The Geography of Tolerance

From The Atlantic Monthly

The map above shows how metros across the U.S. score on the Tolerance Index, as updated for The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited....

Even more than its natural resources and native ingenuity, what has stood at the heart and soul of U.S. prosperity historically has been its openness to hard working, ambitious, and talented immigrants of all stripes—doctors, engineers, and uneducated laborers alike.....

Openness to gays and lesbians similarly reflects an ecosystem that is open to new people and new ideas. ....communities that have long been more accepting and open to gay people have an underlying ecosystem which is also more likely to be accepting of new ideas and different types of people, including the eggheads and eccentrics who invent new things and start new enterprises. ...

[A] place can benefit from low entry barriers for people—where newcomers from different backgrounds are accepted quickly into all sorts of social and economic arrangements. All else being equal, such communities have an advantage in attracting and retaining the diverse and different types of people who power innovation and growth.

Tolerance - and openness to diversity and inclusiveness - is not an afterthought or something that happens when communities get rich. It is a key element of the new economic development equation.

Now, let's compare this map to the others I've shown you before ("Mapping It" is still one of the most frequently visited posts on this blog).  Oh, and here's one for the TEC church geeks:  correlate this map to TEC Dioceses, and  to the votes by Bishops on A049.