UPDATE: A clever reader writes with insight into the data —
Regarding your post about the ridiculous nature of calling the 101,000 population in the micropolitan area “Whitewater,” I just wanted to clear up that the census designates metropolitan and micropolitan areas based on counties, meaning that this micropolitan area is most likely all of Walworth County. (Looking at the data, that makes more sense) You’ll also notice that the 25th-ranked dream town is the twin cities of Watertown-Fort Atkinson (i.e. all of Jefferson County). Only separated by 30 miles or so. There are reasons for the Census to break down data in this manner, and they must call it something, so they pick the largest cities in that area. Unfortunately, this is just another example of non-planners misusing or misunderstanding data in a way that trained planners would hopefully not.
I live in Whitewater, Wisconsin, a town of 14,000 (that’s fourteen thousand) in south central Wisconsin. I’m a blogger in town, and I have been a critic of municipal policy and local culture here.
As you can guess, I am not popular with everyone.
Still, no one would love to wake up and learn that Whitewater’s a dream town more than I would. If we were a dream town, then by definition people would dream about living here, and we’d be a happy destination with few problems.
Imagine how thrilled I was, then, when I saw in our City Manager’s weekly report that we had been named a dream town in a study from an online business journal. That’s right – little Whitewater, Wisconsin was one of America’s dream towns. (We’re Number 22 on the list, actually).
Here’s what City Manager Kevin Brunner’s report for August 1st had to say:
Earlier this week, Whitewater was named one of the top “dream towns” in the United Sates by the on-line biz journals (see http://cll.bizjournals.com/edit_special/68.html). Whitewater was ranked 22nd among the studied 140 “micropolitan” areas in the U.S. that are defined as small
towns that offer the best quality of life without metropolitan hassles.Bizjournals compared the 140 micropolitan areas in 20 statistical categories, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A micropolitan area consists of a central community with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, along with the surrounding countryside. It is, in effect, a small-scale version of a metropolitan area.
Like clockwork, this story was picked up, verbatim, on a local website. It’s likely to become a splashy headline in our local, weekly newspaper.
There’s just one problem – When the survey says Whitewater, Wisconsin, it’s not talking about just Whitewater, Wisconsin, population 14,296
No – the ‘micropolitan’ area that the study uses for Whitewater is an area of 101,000.
That’s right – what the survey calls Whitewater is actually an area 7 (that’s seven) times larger than the real town. The City of Whitewater is only about 14% (that’s fourteen) percent of the area surveyed.
Where are all these other people of the total 100,000? Presumably in nearby towns, over which our local government has no authority, has done no work, and deserves no credit.
It’s similar to saying that Milwaukee is in good health, when you surveyed an area as big as all Wisconsin, and called that area the “Milwaukee metropolitan” zone.
The survey does not describe Whitewater, Wisconsin at all – it describes an area far different.
An official should be able to tell the difference between big and small, without conflating the two. Even a private citizen should be able to do as much. For example, I am able to tell — even without advanced government training and years of taxpayer-paid municipal experience — the difference between the following pictures —
I am confident that they’re different, and that the one on the left represents a person who weighs less than the one on the right.
It’s risky, but I am willing to venture that assertion.
What’s worse – and if one reads the underlying data one will see – Whitewater, Wisconsin is actually below the average of almost every measure of the data in the 100,000 person area.
Here is the link with the data for the 100,000 person area that the study identified as “Whitewater, Wisconsin” : http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/pages/182.html
Those are not our statistics, for homeownership, or median income, not at all.
Those results from the larger area are far better than ours.
Consider these comparisons, using Whitewater-specific data from CLR and Dataplace.org, and the far larger Micropolitian area date from the BizJournal study:
Whitewater Median Household Income: $39,041
Micropolitan Area Median Household Income: $51,836
Whitewater Homeownership Rate: 36.2%
Micropolitan Area Homeownership Rate: 72.6%
(On the matter of homeownership, it was our City Manager himself, only as recently as May, at a Common Council meeting, who observed we had one of the lowest homeownership rates in the entire state.)
If we are part of a dream town, then Whitewater is the poor neighborhood of that 100,000 person town.
The BizJournal survey is a rebuke to us, that we are not doing as well as our neighbors.
Seeing it differently isn’t just cheerleading — it’s blind exaggeration. A person believing these results might feel good, but at the expense of acknowledging what we must do.
We could continue as we are, or we might (1) significantly reduce the size of city government, so that we could reduce the tax burden on residents, (2) eliminate fees for business permits and applications, (3) end a municipal reliance on ticketing students to balance our budget, (4) dismantle a costly and futile code-enforcement regime, (5) encourage true rather than sham community outreach, and (6) represent our current situation honestly even if it hurts the pride of a few.