Common Issues Facing Cities—Aggregated from 100 'State of the City' Speeches

Brooks Rainwater writes a post for Fast Co.Exist sharing the results of "State of the Cities" report by the National League of Cities.

The report provides "a comprehensive analysis of city trends based on annual State of the City addresses from mayors across the country. Our State of the Cities 2015 analysis is derived from 100 cities and represents a diverse cross section of population sizes and geographic regions," according to the website for the report.

Rainwater's post digs into the semantics of the aggregated state of the city addresses, finding that planning issues are at the forefront of the rhetoric from political leadership around the country. Among the top ten most-discussed issues from these 100 addresses:

9) Demographics (mentioned in 11 percent of speeches)
8) Environment/Energy (mentioned in 16 percent of speeches)
7) Data/Technology (mentioned in 21 percent of speeches)
6) Housing (mentioned in 28 percent of speeches)
2) Infrastructure (mentioned in 57 percent of speeches)
1) Economic Development (mentioned in 75 percent of speeches)