “At Large” CM Will Jawando’s “foil” Governor Ron DeSantis, came in Tier 3 but ranked 64th overall. Again, well ahead of MoCo’s main urban areas. It sure looks like Will Jawando’s “reimagining public safety” and command-and-control policy ideas don’t spark economic growth.
It also doesn’t appear that County Exec Marc Elrich’s letter last August to companies in Texas and other places that restricted abortion, post Dobbs decision, has sparked a move of HQs and business to MoCo. College Station-Bryan, Texas was the lowest-ranked metro area in that state and still comes in at 71st overall. Again, ranked well ahead of MoCo. Maybe we just need another four years of Elrich’s tax-and-spend, grow debt-and-regulate policies to climb these rankings? If you disagree, there is an alternative.
Other notable cities or urban places that rank ahead of the Silver Spring-Rockville-Frederick urban area include Springfield, MO and Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA.
More to come.
