Louisville: City of the Future

I guess we’re the Possibility City after all.  Or so says Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a publication of the Financial Times company in London.  Four months went into researching 400 cities classified under four population categories.  A litany of benchmarks covering economic potential , human resources, cost effectiveness, quality of life, infrastructure, business friendliness, and promotion strategy (we’re sure the Possibility City folks helped out with that last one) were used to decide the best.

Louisville ranks 7th overall in the “Small City” category just behind Sacramento, Irvine, and St. Louis.  Tampa, Minneapolis, and Raleigh took the top spots.  The “Small City” category represents a population base between 100,000 and 500,000 people.  I assume this means in the urban service area.  For comparison, New York was listed as the top Major City and Toronto is situated as 7th.  In the Large City category, San Francisco came in first and Orlando pulled in a number 7 spot.

Our own fair town is the only other city besides St. Louis and Chicago to land a spot on the list from anywhere remotely close to our region, either Midwest or South.  Besides the top ten spot for “Small City of the Future,” Louisville was also ranked as 3rd best city for economic potential (just behind Raleigh and Tampa).  The magazine used data ranging from construction investment to number of knowledge-based jobs to retail prices to crime rate per 100,000 residents to the airports serving the city.

Read the full article and all the city rankings here [ Warning: PDF ]