Tucson No. 19 on most-innovative cities list
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Tucson is No. 19 in most innovative cities, according to a new study by Forbes.
Forbes researched the top 100 largest metro areas in the country – we are No. 52 – and measured, among other criteria, "creative" jobs, patents and venture capital. The University of Arizona helped our ranking. Tucson, as did most of the higher-ranking cities on the list, was aided by the presence of a local university.
"The lesson seems to be, if you don't have a strong university nearby, you can't be an innovative city," says Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at jobs site Payscale.com, one of the firms that aided in the survey.
How we ranked
19. Tucson
- Tech and science jobs: 31
- Creative jobs: 27
- Patents per capita: 16
- Venture investment per capita: 45
Phoenix did not make the list.
Forbes' methods:
For our ranking we started with the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. and used data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to determine number of patents per capita. Then we combined it with venture capital investment per capita from the National Venture Capital Association, along with those cities' ratios of high-tech, science and "creative" jobs from ZoomProspector.com and Payscale.com.
The top five cities:
- 1: San Jose, Calif.
- 2: Austin, Texas
- 3: Raleigh, N.C.
- 4: San Francisco
- 5: Seattle
