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Study Gives Buffalo High Marks For Fun

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

by G. Scott Thomas

The Buffalo area is more fun than most metropolitan areas in America, according to a new study.

Buffalo ranks 29th on a list of America’s fun places. The nation’s 100 largest metros were analyzed by Bizjournals and Portfolio.com.

The study says that New York City is the most fun of any major American market. The runners-up are Chicago and Boston.

Click here for the rankings for all 100 markets.

Bizjournals is the online media division of American City Business Journals Inc., the parent company of Business First, and Portfolio.com is an online magazine owned by ACBJ. They created a comprehensive formula to evaluate the opportunities for fun in all 100 markets.

The process began with the collection of federal statistics for 14 relevant types of businesses, from retail stores and restaurants to gambling casinos and golf courses. Each market was graded on both the volume (total number) and the concentration (rate per 100,000 residents) of such businesses.

Results were then grouped in seven broad categories of fun: shopping, food and drink, culture, popular entertainment, gambling, and high-impact and low-impact sports. The top scores went to markets that performed well in a wide array of categories.

Buffalo scored best for food and drink, where it ranked 15th out of 100 markets, and low-impact sports, where it was 18th. Its worst category was gambling, in which it was 77th.

Several factors make New York City the clear leader:

It was the No. 1 market in three of the study’s seven categories: shopping, food and drink, and culture. And it was a runner-up in three others, ranking second for high-impact sports and third for popular entertainment and low-impact sports.
It overwhelmed all other markets in sheer volume. The New York City area, for instance, has 431 museums and historical sites. That’s more than the combined total of 349 in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas, the next three metropolitan areas in population.
It boasted impressive concentrations in several fields. New York City has 399.7 stores, 82.8 restaurants, 12.5 fitness centers and 2.3 museums per 100,000 residents, topping Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas in all four head-to-head matchups.

Second place on the list of America’s fun places went to Chicago, which ranked among the 10 leaders in six of the study’s seven categories. Its best performances were third place for food and drink, and fourth place for popular entertainment.

Rounding out the top 10 were Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland (Maine), Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

Missing from the top 10 are several renowned tourist destinations, including New Orleans (13th), Las Vegas (26th), Washington (27th), Atlanta (34th), Orlando (42nd), Tampa (45th) and Phoenix (57th). They all have their strengths, but also have areas of great weakness, according to the study.

Four markets held the top positions in the seven categories. New York, as already mentioned, was No. 1 in three of them. Here is the complete list of category winners:

Shopping: New York City
Food and drink: New York City
Culture: New York City
Popular entertainment: Miami
Gambling: Las Vegas
High-impact sports: Boston
Low-impact sports: Boston

The ten markets at the bottom of the standings have two things in common. All have fewer than 1 million residents, and all offer a limited variety of recreational and entertainment opportunities.

Provo, Utah, occupies last place. Joining it in the bottom five are McAllen, Texas; Modesto and Bakersfield, Calif.; and El Paso.

Read more: Study gives Buffalo high marks for fun - Business First of Buffalo