City Indicators For Success

According to Joe Cortwright, there are four key dimensions that cities have to do well in to be successful: talent, innovation, connectivity, and distinction. He cautions against creating city rankings based on these indicators because "There are a lot of different recipes, combinations, and approaches to tackling each of those four areas. A city may be talented in some specific ways. It will definitely be distinctive in certain ways, and what one city does is not necessarily the right recipe for every other city." He adds two other indicators: per capita income and urban core's vibrancy.

Cortwright cautions against looking at raw job growth as an indicator of a successful city: "Some of the fastest growing places in the United States -- Las Vegas would be an example -- actually have relatively low levels of educational attainment and pretty significant low-income populations. So they're not necessarily thriving cities, even though they may be growing cities."