GoodSpeedUpdate has an interesting piece called On “Cool Cities” and Blogs which includes our own San Diego in spots.
My theory: cities with the richest local online culture (measured in number of blogs, and use of a select group of other geographically-bound websites) will reflect those cities with the highest numbers of creative class people.
It’s an interesting theory. Does it apply to San Diego? This [PDF] paper Mapping the Blogosphere in America has us ranked #10 based on Diaryland and LiveJournal zip code data. Rough numbers, but seems sound enough.
GoodSpeedUpdate has us at #15, partially due to our low meetup numbers. Well, we’ve not had good experiences with meetup, and people tend not to dig meetup for a variety of reasons anyway.
I’ve been up in Seattle (which GodSpeedUpdate has ranked as #2 in “American Online Culture”) this past week and was overcome by the pervasiveness of online culture and how tied in it is to civic life and community events. Especially impressive was Fremont (1, 2, 3) a once working-class, now gentrified community of Seattle - home to as many Adobe employees as homeless. Everywhere you go in Fremont, whether it’s the corner bar, coffee shop, or coop market, you’ll find free wireless access.
But it’s not just kids in North Face fleeces hiding behind their laptops. There’s this sense of community - like everyone knows everyone else, like they all read each other’s blogs and have monthly meetups concerning what interests them.
It was sorta a micro-utopia for me, a model of what a community could become. I tried to think of what community in San Diego was closest to becoming what Fremont has already achieved. Little Italy? Too pricey. Hillcrest, OB, North Park? Not enough wi-fi access.
Where is San Diego’s creative class most likely to live and develop a new sense of community? In the end, two areas popped into my head. The first is that stretch from University Heights (where Korova and Twiggs are) to Normal Heights (Lestat’s).
The other neighborhood - and this one would get my vote - is Golden Hill, home to SoCalFreeNet’s community wide free wi-fi network, M-Theory Music, Whistlestop Bar, and Influx Cafe.
Which San Diego community do you think has the best “online culture” or would most attract the “creative class”? A list of San Diego’s “top ten urban neighborhoods” can be found here.
Also, Godspeed has an update which measures number of Diaryland and Livejournal users per capita. When plugging in the population, San Diego becomes number 6.
I think this is a rough, but pretty good measure of online culture, but not necessarily “creative class.” I think the creative class would be more apt to make their own weblog instead of depending on a service like Diaryland or Livejournal or even Blogger.
My calculations for largest community and highest per capita rankings took into consideration for each city numbers from Meetup.com, Diaryland, Livejournal, and Upcoming.org.
As noted by oso, San Diego’s community was #9 overall, and #6 per capita. I also think you’re correct that creative class people are more apt to create their own blogs. However in lieu of a more sophisticated analysis, I think my measurements are good proxies. I know many saavy people who choose to use the tools I mentioned in addition to homebrewed sites for a variety of reasons.
Rob
Rob, thanks so much for chiming in! Your analysis is really interesting to me, as I’ve been watching civic blogging here in San Diego for some time.
I wonder if you could add blogger.com data by doing searches for “”san diego : California” site:blogger.com” — the format of blogger profiels (like mine) is consistent and might be an excellent source of data.
Keep up the good work!