The Most Average Place in America Is Jacksonville, Fla.

[Recursion]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/01/jacksonville_is_average.html

Tyler Cowen offers a distressingly unsystematic look at the question of what is the most perfectly average place in America, recapitulating the excessively anti-urban bias of conventional thinking about the American character.

He offers as his candidate Knoville, Tenn., which has a metropolitan area population of just 824,000 people. Fully 180 million Americans live in larger metropolitan areas than Knoxville. The larger Tennessee city of Memphis is almost spot-on the average, but I'd say Memphis is a bit too distinctive to qualify as "perfectly average." Fortunately for us, if you rank U.S. metro areas by population size and then add up the cumulative totals, you get the conclusion that the median American lives in the Jacksonville, Fla., metropolitan area. And Jacksonville, though it may have its virtues, is not especially distinctive or noteworthy. It's a great example of a generic American city. It's in the South, but not really all that southern. It's on the coast, but it's not "coastal." And since the city of Jacksonville is consolidated with Duval County, it doesn't feature any kind of urban-suburban divide. The typical Jacksonviller, just like the typical American, lives in an auto-oriented, suburban-style community that's part of an integrated urban area. In educational terms, Jacksonville has fewer high school dropouts than the average American city and also fewer college graduates than the average American city. In other words, its citizens are exceptionally average in their educational attainment.

If you're ever in the Jacksonville area and get the chance to visit the White Oak Conservation Center, I'd recommend it. Very much a non-average experience.

On the heels of the nutjob view I just posted, two economists' takes (Yglesias links to Cowen's) on what constitutes "mainstream" America... These are much more interesting.

[hobbit709]

1. Now THAT is a scary thought.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. I like Jacksonville. Very underrated city.

A bit conservative but that seems to be slowly waning (they recently elected an African American Democrat as mayor, and President Obama was highly competitive in the past two elections.)

San Marco, Riverside and Avondale are cool neighborhoods. The Beaches are cool. They've got a good zoo, and a great, airy clean airport. Nice weather. Love the St. John's River and the skyline at night. Plus you are a close drive to Amelia Island and St. Augustine, both of which are stunning.

The Jaguars could use a better quarterback, but that's about it.

[Iggo]

3. And I bet he likes both kinds of music, too!

Country AND Western.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. Actually Southern Rock is a good characterization of Jax.

Which makes sense given that it's the birthplace of Lynard Skynrd.

Not quite pure country, not quite pure rock.

I like to think of Jacksonville as what would happen if Miami and Memphis had a love child. A city with both beach town and Southern influences.

[Iggo]

6. I'm just saying there's a whole lot of places...

...outside Knoxville, Memphis, and Jacksonville.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

4. Except Their Football Team, Which Is Well Below Average