Philly City Hall Recognized for Social Media Savvy. Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter is fairly well-known for utilizing social media to get his message across (as he did to combat city violence in September), and even participated in a social media town hall last fall here at NBC10. Now, Philadelphia City Hall is getting some national recognition for its open data initiatives and social media savvy.

A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked the 75 largest cities in America on social media savvy. They based their findings on “opportunities for citizen participation and information,” according to a release, and Philadelphia ranked No. 9 overall. The categories they monitored included:

• Hosting of open data portals;
• Comments allowed on blogs and social networks;
• The extent to which online discussions concerned policy as well as city services;
• Information on officials, budgets, city council meetings and neighborhood issues

The rest of the top 10 (some of the cities tied, according to the scoring system):

1. New York/Seattle
2. Virginia Beach
3. Portland
4. San Francisco
5. Kansas City
6. Denver
7. Mesa, Ariz.
8. Louisville
9. Philadelphia/Long Beach, CA/Sacramento
10. San Jose

Toledo, Ohio was ranked last in the survey.

-LD

[NBC10, PRDaily, h/t The20’s @DPBell and @RichNegrin]

Photo: Getty Images

Philadelphia Among Best Places to Relocate or Expand Businesses. For business owners looking to grow or relocate their companies, there are few cities better than Philadelphia. In fact, only six cities with metropolitan populations over 1 million top “The City of Brotherly Love,” (as noted last week by the Philadelphia Business Journal). Site Selection Magazine, a go-to magazine for business owners looking to move their locations, pulled the numbers and took into account new businesses that invested $1 million or more, hired at least 50 people, or built at least 20-thousand square feet.

The top ten cities, in order, were:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Pittsburgh
4. Dallas/Fort Worth
5. New York
6. Cincinnati
7. Philadelphia/Camden/Wilmington
8. Washington, D.C.
9. Atlanta
10. Tampa

Also of note, in terms of cities with metro populations between 200,000 and 1 million, the Allentown/Bethlehem area (No. 5) and Harrisburg area (No. 6) both rank among the best.

-LD

[Philadelphia Business Journal, Site Selection Magazine, h/t The20’s @richnegrin and @DPBell]

Photo: Getty Images

Forbes: Philly 1 of America’s 10 Comeback Cities. Close to 40 million Americans move from one home to another each year, and Philly itself is doing pretty well in terms of keeping and attracting new residents, according to Forbes. Forbes selected its top 10 cities by “using IRS data to locate counties that were losing net migrants in 2005 and that either gained them in 2010 or stemmed their losses dramatically. Migration figures refer to the net members of taxpaying households that moved into and out of these counties in the years ending in April.” In other words, people are moving back to the city.

“Like Boston, Philadelphia continues to lose migrants, but saw many more in-migrants and many few out-migrants in 2010 than in 2005.”

As for the official numbers, Philadelphia showed a net loss of 13,481 people in 2005, a number that dropped to only 5,675 in 2010.

Other cities making a comeback include New Orleans, Denver, Pittsburgh, Boston, Washington, D.C., El Paso, Tex., Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Arlington, Va.

-LD

[Forbes, h/t The20’s @dpbell and @richnegrin]

Photo: NBC10