Quality of Life Index

Riverside Quality of Life Index: Celebrating Progress and a Call to Action 2012

The Index is a truthful, asset-based examination of what is working in Riverside, and what needs working on, as we strive for a better quality of life.

The Seizing Our Destiny Campaign was born in 2009 when civic leaders and City officials came together to imagine a 20-year strategic vision that mobilizes the skills and resources of a broad cross-section of Riversiders toward one common goal – a better community for us all.

From the beginning it was understood that Seizing Our Destiny must continually measure progress toward our vision of enhanced quality of life. This first Index helps us set a baseline that will allow us to deliberately shape our future on our own terms. To view, download or print the 2012 Riverside Quality of Life Index: Celebrating Progress and a Call to Action, click here.

Celebrating Progress

The Index shows progress toward Seizing Our Destiny’s vision of improving quality of life through:

• One overall Riverside quality of life score (see page 30 of the Index PDF);
• A score for each aspect of our shared vision
  • Intelligent Growth (see page 34 of the Index PDF)
  • Catalyst for Innovation (see page 40 of the Index PDF)
  • Location of Choice (see page 46 of the Index PDF)
  • Unified City (see page 54 of the Index PDF)
• Scores for four data segments of each aspect of our vision, for a total of 16 (see page 31 of the Index PDF).

The Index uses a unique methodology that combines facts (quantitative data) and feelings (qualitative data) into one streamlined scoring mechanism. The scoring methodology shows that of the four aspects of the vision the strongest currently is Catalyst for Innovation. Across all 16 scores the highest are for Connection, Technology and Sustainability, while the lowest scores are for Giving, Neighborhood and Economics. To see a full list of the 474 indicators used in the Index, click here.

Feelings and perceptions of those who live and/or work in Riverside were measured through the largest, most comprehensive survey conducted in Riverside’s history – 1,450 Riversiders responded to the Riverside Quality of Life Survey with thoughtful and challenging answers.

The Resounding Message from the Index is that Riverside’s Quality of Life is High
After all the number-crunching the headline is that Riverside’s quality of life is high, especially considering the economic recession and its devastating impact on our local housing market and employment.

Some overarching themes we found:

• We are proud to be Riversiders
• Riversiders, across racial/ethnic, age and income groups, are uniformly happy with their overall quality of life
• Riversiders are technology-centric, environmentally-conscious and broad-minded people
• Seizing Our Destiny is having a subtle yet profound impact

Moving beyond the actual scores and looking in-depth at both the qualitative and quantitative data we found a few areas that we want to draw your attention to.

Where Riverside Is Out Ahead – Sustainability
As one example of how Riverside is out ahead of the curve, we are performing magnificently in environmental protection and green leadership.

Where Riverside Is Making Strides – Education
The Index shows that a key part of our quality of life – K-12 education – is making big strides in several critical ways.

Where Riverside Still Needs to Invest – Economics
Many efforts are underway in our city, county and region to boost economic development, attract new employers and develop skilled workers – these efforts are starting to see results.

Calling You to Action

It is important to understand that Riverside scores positively when compared to our own history; but room for improvement still exists. The Index in 2011 serves as a baseline for our community to measure itself against each year. The goal is that the Index encourages Riversiders to aim for a higher quality of life over time.

The Index is an innovative tool for our community to understand our current quality of life and to celebrate our progress toward the quality of life we all dream of, as articulated in the Seizing Our Destiny plan. But how it gets used is up to us, as a community making thoughtful decisions together. It is a tool that can check our progress each year against our past and relative to other communities. This keeps our efforts focused on strengthening even further the areas that are working well and bolstering our commitment to improve the areas where our community deserves better.

We believe that the greatest lesson from the Index is the need to maintain and increase our momentum toward Seizing Our Destiny’s vision. This means a stronger partnership between the public and private sectors, including financial support of the Campaign and the Index. Most of all it means your involvement and your commitment to help us seize Riverside’s destiny as a great California city.

Join us.

You are probably already involved in efforts that move forward our common goal – share them with us!

For more information on Seizing Our Destiny and how to be involved, see www.SeizingOurDestiny.com.

To share your story and read more about our collective wins see SeizingOurDestiny.wordpress.com.

RESOURCES:

• To view, download or print the 2012 Riverside Quality of Life Index: Celebrating Progress and a Call to Action, click here. Note that the document is 2.7MB, so may take some time to load.
• To see a full list of the 474 indicators used in the Index, click here.
• To lear more about the Riverside Quality of Life Survey, click here