What is Livability?

“Quality of life.” This is a phrase or concept that is intuitively understood by everyone. It is usually referred to or defined at the personal level, and extends to a more interpersonal level in our communities; it defines how connected the people are to one another. “Livability” expands the notion to an even more general audience, and thus opens the door to more diverse and objective meaning regardless of the size of a given market or community.

Several organizations routinely rate the livability of U.S. communities. Money
Magazine annually ranks the best places to retire based on “vitality, great quality of life, affordable housing, plenty to see and do,” etc. Many health and social care organizations are also beginning to use the concept of livability as a focus of their interventions. They are viewing health as not only the absence of disease, but also the condition of people’s social networks, job opportunities, and natural environment.

One thing is clear about the definition of “livability,” however—there is no single measure of it. Planners, citizen groups, social scientists, and politicians usually employ a combination of environmental-, economic-, social-, and civic-related measurements in an attempt to explore and study the quality of life that reflects the overall livability within a community.

What is the Livability Index –

The purpose of this Livability Index is to provide a fact-based guide for the constituents and public decision makers of Routt County to make more informed choices. While many communities develop Economic Studies, the mission of the people who have created this document was to recognize significant drivers of the health and wealth of our citizens that reach beyond the dollars and cents that drive the economy; the facets that make up our united fabric. Therefore hundreds of hours were dedicated to the analysis and thought regarding exactly what is important to our community, and to the development of an accurate process of how to measure these values over time.

This index serves as a tool that can be used to measure the change in our area. The following is a high-level overview of the development of Routt County’s metrics for 4 aspects of importance to our citizens: Economic, Environmental, Social and Civic. Convened by the Routt County Economic Development Cooperative (RCEDC), a cross-sectional team of 25 volunteers including 4 facilitators and 21 members (referenced throughout the Index as the “Team”) was identified based on several criteria: their geographic representation, individual breadth and depth of professional knowledge, and experience and/or personal interest in their respective sub-teams. The overall goal of the RCEDC and the Team was to reflect the needs and concerns of Routt County constituents, and to provide them with a basis for making more informed decisions to shape our community.

The data sets used in the Routt County Livability Index were either characteristics of what the groups wanted to measure or highly correlated traits of such within each of the four main categories. These data sets are from public sources, most of which are updated and available on the Internet.

We believe that collectively these measurements begin to quantify what is valued when quality of life or a community’s livability is discussed. The process to obtain the data is well documented which will enable easy replication from year to year. This initial Index is a starting point which will expand over time as new and enhanced data becomes available.

2008 Routt County Livability Results

Link to: Livability Index Home Page