Urban and Regional Planning professor Peter Fisher offers a wonderful dressing down of five national ”business climate rankings” that seek to define the best places in the nation for business. His primary concerns:
The underlying problem with the five indexes is twofold: none of them actually do a very good job of measuring what it is they claim to measure, and they do not, for the most part, set out to measure the right things to begin with.
Fortunately, he concludes, nobody of any importance is using these indices to make major business decisions.
So, why is this useful fodder for arts and cultural management? National rankings and ratings of cities do play a large role in validating the local citizens, government, and media in the cities that come out on top (just look at the Madison boasting surrounding the topic). And arts organizations, always eager to be part of the good news, may decide to focus on the metrics that make such rankings run.
Trouble is, when the rankings are designed to promote a specific policy issue (ie, lower taxes for the wealthy, or less regulation of start-ups), when the rankings don’t actually measure what they claim to value, and when the rankings value things that are counter-productive to a vital cultural ecology, an organization can lose itself and its footing when striving to win a higher slot.
Thanks (again) to the Smart City radio show for leading me to the link.
