Richard Florida, Senior Editor of The Atlantic, posed the question in November, 2011 “which U.S. cities and metros have the most extensive artistic communities?”
With the help of Kevin Stolarick from the Martin Prosperity Institute, he used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to rank the leading metros areas for their numbers of artists and the artists’ concentration relative to their population. They determined there are about 237,000 artists across the U.S., of which roughly 210,000 are located in cities and metro areas, in the category “artists and related orkers”, which covers both employed and self-employed visual artists in the United States:.
As expected, the list of the top cities with the largest number of artists tended to follow population size. New York was first in total number of artists, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago came in third, San Francisco in fourth and Seattle in fifth place.
But when the author examined which metros have the largest concentration of artists relative to their population, the results were different. Using a measure called a “location quotient,” or LQ, a ratio that compares a region’s share of artists to the national share of artists, Santa Fe came in first.
An LQ of one implies that its regional share equals the national average; less than one is less than the national average and greater than one is more than the national average. An LQ of two, for example, means a region has twice the national average of artists. Santa Fe’s LQ was a whopping 7.587, almost double its closest competitor, San Fransciso, which had an LQ of 3.825, followed by New York at 2.573 and Los Angeles at 2.513.
Thanks to Richard Florida for quantifying what is immediately apparent the moment one sets foot in Santa Fe. Art and beauty are everywhere!
To read the complete article, Most Artistic Cities in America.
{ 0 comments }
