The Denver Region in Richard Florida's "Who is Your City?"

I mentioned Richard Florida in two recent blog posts (here and here). Florida, currently a Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is a well known public intellectual who specializes in issues of economic competitiveness and the role of social and demographic trends in place-making and economic development.

He has a new book titled Who's Your City? which delves into how people make location decisions. Part economic development tome and part self-help guide, this book and its associated web site, take Florida's academic work and makes it applicable and useful for everyday Americans thinking about a relocation decision.

The Who's Your City? web site has several very interesting features including a "Best Cities" section and a series of graphic maps. In the Best Cities section among small regions, Boulder is ranked as a top 5 city for young singles, mid-career professionals, families with children and empty-nesters and Denver is ranked as a top 5 large region for mid-career professionals.

The maps are also very interesting, showing how real estate prices, economic activity, innovation, personality types, gender distribution, population and other factors are spread across geography. Its very interesting to see how the Denver Metropolitan Region appears on these maps. Collectively they convey how the region is a relatively remote island of activity surrounded by economically sparse parts of the country.