NW Arkansas ranks high in livability, but LR falls
Northwest Arkansas ranks among the country’s top five metropolitan areas to live in for the third year in a row while the Little Rock metro area dropped 27 spots from a year ago, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Rankings released today put Northwest Arkansas — which includes Fayetteville and its surrounding cities — at No. 5 in livability out of the country’s 125 biggest metro areas, behind cities like Austin, Texas, and Denver but ahead of Minneapolis, Seattle and Dallas. Little Rock is 65th among the same metro areas, down from 38th in 2017.
The report refers to Northwest Arkansas collectively by the name Fayetteville because U.S. News saw it as the most widely known city in the area, public relations coordinator Anna Beth Jager said. The same goes for the Little Rock metro area.
Northwest Arkansas
placed high thanks to its quality of life, healthy job market and strong population growth based on data from the U.S. Census, polling company Gallup and other sources, according to the report.
The No. 5 ranking isn’t surprising, given years of national lists from U.S. News and other outlets that have tabbed Northwest Arkansas as being among the best for affordability, minority group-owned businesses and mountain biking, among other things. But the reminder doesn’t hurt, said Steve Cox, senior vice president of economic development at the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce.
“Everyone says their community is the best, but we actually have some facts to support it,” Cox said, pointing to development of Rogers’ downtown and Pinnacle Hills area as examples of the boost that can come from such attention. “National companies, people around the world, are taking notice of Northwest Arkansas.”
The area also ranked fifth last year and third in 2016. Its strongest showings in the ranking index this time around were in the areas of cost of living and net migration. Northwest Arkansas, home to more than half a million people, was the 14th-fastest growing metro area in the country from mid-2016 to mid-2017, based on census estimates out last month.
Charlie Alison, a local history enthusiast and editor for University of Arkansas, Fayetteville public relations, moved to Fayetteville in second grade and remembers college friends would shop in Tulsa and take jobs in Dallas or Kansas City.
But at a high school reunion a few years ago, many of those college friends had moved back, including one who had worked at Harvard University for two decades. Others said they wished they could do the same.
“They realized Fayetteville and this whole region was booming,” Alison said. “If it were the same town, it would probably be really boring, but it’s a place that has kept changing all of my life.”
The U.S. News report used public safety measures, unemployment statistics, the media group’s own hospital and high school quality scores and other data sources to compute its overall scores. Northwest Arkansas’ unemployment rate has been below 3 percent for months. It’s also home to seven of the top 10 high schools in the state, as ranked by U.S. News last year.
Northwest Arkansas’ lowest score in the rankings was for what U.S. News called desirability, based on a survey of a couple thousand Internet users asking whether they’d want to live in a given place. The area’s desirability score was the same as Little Rock’s.
LITTLE ROCK RANKING
While the Little Rock metro area dropped 27 spots from 2017, its score dropped just 0.13 point from 6.60 to 6.47, declining in all five subcategories calculated by the publication.
“Little Rock’s ranking dipped this year because the city saw a decrease in the amount of people moving to the area, growing by less than 1 percent due to net migration between 2012 and 2016,” U.S. News Real Estate Editor Devon Thorsby said. “Additionally, Little Rock received a little less love than it has previously from survey respondents who selected which place in the U.S. they would like to live. Still, Little Rock ranks in the top 20 for affordability, with a low cost of living compared to the median annual household income.”
The area’s net migration score dropped from 6.2 to 5.9, while its desirability index dropped from 5.9 to 5.5.
Net migration and desirability account for 10 percent and 15 percent of an area’s score, respectively, according to the publication’s methodology.
Job market index, which assesses unemployment and median salary, and value index, which measures home ownership and cost of living, account for 20 percent and 25 percent of an area’s score, respectively. Little Rock saw its ratings for those categories decline from 6.7 to 6.6 and from 7.7 to 7.6.
The biggest factor is quality of life, which accounts for 30 percent of an area’s score.
In the Little Rock area, that dropped from 6.3 to 6.1. Quality of life assesses crime rate, quality and availability of health care, education quality, reported life satisfaction and commute times.
The decline in Little Rock’s position in the report doesn’t worry James Reddish, executive vice president of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. Reddish said he doesn’t think the drop says as much as it might initially seem.
The continued presence of both Little Rock and Fayetteville in the rankings is “just sort of renewed confirmation we’re in a competitive state,” Reddish said.
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola expressed similar feelings about the difference from last year to this year.
“There must be a bunch of cities bunched together,” he said.
Stodola said he views the U.S. News report as one of many rankings that come out every year that subjectively analyze data.
From his standpoint, the economy continues to improve in Little Rock with the number of construction permits going up last year, continued renovations downtown and the opening of the technology park. He also noted that while violent crime went up last year in Little Rock, the number of crimes the city reported to the FBI was largely unchanged.
LOOKING AHEAD
Reddish said the chamber of commerce is focused on the business and employment factors in the ratings and wants to increase technical and career education in schools, like the North Little Rock Center of Excellence, to boost employment and income levels in the Little Rock metro area.
Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said Northwest Arkansas shouldn’t take its ranking for granted. It must continue to welcome people from around the country and world while keeping the area’s economic engine running, Sprouse said. Others agreed.
“It is a sign that we’re doing a lot of the right things,” but also a challenge to keep doing so, said Karen Minkel, home region program director for the Walton Family Foundation.
Nonprofit groups and advocacy organizations in the Northwest Arkansas metro area have pointed out housing costs remain a burden for lower-income families despite the affordable reputation, and hundreds of people are homeless on a given day around Benton and Washington counties. Respondents in the Walton foundation’s regular regional quality-of-life survey often decry the lack of robust public transit as well.
Officials are trying to address such needs, Minkel said. The Walton foundation and Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission have partnered for an ongoing series aimed at improving mobility and transportation in the region. The foundation and University of Arkansas also are working on a project to ease the development of affordable housing with the input of national experts.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to have a region that has a lot of different partners working diligently on quality-of-life issues and approaching it with a sense of urgency and possibility,” Minkel said.
Northwest Arkansas’ lowest score in the rankings was for what 8 6 1HZV called desirability, based on a survey of a couple thousand Internet users asking whether they’d want to live in a given place. The area’s desirability score was the same as Little Rock’s.