Time Magazine says Jacksonville . . .

[KenFSU]

As much as I like seeing our city's name pop up in lists like this, I know at the heart of it these lists are just clickbait and meaningless. Is there anybody out there who would actually look at an article like this to determine where to live next?

Yes.

I agree. No, people arent searching for a list, looking at the top rankings and then moving blindly to those cities. But yes, many people I see are researching a number of these lists, forming opinions, and then researching more as they seek a better fit. It's a small piece of a large picture but it is indeed a piece.

Moving blindly to a city based on positive press?

Difficult to track.

Booking trips to check out Jacksonville based on positive press?

Absolutely, and empirically.

You'd be shocked at how many people book flights and hotels in Jacksonville based off positive articles like this on the internet.

Believe me, I know better than anyone in the city. I lead analytics at Jacksonville's largest ad agency, partner directly with Visit Jacksonville and the TDC on travel attribution, and you'll find me down at City Hall once a quarter explaining in detail how articles like this translate to travel bookings and incremental revenue for the city.

Kerry, Jacksonville didn't pay a dime to be included on this list.

[Kerry]

I don't think Jax had to pay.  I think we were the only city in the state that met the criteria.

[Adam White]

My only real 'problem' with articles like this is that they tend to paint an unrealistic or overly-rosy portrait of the city. I only come home for a couple of weeks a year, so I cannot claim to have a good sense of the Riverside Arts Market - however, whenever I go, it looks more like hundreds, rather than thousands of people attending. Of course, over the course of a day, maybe a couple of thousand visit. But it's pretty underwhelming these days.

Reminds me of an article back in the 90s. It described downtown as having a floating party on the river or something (based on the fact that the Landing was there).

Jacksonville has a lot to offer. Its biggest problem (IMO) is that the stuff it has to offer is spread out over a large area - with a lot of pretty ugly, uninspiring crap in between. If Jax could revitalize downtown and do something about curbing sprawl/promoting infill, it could be a great city.

But it's home and I love it, regardless.

[Kerry]

The inclusion of RAM in the article is what made me suspicious of the criteria.  It's nice and I go there at least one time a month but it is only one day a week for a couple of hours.  Hardley a cultural tourist attraction.  Most people in Jax don't even know it is there, let alone tourist.

[jaxnyc79]

Did Time disclose their methodology for composing this list?

Technically it is Money magazine, which is the same family. They have a big section at the bottom of the article labelled "METHODOLOGY" so kind of...cause they don't go into specifics.

To create MONEY's Best Big Cities ranking, we looked only at places with populations of 300,000 or greater. We eliminated any city that had more than double the national crime risk, less than 85% of its state's median household income, or a lack of ethnic diversity. We further narrowed the list using more than 8,000 different data points, considering data on each place's economic health, cost of living, public education, income, crime, ease of living, and amenities, all provided by research partner Witlytic. MONEY teamed up with realtor.com to leverage its knowledge of housing markets throughout the country. We put the greatest weight on economic health, public school performance, and local amenities; housing, cost of living, and diversity were also critical components.

Finally, reporters researched each spot, searching for the kinds of intangible factors that aren't revealed by statistics. To ensure a geographically diverse set, we limited the Best Big Cities list to no more than one place per state.

Interesting to note they limited to one metro per state, which means Jax won out for Florida.

I relocated to Charlotte from Manhattan earlier this month.  The in-town neighborhoods and uptown appear to be almost a generation ahead of Jax - I've been blown away at the extent of infill development.  I ended up finding a place in South End, and take the light rail each day to my office tower in Uptown.  Only using my car on the weekends, which is exactly what I had in mind.  The first couple weeks in the area, I was in temp housing in the 'burbs, and the traffic was atrocious, making my South End selection much easier than it otherwise may have been.

I'm a bit surprised not to see Charlotte on the list, although the methodology says only one city per state, and I've heard people rave about Raleigh but don't know it well. 

[Adam White]

The inclusion of RAM in the article is what made me suspicious of the criteria.  It's nice and I go there at least one time a month but it is only one day a week for a couple of hours.  Hardley a cultural tourist attraction.  Most people in Jax don't even know it is there, let alone tourist.

RAM's...okay. But if you were hoping to visit it on a regular basis, I think you'd be disappointed.

[thelakelander]

Did Time disclose their methodology for composing this list?

Technically it is Money magazine, which is the same family. They have a big section at the bottom of the article labelled "METHODOLOGY" so kind of...cause they don't go into specifics.

To create MONEY's Best Big Cities ranking, we looked only at places with populations of 300,000 or greater. We eliminated any city that had more than double the national crime risk, less than 85% of its state's median household income, or a lack of ethnic diversity. We further narrowed the list using more than 8,000 different data points, considering data on each place's economic health, cost of living, public education, income, crime, ease of living, and amenities, all provided by research partner Witlytic. MONEY teamed up with realtor.com to leverage its knowledge of housing markets throughout the country. We put the greatest weight on economic health, public school performance, and local amenities; housing, cost of living, and diversity were also critical components.

Finally, reporters researched each spot, searching for the kinds of intangible factors that aren't revealed by statistics. To ensure a geographically diverse set, we limited the Best Big Cities list to no more than one place per state.

Interesting to note they limited to one metro per state, which means Jax won out for Florida.

I relocated to Charlotte from Manhattan earlier this month.  The in-town neighborhoods and uptown appear to be almost a generation ahead of Jax - I've been blown away at the extent of infill development.  I ended up finding a place in South End, and take the light rail each day to my office tower in Uptown.  Only using my car on the weekends, which is exactly what I had in mind.  The first couple weeks in the area, I was in temp housing in the 'burbs, and the traffic was atrocious, making my South End selection much easier than it otherwise may have been.

I'm a bit surprised not to see Charlotte on the list, although the methodology says only one city per state, and I've heard people rave about Raleigh but don't know it well. 

It's a full 20 years ahead. Charlotte took Jax's urban anchors away when its banks acquired ours in the 1990s. Our towers were emptied as jobs were relocated to Charlotte. Charlotte also got Orlando's LRT money when Orange County rejected it in 1998. That same line is what birthed the South End's rebirth. With that said, Charlotte is closer to Orlando in size than Jax. In short, although it's too bible belt for my liking culturally, scale-wise it's out of Jax's league now.

[jaxnyc79]

Still trying to gauge it culturally.  It does feel very conservative, but a polite, genial sort of conservatism versus a rough, aggressive, xenophobic, dogmatic sort.  I think I prefer "bible belt" conservatism over "shooting fridges" redneck-ism.  Billy Graham versus Ted Nugent, perhaps.

[vicupstate]

Charlotte has evolved a great deal culturally in the last 20-30 years, particularly the last 10. It use to be a sleepy Presbyterian southern city but the influx of people from outside the South has changed it quite a bit. No doubt the change has been more noticeable in the urban core than the suburbs, particularly those outside Mecklenburg County. For instance, Charlotte use to be a huge GOP stronghold but it is the opposite now.     

[I-10east]

^^^A large US city leaning Democrat is nothing new right now. Democrat is virtually the political party leaning for all of urban USA right now. Look at Jax, voted more for Gillum and Nelson. I tried to tell people that Jax is centrist, but they still insist that we are the next thing to Casper, WY political-wise...

[Adam White]

^^^A large US city leaning Democrat is nothing new right now. Democrat is virtually the political party leaning for all of urban USA right now. Look at Jax, voted more for Gillum and Nelson. I tried to tell people that Jax is centrist, but they still insist that we are the next thing to Casper, WY political-wise...

The Democratic Party is also the party of the educated, it would seem. I guess it makes sense that cities skew Democratic, then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/21/as-americans-become-more-educated-the-gop-is-moving-in-the-opposite-direction/?utm_term=.5921b2a2de07

[Bill Hoff]

^^^A large US city leaning Democrat is nothing new right now. Democrat is virtually the political party leaning for all of urban USA right now. Look at Jax, voted more for Gillum and Nelson. I tried to tell people that Jax is centrist, but they still insist that we are the next thing to Casper, WY political-wise...

The Democratic Party is also the party of the educated, it would seem. I guess it makes sense that cities skew Democratic, then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/21/as-americans-become-more-educated-the-gop-is-moving-in-the-opposite-direction/?utm_term=.5921b2a2de07

"I love the poorly educated!"   

[Adam White]

^^^A large US city leaning Democrat is nothing new right now. Democrat is virtually the political party leaning for all of urban USA right now. Look at Jax, voted more for Gillum and Nelson. I tried to tell people that Jax is centrist, but they still insist that we are the next thing to Casper, WY political-wise...

The Democratic Party is also the party of the educated, it would seem. I guess it makes sense that cities skew Democratic, then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/21/as-americans-become-more-educated-the-gop-is-moving-in-the-opposite-direction/?utm_term=.5921b2a2de07

"I love the poorly educated!"   

As do I! But I might be biased (hides UNF diploma while no one is looking)

[Kerry]

A college education isn't what it used to be.

[I-10east]

^^^I totally agree!

The Democratic Party is also the party of the educated, it would seem. I guess it makes sense that cities skew Democratic, then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/21/as-americans-become-more-educated-the-gop-is-moving-in-the-opposite-direction/?utm_term=.5921b2a2de07

I wouldn't call the WaPo an unbiased paper, and many agree with me. Technically are Democrats more educated the Republicans percentage-wise? Yes. Does that automatically mean the Democrats are smarter on average? IMO not at all, and there are a variety of reasons why.

As said above, college isn't what it used to be. Now the overwhelming majority of college is about feelings, avoiding micro-aggressions, social justice, and ultimately leftist indoctrination. Many people have BS degrees involving social justice, gender studies, varying histories etc (stuff that translate little to the real world) Leftism is all about following the flock of the herd mentality like "man made carbon dioxide climate change being an absolute 100 percent truth, and anyone disagree is a heretic worthy of a gulag!!!

Explain why from 1940 to 1975 the world's temp was going DOWN throughout the Post war economic boom (the entire world was a giant industry smokestack belching the supposedly "poisonous and useless" Co2)?  There are alot of other major fallacies with supposed GOD ALMIGHTY'S WORD climate change (like with the ice cores) that I'm not gonna even go into. I'm willing to debate science, and all of the Al Gore liberals wanna close down the conversation. Yall ignore the most POWERFUL thing I can think of THE SUN, and talk about something that's essential to life as being bad.

I only brought up climate change as an example of the powerful monolithic thought that must be abided by (as well as many other things in college, like minorities are rightful victims of everything). Many conservatives go into blue collar jobs, first starting of in trade schools, auto repair, HVAC jobs etc etc; many successful people out there despite being supposedly 'uneducated".

Colleges continue to go more and more leftward, and many people don't wanna (or have to reluctantly) put up with that walking on eggshells, easily offended pernicious BS. Some of the most successful people in the world (even in Silicon Valley) didn't attend college. The current 'less importanceness' of college these days is well documented; people with alot of debt and a good degree working at somewhere like Walmart is prevalent today.