Quality Of Life

This information regards daily life in McLean County. It includes breakdowns on educational and recreational opportunities, consumer price indexes and housing issues. It also details the levels of crime in McLean County in comparison with other Illinois counties. This page also demonstrates the transportation and connectivity advantages of Bloomington-Normal. Sources have been cited at the bottom of each page where appropriate.

Under each title, you are given the option of downloading the information in PDF or Excel format.

Crime Rates, Poverty Estimates and Income Comparison by County

PDF     Excel

Educational Attainment by Age Group and Sex

PDF     Excel

McLean County School Enrollments by District

PDF     Excel

ACT Scores and Graduation Rates

PDF     Excel

Consumer Price Index by Region

PDF     Excel

ACCRA Inter-City Cost of Living Index

PDF     Excel

Construction Permits and Valuation

PDF     Excel

Quarterly Home Price Index

PDF     Excel

Rent Comparison by County

PDF     Excel

McLean County Foreclosures

PDF     Excel

Ground Transportation - Travel and Commuting Times

PDF     Excel

Central Illinois Regional Airport Facts and Figures

PDF     Excel

Health Statistics - McLean County

PDF     Excel

Media Market Synopsis

PDF     Excel

Rankings

Are rankings important? They can be for individuals who are looking to move or for site location consultants trying to find that right place for their client. Fortunately for the Bloomington-Normal area, the rankings all indicate that the Twin Cities are a great place in which to move your family or your business. With high rankings in many categories important to individuals and businesses alike, Bloomington-Normal is a metro area with a lot to offer.

The following rankings are for the Bloomington-Normal Metropolitan Statistical Area (McLean County) unless noted. They range from quality of life ratings to economic well-being ratings.

2008

• Best-Performing Cities - Smallest Metros (Milken Institute/Greenstreet Real Estate Partners) No. 80 out of 124 - The Best Performing Cities Index ranks U.S. metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth. Components of the rankings include job, wage and salary and technology growth. The Bloomington-Normal MSA scored particularly high in the areas of five-year high-tech gross domestic product growth (ranking No. 14) and high-tech gross domestic product location quotient (ranking No. 26).

2004 - 2007

• Best-Performing Cities - Smallest Metros (Milken Institute) No. 142 out of 179 (2007)

• Best Places to Live (CNNMoney) No. 80 out of 100 - CNNMoney ranked the cities according to ease of living, health, education, crime, park space, arts and leisure and economic opportunity. Bloomington was the only city in Central Illinois to make the cut.

• Best Places for Golf (Golf Digest) No. 5 out of 330 - The magazine judged the MSA's according to access to golf, weather, value of golf and quality of golf.

• Cities Ranked & Rated (Bert Sterling & Peter Sander) No. 42 out of 400 - The book cited the area’s small-town atmosphere, stable economy and educational attainment as pros of living in the Twin Cities, and they ranked the small metro area of Bloomington-Normal above many larger cities.

• Expansion Management is a monthly business magazine intended for company managers and executives. Its goal is to “provide readers with honest and factual comparison information on cities, states, regions and countries that will enhance their ability to make quality site location decisions.” Two rankings from Expansion Management bode very well for the Bloomington-Normal area. Expansion Management rated Bloomington-Normal as one of 72 metro areas with a five-star quality of life, giving the community high rankings in areas such as standard of living, quality of schools and traffic and commute. In its yearly Mayor’s Cup Challenge, Bloomington-Normal ranked 34th, which means it was rated as the 34th best place in the U.S. to relocate a company. A few factors that attributed to a place’s attractiveness for business were business climate, logistics infrastructure and quality of life at a reasonable cost.

• Best Small Places for Business (Forbes) No. 15 out of 168 - Some of Bloomington-Normal’s higher ratings were in job growth, crime rate, educational attainment and advanced degrees.

• Richard Florida is an economist who wrote the book The Rise of the Creative Class, in which he examines the growing role of creativity in our economy. In Florida’s view, “places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don’t.” He believes the key to economic growth lies in translating the power of the creative class into “creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses, and regional growth.” The Twin Cities ranked competitively in Richard Florida’s creativity ranking. Most noteworthy is Bloomington-Normal’s creative class share of the workforce, which resulted in a No. 1 rating for Bloomington-Normal’s creativity rank.

• As stated on its Web site, the POLICOM Corporation “is an independent economics research firm based in Palm City, Florida, which specializes in analyzing local and state economies. Through its research, it determines if a local economy is growing or declining, what is causing this to happen, and offers ideas and solutions to improve and enhance a local economy.” POLICOM analyzed the economic strength of 361 metro areas. Bloomington-Normal ranked 97th with only one other Illinois metro area ranked above it (the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metro area) and seven Illinois metro areas ranked below it. In addition, Bloomington-Normal ranked higher than such well-known metro areas as Ann Arbor, Mich.; Boulder, Colo.; Albany-Schenectady-Troy, N.Y.; Roanoke, Va. and many others.

• Best Places to Live in Rural America (The Progressive Farmer) No. 60 out of 100 - The Progressive Farmer looked at 600 rural counties and ranked them by health care, education, climate, pollution index, crime index and tax burden to find the best places to live in rural America. Intangible characteristics were also considered, such as quality of life, leisure and cultural pursuits and scenery. McLean County made it into the top 100 counties at No. 60. The statistics provided by the ranking show that McLean County has a lower crime rate than the national average and better air quality than the national average.

• Best-Performing Cities - Smallest Metros (Milken Institute) No. 139 out of 179 (2005)

• Best-Performing Cities - Smallest Metros (Milken Institute) No. 40 out of 118 - The Twin Cities’ highest rankings were in high tech sector output growth and the number of highly concentrated high tech industries. Bloomington-Normal also scored very well on five-year wages and salaries growth and five-year job growth. (2004)