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Find your spot
Submitted by acohill on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 10:04.
Find Your Spot is an online relocation service that helps business owners and prospective employees find a place to live that matches personal preferences like the weather, arts & culture, recreation, education, the cost of living, health care, and the local economy.
Here is a key quote from the FAQ portion of the site:
Thanks to advances in technology and the economy, more people than ever are choosing where to live based on the factors that really matter to them — the weather, schools, recreational activities, cost of living, and general quality of life.
Notice that they are saying job seekers and relocating businesses are interested in personal and life style factors, not the availability of water and sewer in the industrial park. A community that is offered as a pick is going to be much more likely to get someone to move there if that community has a lively community portal, lots of recently updated community and civic Web sites, and attractive government, Chamber, and economic development Web sites.
Who in your community is responsible for the long term strategy of ensuring the community or region looks great on the Web? What specific activities are they doing regularly to ensure a job searcher or a relocating business thinks, "This community looks like a great place to live and to work?"
The Experience of Place Matters
Find Your Spot seems to understand that environment plays a huge role in personal happiness. I find it difficult to understand why so many business and community leaders ignore the experience of place when faced with high employee turnover, or a downturn in the fortunes of the community. They seem to think it's all about money (high taxes, low wages, etc.). People go where the action is. If the community is vibrant, people will come and be happy about staying there. Many will even forego higher wages for an improvement in their live/work experience.
In addition to Find Your Spot, the Who's Your City website (whosyourcity.com) has a DIY 'Place Finder' tool that asks users to pick four cities they'd consider moving to, and answer a series of analytical questions (i.e. Does the place have housing that you like at a price you can afford?) that feed into a ranking algorithm, which in turn delivers a recommended best city prognosis. The author behind the site is Richard Florida who penned the book by the same name.
Digging further into the website, users will find some interesting maps that depict location clusters of like-minded individuals based on things such as personality traits, scientific endeavor, and creative innovation. The evidence presented suggests that the experience of place plays a major role in an individual's happiness. The adage "Birds of a feather stick together" rings true when confronted with the facts.
Accountability in urban design, and work experience planning is decidedly lacking in places large and small around the globe. Unless sustainable changes take place on the ground, people will continue to stay away from lackluster communities. Better advertising is not a cure-all for this situation. The best advertisers in the world cannot convince people to buy if word gets out that the message is mere hyperbole.