Bloomberg Businessweek evaluated 100 of the country’s largest cities using 16 criteria. They looked at the per capita number of restaurants, bars and museums; the number of colleges, libraries and professional sports teams; rates for income, poverty, unemployment, crime and foreclosure; educational attainment; public school performance; park acres per 1,000 residents; and air quality. After all the number crunching, Raleigh came out on top, earning the title of America’s Best City.
Winning attributes of North Carolina’s capital city included:
- 51 museums
- 110 bars
- 867 restaurants
- 144 square miles
- 12,512 park acres
- 30,000-square-foot State Farmers Market
- 400,000 people
Read more: Bloomberg Businessweek
Can-Do City
Serving as the anchor to the Research Triangle, which feeds off of N.C. State University, UNC Chapel-Hill and Duke University as well as over two dozen other area colleges and universities, Raleigh was also recently touted as one of Newsweek’s Can-Do American Cities. The Newsweek piece considered sustainability, transportation and infrastructure, livability and business development.
Read more: Newsweek
Job Growth
CNN Money recently listed the top 25 counties in the U.S. for job growth based on data from 2000-2010. Wake County, which includes the capital city of Raleigh, came in at number 15 based on 35.9 percent job growth over the past decade. Thousands of new jobs have already been reported for 2011 through various economic development channels.
Read more: CNN Money
Innovation
In addition to being a hub for information technology as home to global corporations such as Cisco, EMC, IBM, Red Hat and SAS, Raleigh and Research Triangle Park are seeing a boon in biotechnology. Led by industry heavy hitters such as Bayer, Biogen IDEC, GlaxoSmithKline and Quintiles, the area has the fourth largest concentration of biotechnology companies in the country.
Read more: MedCity News
Related news:
Wake County Ranked Among Top Areas for Job Growth in U.S.
Site Selectors Rank North Carolina No. 2 in Best States for Business.
Raleigh, RTP Area Emerges as Nanobiotechnology Bubble.
Related links:
North Carolina Accolades
Quality of Life in North Carolina
North Carolina's Distinct Biotechnology Advantages
