Innovation puts communities on 'most livable' list

By Haya El Nasser
USA Today

People who think 200 inches of snow a year sounds about as pleasant as a root canal would not find Michigan's Upper Peninsula livable. But winter sports aficionados who dream of hitting the slopes on their lunch hour may find Marquette, a small university town, one of the country's best places to live.

Many books and magazines rank the nation's best cities based on everything from climate and safety to cost of living and the quality of public schools. The Partners list recognizes communities that have done the best job of adapting to changing times. It tries to reflect the latest thinking among urban planners, researchers and mayors. The group's 2004 winners, to be honored April 20 in Washington, D.C., show how the definition of livability has changed in the past 30 years. (No Hawai'i community was chosen.)

Twenty-nine other cities, towns and regions from Tulsa, Okla., and St. Paul, Minn., to Roanoke, Va., and Elkhart, Ind., join Marquette on the Partners list.

Whether large or small, they share common attributes, including civic participation from community groups, universities or foundations. In Marquette County, for example, residents who have no health insurance get free care from doctors, pharmacies, hospitals and clinics participating in a countywide coalition. Another attraction: Dog-sledding races start on Main Street and skiers can hop on chair lifts in the middle of town.

Many of this decade's livable places have made a dramatic turnaround, says Robert McNulty, president of Partners, a research group that promotes economic and community development.

"It's the attractiveness, the architecture, the design," he says of the qualities that set some cities apart. "It's cities that embody the creative economy. It's cities that don't leave anyone behind. It's regionalism. It's cities run by a team of different players — not just the mayor, not just the chamber of commerce, not just the convention and visitors' bureau."

Looks mattered in the 1970s, when New Orleans, Portland, Ore., and other cities featuring beautiful architecture or scenic settings made the group's list. In the '80s, the focus was on cities recovering from post-industrial declines. Baltimore and Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, were honored for successful waterfront redevelopment. By the '90s, when sprawl pitted cities against the growing suburbs, the focus was on strong leadership that could tackle crime, troubled schools, poverty and affordable housing. Philadelphia, Charleston, S.C., and Minneapolis made the list.

What some of this year's winners have done:

• Tacoma, Wash. This port and lumber industrial center south of Seattle once was known for noxious smells spewing from its pulp mills and factories. The "Tacoma Aroma" began to fade along with jobs in the early 1990s as a recession and environmental crackdowns took their toll.

Tacoma has reinvented itself. The city owns a telecommunications system that offers high-speed Internet access to every corner of the city — a plus for attracting business. The University of Washington took over vacant warehouses in a desolate part of the city and opened a Tacoma campus. Three museums sit across the street. The best known is Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, a tribute to Dale Chihuly, a Tacoma native who helped establish the Northwest as a major glass art center.

• Elkhart, Ind. This city of 52,000 people in the heart of northern Indiana's Amish country is within 115 miles of Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis. It's also the manufacturing center of recreational vehicles and musical instruments.

Six years ago, the city began buying and demolishing old industrial buildings along the banks of the Elkhart and St. Joseph rivers, which converge downtown. Riverwalk Commons — park, corporate offices, restaurants and planned condos — was created.

• Tulsa. The one-time oil city diversified in the 1990s, attracting major companies such as American Airlines' maintenance operations and MCI, formerly known as Worldcom. But the 9/11 terrorist attacks hurt the airline industry, and one of the largest accounting frauds in corporate history rocked Worldcom-MCI. The region lost 25,000 jobs.

City officials and citizens have spent the past 18 months setting a new vision for Tulsa in education, quality of life and economic development. The result was four initiatives to be funded by a sales tax increase. Foundations offered millions in matching funds if voters approved the proposals. They did — by more than 60 percent.

• Ventura, Calif. Once an oil and farming town between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the oceanside city is the base of Patagonia sports retailer and copier king Kinko's. Now, it's attracting high-tech startups.

Unlike many other California cities, where housing prices have exploded, "most of the people who work here also live here," says William Fulton, an urban planning consultant recently elected to the city council. But that's changing. People who work in Santa Barbara, where the median housing price is $800,000-plus, find Ventura's $500,000 listings a bargain.