Number 1 "Numero Uno" Ichiban Most Liveable City (Portland: best city, crime rate)

[elston]

Forbes magazine has selected Portland Maine as the Most liveable City in the country! I am feeling a burst of civic pride!

[msina]

That's because you're there!!

[WhoFanMe]

Thanks for posting this elston, I just sent it to my boss. We'll see how long our P.R. department takes to send it to her.

[elston]

It has been about 3 hours since I read and posted and I am still smiling!
And everytime I go into Portland.....I start smiling and walk about smiling because I know that I really am blessed.

[K-Luv]

Funny thing is that part of the criteria was that the statistical metro area have a population of 500,000 or more. Forbes claims that Portland has a metro population of 513,000. Portland's metro population is just over 200,000.

I wonder how many new people flocking to Maine are going to bummed out when they discover that it is not a bustling metropolis.

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by K-Luv

Funny thing is that part of the criteria was that the statistical metro area have a population of 500,000 or more. Forbes claims that Portland has a metro population of 513,000. Portland's metro population is just over 200,000.

I wonder how many new people flocking to Maine are going to bummed out when they discover that it is not a bustling metropolis.

You know, I've been debating commenting on this all day. I've made it clear in the past (especially in the General U.S. forum) that I despise those Forbes lists. They are VERY misleading and build results based on strange (at best) information. Forbes is the company who listed Sprinfield MA, the 8th best city to raise a family the same year Springfield ranked 40th in the nation in terms of highest overall crime rate (top 50 in murder rates).

I'm not trying to be a buzz kill. Portland deserves to be mentioned as one of the top "livable" towns in the U.S. because of many of the reasons stated in the article (affordability, lack of crime, friendliness, and a good deal of charm). I wouldn't debate that for a second.

However, reading the entire article and resulting list makes me shake my head. Portland is followed by cities like Tulsa Oklahoma, Des Moines Iowa, and the REAL kickers, BRIDGEPORT, CT and WORCESTER MA. Hell, even Peabody MA made the list at number 14.

The list (and data used to create the list) is VERY misleading. The 513,000 metro figure jumps out as an obvious question mark. The truth is, that that is the number for the Combined Statistical Area (CSA) which combines the metro population of the Portland area, Augusta area, Lewiston/Auburn area and Saco/Biddeford area. The number is essentially the entire population between Kittery and Augusta... hardly all part of the Portland metro area. To put it in perspective, Boston's metro area has about 4 million people... its CSA (Boston/Providence/Manchester) boosts that number up to nearly 8 million. The CSA is a misleading figure to use when estimating a city's size. It's really misleading to give the nation the idea that Portland is a city of over 500,000 just like it's misleading to make people think that Boston has about 8 million people.

I doubt the list is going to have that big of an effect on people moving to Maine. Reading comments on the article on this in the Boston globe (and reading commentary on past Forbes lists right here on this forum) leads me to believe that most people don't put too much stock in these things at all. Any organization that can rate Bridgeport CT, Worcester MA (though it's improved a bit), Peabody MA, or Tulsa OK as one of the top 10 most "livable" cities (by arbitrarily crossreferencing some useless/ contradictory data) in the country deserves to be looked upon in a questionable manner.

That being said, it's at least a nice compliment and evidence that Portland has come a long way. Regardless of how much stock one should put into this list, Portland has come a long way from even 10 years ago and the positive national recognition can't hurt. It's a good thing for the city. It's nice to see the city get recognized for its progress.

[lookinforahome]

The Portland-South Portland-Biddeford Metropolitan Statistical Area is supposed to be around 513,102 in 2008. It was more like 478,000 in the 2000 census.

[K-Luv]

Originally Posted by lookinforahome

The Portland-South Portland-Biddeford Metropolitan Statistical Area is supposed to be around 513,102 in 2008. It was more like 478,000 in the 2000 census.

Portland metro From City-Data.

Portland: Pop 64,249.
South Portland: Pop 23,324.
Biddeford: Pop 20,942.
Saco: Pop 16, 822.
Westbrook: Pop 16,142.
Falmouth: Pop 10,310.
Yarmouth: Pop 3,560.

Total: Pop 155,349.

I left out OOB and Cape E., but their populations are not going to make that much of a difference in the numbers.

City of Portland says that the Portland metro area has a pop of 230,000:
City of Portland, Maine

Anyways, according to the 2000 Census, the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford statistical area extends from the Brunswick area all the way down to Kittery.
Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[lookinforahome]

I was going by this:
http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/tables/2007/CBSA-EST2007-01.csv (broken link)

Which says 513,102

Why leave out OOB, population almost 9,000, and Cape Elizabeth, population 9,000, but include Yarmouth, population 4,000?

[K-Luv]

Originally Posted by lookinforahome

I was going by this:
http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/tables/2007/CBSA-EST2007-01.csv (broken link)

Which says 513,102

Why leave out OOB, population almost 9,000, and Cape Elizabeth, population 9,000, but include Yarmouth, population 4,000?

I left them out because I didn't think of them until after I looked up the populations and 18,000 is a small number and would not bring the total up by anything substantial anyways. I went to Yarmouth because it is about the same distance from Portland northwards as Biddeford is from Portland southwards.

The US Census considers Brunswick all the way down the coast to Kittery the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford statistical area. It is basically all of three counties; Cumberland, York, and Segadahoc. Keep in mind that the statistical area includes a lot of rural communities. They are probably added because they have such a small amount of people that they might as well just lump them into the entirety of Southern Maine. Kennebunkport is not a part of the Portland Metro, let alone Harpswell.