One of NOLABA‘s economic competitiveness initiatives in 2017 is improving New Orleanians’ survey participation and completion rates across the city and region. NOLABA immediately answered the call to reposition New Orleans in this arena by leading a research project with the City of New Orleans that helped earn top 10 rankings in fDi’s Mid-Sized American Cities of the Future for 2017-18.

To create the rankings, the fDi Intelligence division of The Financial Times collected data from 428 cities throughout North America and South America and organized the submissions by population. New Orleans was one of 75 locations considered in the mid-sized division (an immediate city population from 350,000-499,999). The quantitative categories were connectivity, business friendliness, cost effectiveness, human capital & lifestyle, and economic potential.

New Orleans performed the best in connectivity, ranking #7 overall. Metrics used to measure connectivity include the number of airports within 80km, number of international destinations served, distance to the nearest international airport, number of ports within 100km, cargo volume through local port, container traffic through local port, and quality of overall infrastructure.

New Orleans also excelled in the qualitative category of foreign direct investment strategy, leading all U.S. cities and ranking #9 overall. The only other U.S. city in the top 10 was Colorado Springs, Colo. NOLABA highlighted its #WhyNOLA campaign, along with other achievements like securing Valmiki Capital Management’s decision to open a New Orleans-based subsidiary (Valmiki 504) to demonstrate the city’s strategy to attract investments.

“We encourage both our public and private sectors to fulfill requests for survey participation because we have the opportunity to spotlight our progress,” said Katy Dupre, NOLABA Manager of Economic Competitiveness, who spearheaded the submission process. “That can help usher in new businesses and talent who might have originally overlooked New Orleans as a relocation option.”

Dupre said higher survey response rates can help reverse New Orleans’ trend of ranking poorly in survey-based publications because New Orleans often hasn’t provided enough data to even be recorded.

“At the very least it will provide a more accurate snapshot of our strengths and weaknesses and help facilitate smart growth based on data driven results,” she said.