Core Function: Measure

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

The resounding message from the Index 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 were found:

  • People who live and work in Riverside 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
  • The Seizing Our Destiny campaign is having a subtle yet profound impact

Moving beyond the actual scores and looking in-depth at both the qualitative and quantitative data the Index highlights the following:

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.

The Index is a truthful, asset-based examination of what is working in Riverside, and what needs working on, as we strive for a significantly enhanced 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. The Index shows progress toward that vision through:

  • One overall Riverside quality of life score;
  • A score for each aspect of our shared vision
    • Intelligent Growth
    • Catalyst for Innovation
    • Location of Choice
    • Unified City
    • Scores for four data segments of each aspect of our vision, for a total of 16.

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. Click here to see a full list of the Survey questions and responses.

The first Index helps us set a baseline that will allow us to deliberately shape our future on our own terms. The Index uses a unique methodology that combines facts (quantitative data) and feelings (qualitative data) into one streamlined scoring mechanism.

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. We believe that the greatest lesson from the Index is the need to maintain and increase our momentum toward Seizing Our Destiny’s vision.

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