Look For That Climate Dome to Go Up Any Day
It may just be us, but there’s always something that seems a bit…megalomaniacal when Mayor Hieftje starts expounding on A2’s list mentions. “We’re the only city in the top 20 in the Midwest,” he tells a Washington Post reporter, when asked about A2’s sixth-place ranking in Frommer’s Cities Ranked and Rated. “If it were not for climate, we would have been number one.” When the U.S. News college rankings come out, at least the top scorers pretend to believe that ratings don’t matter much, that Harvard or Princeton or wherever has so many ineffable qualities that can’t be quantified by a raw score.
These rankings inspire the strangest kind of macho posturing. Poor 331st-place Laredo. “When you can travel the world and see the same thing all over, every city has to find out who they are and embrace it. Otherwise, cities like Laredo, if they’re running around trying to be like everybody, they end up being like no place at all,” says Frommer’s author Bert Sperling. Oh, snap! And Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce head Tim Halbert really sticks it to Newburgh, New York: “I’ve been to Newburgh, New York, Number 329 on the list. Try breathing life into places like that. When you drive into Charlottesville, the prosperity hits you in the face.” BOO-YAH!
I’m bored….
Didn’t this site used to not suck?
posted by Drusilla on April 13th, 2004 at 4:53 pmCheck it out, a list AA didn’t make (and Grand Rapids did!): http://www.mostlivable.org According to this list, Grand Rapids is one of America’s Most Livable cities.
posted by paul on April 13th, 2004 at 4:54 pmI’ve been to Grand Rapids. The livability hits you right in the face.
posted by Sam on April 13th, 2004 at 5:44 pmNo, that would have been the Amway salesman.
Marquette is on that list too. The U.P. is the only part of Michigan that doesn’t bite horse cock.
posted by torONTo on April 13th, 2004 at 5:56 pmNotice that they have the population of A2 listed as 603,358? Where’d that come from? Doesn’t say much about the liveability survey if the population is off by a factor of 5 or 6.
posted by Mike Gorund on April 13th, 2004 at 6:15 pmI’d like to propose and idea that I’ve been working on for some time: Putting a huge plastic bubble around annarbour.
Join the Ann Arbor Bubble Party. The plan is to build a climate controlled bubble around the city so the weather is always mild. So let’s start diverting those taxes, we’ve got proposals to write!
posted by Steven B. Cherry on April 13th, 2004 at 6:27 pmDude, yeah! And when it’s finished we can cut off the oxygen! That will kill at least half of them in one fell swoop. Of course we’ll have to go in, hand to hand, to take out the bobos who were in the O2 bars when the shit went down.
posted by torONTo on April 13th, 2004 at 6:33 pmMike, these rankings are done by Metro Area, not municipal population, hence the disparity.
posted by Brandon on April 13th, 2004 at 6:34 pmDrusilla,
This sight can often be found to be lacking in substance, but it doesn’t truly “suck” in my opinion.
It is not yet the Monica Lewinski of blogs.
Ilya
posted by ilya on April 13th, 2004 at 6:58 pmInspired idea Steven. Maybe they can give the dome contract to Engineered Plastics (James Hart Dr., Ypsi Twp.)
posted by Laura on April 13th, 2004 at 8:59 pmSteven, I guess the sarcastic reply would be to ask whether Ann Arborites really need another bubble to live in.
posted by Nick on April 13th, 2004 at 9:25 pmWell, we need something to keep the prosperity in so it hits you in the face harder when you get here.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on April 13th, 2004 at 10:36 pmAnd think about the homeless! They deserve better!
Everyone loves Bubbles!
(brought to you by the annarbour bubble party)
posted by Steven B. Cherry on April 13th, 2004 at 10:40 pmahahahhaahahha
posted by Anonymous on April 14th, 2004 at 12:27 amNow, focusing on logistics, how would this work for commuters like me? Would I go through an airlock? Retinal scan? Once inside the dome, would I be forced to breathe the fetid recycled pre-breathed air of urban-assault-stroller-pushers? Can I bring my own portable oxygen tank? Lots of details to work out here.
posted by Laura on April 14th, 2004 at 12:28 amSteve you Bastard (JK), the bubble idea is mine, and I’ve been pushing it on Ann Arbor since High School.
posted by Just a Voice on April 14th, 2004 at 8:39 amGo ahead and create the bubble; just make sure the rest of us can get out of here before you decide to evacuate the atmosphere.
posted by Eston on April 14th, 2004 at 10:20 amThose are all details for the engineers to work out, I’m an idea man!
(this message was aproved by the ann arbor bubble party)
posted by Steven B. Cherry on April 14th, 2004 at 1:33 pmwhy is it whenever anyone mentions sucking the air out of bubble i think of the movie spaceballs? i can’t imagine it’d be much different.
posted by beth on April 14th, 2004 at 6:17 pmWhat is Bubble Tea? Does it have anything to do with the Bubble on The Prisoner?
posted by mucho (clueless) gucho on April 14th, 2004 at 7:07 pmThose are Guardian Spheres not bubbles. We can’t have people running around screwing up the Prisioner trivia.
posted by Steven (number 17) on April 14th, 2004 at 8:17 pmbe seeing you.
posted by Just a Voice on April 15th, 2004 at 7:54 amNote, too, that the “Ann Arbor metropolitan area” (as redefined by the census) now includes the vast suburban sprawl of Livingston County, and the vast rural hinterland of Lenawee County, as well as all of Washtenaw County.
Actual cities (like Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, hell, even throw in small cities like Saline and Chelsea and Howell) make up only a small portion of that 600,000-plus “metro” population.
Ann Arbor’s “metro area” shows up as one of the most white-bread in the country: a whole lot of white upper-middle-class homeowners who live overwhelmingly in new single family homes on large lots and drive everywhere. Anyone who values suburban sprawl and detests city life would be attracted to the statistical profile of the Ann Arbor “metro area”.
If you rate and rank Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti as urban entities, the picture is quite different. But for the folks who do national place ratings, there are just too many cities to bother with looking at them individually. Metro areas make convenient packages. And after all, a whole lot of Americans live in unincorporated suburban areas, and would be “left out” by ranking only cities.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on April 15th, 2004 at 9:14 am