{"id":791,"date":"2005-10-27T08:59:23","date_gmt":"2005-10-27T15:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2005\/10\/the_rankness_of_rankings\/"},"modified":"2005-10-27T08:59:23","modified_gmt":"2005-10-27T15:59:23","slug":"the_rankness_of_rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/the_rankness_of_rankings.php","title":{"rendered":"The rankness of rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Urban and Regional Planning professor Peter Fisher offers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epi.org\/content.cfm\/books_grading_places\">a wonderful dressing down of five national &#8221;business climate rankings&#8221;<\/a> that seek to define the best places in the nation for business. His primary concerns:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nThe 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.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortunately, he concludes, nobody of any importance is using these indices to make major business decisions.<\/p>\n<p>So, why is this useful fodder for arts and cultural management? National rankings and ratings of cities <i>do<\/i> play a large role in validating the local citizens, government, and media in the cities that come out on top (just look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitmadison.com\/visitorinfo\/awards.php\">Madison boasting<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks (again) to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcityradio.com\/smartcityradio\/past_shows.cfm?showsmartcityID=245&#038;PageNum_getsmartshows=1\">Smart City<\/a> radio show for leading me to the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Urban and Regional Planning professor Peter Fisher offers a wonderful dressing down of five national &#8221;business climate rankings&#8221; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}