Alabama Economic Development

[kayman]

People who usualy have comments like this live in a unprosperous city !

[Bama`s Port]

Actually, that is an untrue generalization b/c that poster lives in Charlotte, a very prosperous and rapidly-growing region. I live in Birmingham, and can tell anybody for one that we seem to top a lot of these very types of lists, but it basically amount anything other than a morale booster. Most if not all of these types of lists are based on trivial stats that can be found in just about any city or metropolitan region in the country. A more substantial source of growth would be the metropolitan regions gross domestic product (GDP), employment rate, diversity of a region's economy, and the number of white collar jobs that are being produced or relocated to a specific region within a given year. Basically, these are articles are more or less a trivial thing for cities those looking to boost about these type of things rather than actually sustantiatial evidence of actual economic growth.

[Alabadrock]

I think most of these articles are reports of the potential for progress. They look at past and future projects and expect that they will be carried through. Based on those projects they say whether or not they think the city will be successful. It's all in how you look at it. It's so opinionated it's not even funny.

Example: Atlanta, we love to harp on this one don't we!

Atlanta we would probably all say is prosperous in the sense of the economy and amount of growth. But, where they lack is in the basic support of their citizens. I have family quite close to the city center so I hear this a lot. The reason that so many trauma patients are sent to Birmingham from ATL is because the hospitals in ATL won't accept some of them. It may be because they're already so full and overcrowded with patients that can't pay their bills, so they're afraid to take them in. Transit is another issue, we can all agree that traffic in ATL is some of the worst in the country. Mass transit is something that needs to be massively expanded in the city. Air quality is quite poor. And heck, I went to a high school that surpasses many of the suburban high schools' test score averages.

It's all about which part of the prosperity you wanna look at. For every amount of prosperous activity, there's always going to be something that's on the downswing in some form.

[kayman]

So your are saying that Mobile, your town B-ham, Huntsville, and the Aubern area isn't showing any economic progress . You did say that B-ham always make the top of list like this all the time , they also mentioned Austin which is a propserous city also. I guess Moddy's calcultions are all lies then ?

[Bama`s Port]

I stand by my argument that these type of articles are quite trivial and are basic assumptions. Unless there are concrete and substantial changes in the quality of life and economy with hard numbers, you can guestimate anything about any city. As others have reiteriated, this type of articles are just issue sellers and morale boosters.

[Southron]

The new Kia plant near West Pt., Ga. may lead to as many as 3,000 Alabama jobs in the next two years. That figure doesn't include Alabamans who will work at the Kia plant itself. Hyundai suppliers already in Alabama should have an inside track on contracts with Kia.

Kia recently announced that about 20 percent of job applicants for the Georgia plant were from Alabama. If that percentage holds for workers actually hired, the plant may employ about 500 Alabamans.

New Kia plant in Ga. will mean jobs for Ala.

[Southron]

Alabama entered the top five among U.S. automaking states in 2007, as its Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai plants rolled out 739,019 sedans, sport utilities, crossovers and minivans. Vehicles produced in Alabama represented 7 percent of the U.S. market share for the year.

Michigan remained the largest automaking state by far in 2007, followed by Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, California and Texas. Alabama ranked 6th in 2006.

Alabama moves up to fifth among automaking states

[Southron]

Foreclosures in Alabama are down 20 percent!!

http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/....xml&coll=2

[Southron]

Alabama is one of three states in the running for a Volkswagen plant, along with Michigan and Tennessee. VW is evaluating whether to build a new plant in the United States and will make a final decision this summer.

State in competition for VW plant