The 2006 Business Facilities Rankings Report
Readers’ ChoiceThe purpose of this - our final ranking - was to find out which locations you, our readers, prefer for business. It’s as much a perception poll as a ranking; in a sense it really measures the reputation of various locations. It doesn’t control for the fact that some of you will simply be more familiar with certain areas over others. But it should provide an interesting measure of how perceptions evolve as we run it each year. (It’s also a nice opportunity for states and cities to find out what Business Facilities readers think about them.) Our questions were simple: for each state, large MSA, Canadian province, and international location or region, we asked you to tell us if you:
We gave a location two points every time a respondent selected "very good location;" one point for "probably a good location;" zero points for "neutral;" and minus one point for "negatively." After screening out any respondents who would seem to have an obvious bias, we totaled the scores to arrive at our results. It’s fascinating to see that two states so far apart geographically - Texas and North Carolina - managed to share the top spot. Fascinating, but not surprising to us: as editors, we can attest to the perception that more and larger project announcements have been originating in the Southeast - followed closely by the Southwest - than in other area of the country over the past five years. In fact, with such robust population growth in the Southwest over the past decade or so, it’s conceivable that future Readers’ Choice polls will give even more spots to states and metros in the Southwest. * Choices for respondents were limited to: Mexico, Caribbean, Central America, South America, England (UK), Scotland (UK), Wales (UK), Northern Ireland (UK), Republic of Ireland, Western Europe (not including the UK or Ireland), Eastern Europe, Asia/Pacific, Australia/New Zealand, Middle East, and Africa |