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Louisville has realized neither its worst fears nor its highest aspirations.

 

The 2003 Brookings Institute Report Beyond Merger laid out a stark vision of what could happen to Louisville if fundamental issues were not addressed: a hollowing out of the urban core, the loss of well-paying jobs to other cities throughout the region, and patterns of segregation and inequality becoming even more entrenched. Over the last 15 years, Louisville has not become the blighted city described in the report, though many of the goals that have been created in the meantime have not been achieved.

Louisville has generally persisted in the middle of its peer cities.

 

In 21st Century Jobs, Louisville has moved from 5th to 6th. While Louisville does a good job of providing families with the incomes needed to keep themselves out of poverty, we do not attract the high-paying jobs necessary for many families to earn a living wage.

In Quality of Place, Louisville has remained 7th, reflecting consistent population growth in Jefferson County. While the Urban Core has not hollowed-out overall, many neighborhoods in the West and South sides of Louisville have seen large population loss.

In Education, Louisville has risen from 13th to 11th. We have made more progress in helping residents obtain college degrees than most of our peer cities, although degree-holders are leaving Louisville in larger numbers than our peers.

In Health, Louisville has fallen from 13th to 16th. Our low ranking reflects many poor health-related behaviors, such as our high rates of obesity and smoking. In recent years, Louisville has also been hit harder by the opioid crisis than any of our peer cities and seen an uptick in the homicide rate.

 

Looking forward to the next 15 years of data

 

Over the next 15 years, the Greater Louisville Project will seek to provide data for the evolving needs of the community. Data will be broken down by race, gender, and other demographic groups where possible to highlight the importance of a targeted and intentional approach toward equity. The Greater Louisville Project will work toward building the connections necessary across people and organizations to build Louisville’s competitiveness. We will continue to provide a data-driven perspective on where Louisville is advancing faster than its peers and where the city is falling behind.

 

Acknowledgments

The Greater Louisville Project is organized by The Community Foundation of Louisville and supported by a consortium of philanthropic foundations including James Graham Brown Foundation, Brown-Forman, The C.E. & S. Foundation, Gheens Foundation, Humana Foundation, The JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, Lift-A-Life Foundation, Owsley Brown II Family Funds, and the Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham Fund.

To request copies of the report, email glp@greaterlouisvilleproject.org.

Continue Exploring with More Reports

2019: The Flow of Community Investment

2017: Poverty Beyond Income

2015: Focus on Poverty

2013: Building a Healthier Louisville

Natural Breaks Algorithm

For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.

Z-Scores

Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).

Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.