Do you live in an ‘Urbane Oasis’ or ‘McCulture Desert’ when it comes to food?

Some people say I could talk about food all day long, but you have to admit, it’s a great topic. Plus, it not only influences your city’s cultural standing, but its economic bottom line as well. We’ll get to that in the next entry, but first…

Check out the study, Culinary Deserts, Gastronomic Oases: A
Classification of US Cities by Zachary Neal, managing editor of an urban journal, based on economist Richard Florida’s creative class research. He defines four types, defined by the author along with a few of the 50 or so cities he lists for each type (don’t shoot the messenger!):

Urbane oasis – A high concentration of diverse, unique restaurants in pedestrian-oriented urban villages, like San Francisco, Providence RI and Madison WI. Essentially your cool towns.
McCulture oasis – “Larger than normal concentrations of highly standardized eating-places designed for mass consumption… in models of urban sprawl, designed for a driving public,” listing Phoenix, Tampa, St. Louis, and surprisingly, Austin.
Urbane desert – Like an urbane oasis, but with lower concentrations of restaurants of any type, listing Oakland CA, Syracuse NY and other coast-oriented cities.
McCulture desert – You guessed it – like a McCulture oasis, but with lower concentrations of restaurants of any type, listing pretty much a majority of U.S. cities.

Next – how this applies to economic prosperity in your community.

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neilkt