2008 Top Ten Most Literate U.S. Cities; and Top Ten Cities with most Bookstores
| Minneapolis, MN | ||||
| Seattle, WA | ||||
| Washington DC | ||||
| St Paul, MN | ||||
| San Francisco, CA | ||||
| Atlanta, GA | ||||
| Denver, CO | ||||
| Boston, MA | ||||
| St Louis, MO | ||||
| Cincinnati, OH | ||||
| Portland, OR |
The most ‘literate’ American cities according to Central Connecticut State University (Via Bookninja). Minneapolis on its own is number one…given that St. Paul is number four, and no more than a margin’s width across the Mississippi…it’s evident that together the Twin Cities will own the ‘most literate’ title for centuries to come.
Even more interesting, at least to this bookstore photographer:
TOP 10 Bookstore (per 10,000 population)
| 1.5 | Seattle, WA | |
| 1.5 | San Francisco, CA | |
| 3 | Cincinnati, OH | |
| 4 | Minneapolis, MN | |
| 5 | St. Louis, MO | |
| 6.5 | Pittsburgh, PA | |
| 6.5 | St. Paul, MN | |
| 8 | Portland, OR | |
| 9 | Cleveland, OH | |
| 10 | Washington, DC |
Here’s Dr. Jack Miller, author of the study:
"This study attempts to capture one critical index of our nation’s social health—the literacy of its major cities (population of 250,000 and above). This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources…As the data for this and previous surveys indicates, cities ranked highly for having better-used libraries also have more booksellers; cities with more booksellers also have a higher proportion of people buying books online; and cities with newspapers with high per capita circulation rates also have a high proportion of people reading newspapers online. Cities that rank highly in one form of literate behavior are likely to rank highly in the other forms and practices of literacy. A literate society tends to practice many forms of literacy not just one or another."
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