Top Stories Wichita

BY FRED MANN

The Wichita Eagle

Wichita residents are feeling less positive about the community than a year ago, according to new study results.

The second year of the three-year Gallup/Knight Foundation “Soul Of the Community” survey shows our sense of passion and loyalty to the community has slumped.

Last year, Wichita residents mostly felt “neutral” toward the area, with fewer engaged citizens than cities of similar size.

This year, they felt significant declines in several factors that the study claims lead to feelings of attachment to a community, including social offerings, openness (how welcoming we are) and aesthetics, particularly our natural setting.

Ratings of the local economy also dropped as the area endured job losses in the recession. The same was true nationally among 26 communities studied.

But the economy was not a key factor in whether people loved their communities, the study says.

That surprised researchers.

“While the pain from the recession is deep, other factors far outweigh economics when it comes to determining how emotionally attached people are to their communities,” said Warren Wright, managing partner for Gallup.

Wichita remained strong in basic services, with health care rated highest. But feelings about highways and freeways suffered a decline from last year.

When it comes to social offerings, Wichita needs more of them, the study says.

The city has been working on them, said Anne Corriston, Wichita program director for the Knight Foundation. But survey respondents may not know about them.

She cited the Go Play Kansas Web site designed to help Kansans discover outdoor recreation spaces and connect to others in the community, and efforts by the ROK ICT organization to support and promote local arts and culture.

“I think the word isn’t out there,” Corriston said. “We haven’t reached critical mass in promoting these efforts, so it isn’t being picked up by people on the Gallup survey.”

Corriston said more promotion of local efforts to introduce people to cultural offerings could lift the city’s opinions about social offerings by 2010, the final year of the study.

The survey, conducted by Gallup and funded by the Knight Foundation, examines how emotionally attached residents are to the 26 U.S. communities where Knight founders owned newspapers, including Wichita.

It defines “attachment” as an individual’s psychological connection with the community, which goes beyond satisfaction and extends to passion and pride.

Gallup conducted telephone surveys with 14,000 people in the 26 communities between February and April. It interviewed 402 people in the Wichita area, which includes Sedgwick, Sumner, Butler and Harvey counties.

The number of people who feel unattached to the area rose this year.

Last year, roughly 43 percent of area residents felt neutral about the community, while 24 percent felt attached and 34 percent didn’t feel attached.

This year, 35 percent were neutral, 20 percent felt attached and 45 percent felt unattached.

Wichita this year ranked lower in attachment, loyalty, and passion than cities deemed by researches to be comparable to Wichita in size and population density. Those cities include Columbia, S.C.; Columbus, Ga.; Lexington, Ky.; and
Tallahassee, Fla.

One area that improved and rose above the other cities was “social capital,” which represents the human connections that residents make in a community and how they share time with others.

Wichita’s lack of openness was felt especially by college graduates, the study shows. That could be caused by a combinations of factors, including lack of jobs, and a perceived lack of things to do, Corriston said.

It is a problem nationally, said Katherine Loflin, a consultant with the project. College grads consistently show up in the study as the least, or second-least, welcomed group in a community.

While one reason might be lack of jobs in a community, she said, young people are really attracted to cities by social offerings.

Those include not only a vibrant night life, but opportunities to have shared experiences, and a feeling that the community cares about them, Loflin said.

“We really need to figure out how to turn that around,” she said.

The study was designed to explore the connection between economic growth and residents’ emotional attachment to their communities.

Gallup’s previous work in U.S. and abroad shows that emotional connection does drive economic growth.

The Knight Foundation aims to inform elected leaders, planners, educators, nonprofits and other community leaders about the survey so they can decide how to make the changes that encourage attachment.

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