Fishers, Indiana and “Best Places to Live 2010”
Money Magazine ranks Fishers, Indiana number 8 on the list of “best places to live” in 2010. The criteria? “These terrific small cities — even now — boast plenty of jobs, great schools, safe streets, low crime, lots to do, charm, and other features that make a town great for raising a family.”
Interesting idea. I haven’t broken down all the charts to try to see behind the curtain at how they put together these rankings, but I sure have some reactions.
Among them:
1) Indianapolis is a small city. Fishers is a town.
2) I’d rather blow my brains out than live in Fishers. That is completely personal and a reaction to having grown up in the suburbs, but I can’t get past the “Little Boxes” song whenever I visit that town or any other in Hamilton County.
3) The data seems to me to suppose that you’re white, middle class and and that you have 2.5 kids as a basis for finding these places desirable to live in.
4) Yay for Hamilton County, but is Marion County doomed as a result? The success of one is a direct result of the degradation of the other due to decades of white flight – Indianapolis and surrounds being such a shining example of that phenomenon that it was literally institutionalized into Indianapolis government through Unigov. The key to Marion County reviving itself is somewhat dependent on the reversal of white flight and attracting some of those fliers back into the metropolis – if that’s even possible in Indiana.