Jackson Free Press

Regular JFP blogger Philip brought this to our attention this weekend; great news! Go, Jackson, go.
I just bought the paperback edition of Rise of the Creative Class the day after Christmas, and in Jackson too! (yes, I took a friend from NE La for a little day trip here that day. More about that later). Anyway, the book has an updated list of most creative cities, whose rankings bounce all up and down the list.

First, a long spiel of the bad news: As a whole, the cities of Mississippi and the states that border it LOST ground – sometimes MAJOR ground. Louisiana was by far the biggest loser… especially Baton Rouge (dropped in creative class rank from 72th to 195th..a 123 place loss!!) Monroe lost 80 places dropping from 151 to 239, while New Orleans had a 64 place drop from 83 to 147. Shreveport lost 9 places, which is much worse than it sounds since it was already dead last among US metros with populations between ¼ and ½ million. Only Lafayette made any gains at all, from 175 to 157 – an 18 place gain.

Alabama and Tennessee didn't fare particularly well overall. Alabama's big losers were 3 of the 4 largest cities in the state, "lead" by Montgomery, which dropped 57 places from 120th to 177th. Mobile and Huntsville didn't fare much better. Still, the news wasn't all bad for Alabama. Tuscaloosa made a TREMENDOUS gain of 57 places from 238 to 184. Dothan did fairly well too, a 21 place gain from 193rd to 172nd. Auburn-Opelika only became a metro area in 2000, but it made a fairly respectable debut for a new metro - the 126st most creative city in the nation.

As for Tennessee, Memphis's place remains unchanged – still holding at 132 while Nashville dropped from 42 to 66, a 24 point loss. Chattanooga lost a whopping 98 places from 139th to 237th!! Only Knoxville made any gains – it jumped from 89th to 80th

Arkansas made some solid gains despite Little Rock's 9 place drop from 53rd to 62nd. However, three of its metros made huge gains: Fayetteville, Texarkana, and Pine Bluff. They gained 39, 46, and 24 places respectively, although only the first one jumped as far as the middle of the list (currently Fayetteville ranks 161st). Nevertheless, Arkansas still has work to do before it can shine.

NOW we get to Mississippi!!! On one hand, Biloxi dropped a painful 41 places from 186 to 227 while Hattiesburg debuted on the list at 220 (like Auburn, it wasn't a metro area in 1990). On the other hand, JACKSON made a MODEST GAIN of 4 places, jumping up to Number 71, although within the ¼ to ½ million population rank it slipped to 16th place of the 63 such metro areas.

So I will say that congratulations are in order for metropolitan Jackson. Their may not have been any substantial gains in creative class rankings, but it could easily have been a lot worse given how the rest of the region did. But don't rest on your laurels – there's still a lot of work left to do.

Please comment on this thread on our original Creative Class story:
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php?id=111_0_9_0_C