Tag Archives: comparison

Learn more about the Other Birmingham

screenshot from "The Other Birmingham"A couple of years ago there were a couple of incidents involving folks from Birmingham, AL and the city we’re named after, Birmingham, UKconfusing the skylines of the two cities separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

There’s an online resource that should help keep that from happening again.

The Other Birmingham was created by Fiona Cullinan, who originally created the piece for her travel journalism blog as a one-off. She has since maintained the site, enabling her to accept additional submissions about similarities between the two cities as well as suggestions about what else should be covered. There’s been a lot looked at already, including that growing list of similarities

By the way, there are several cities named Birmingham in the United States. They’re considerably smaller, like Birmingham, MO (population 214 according to the 2000 Census) and Birmingham, MI (pop. 19,291) to not even in existence anymore (e.g., Birmingham, KY).

A look at walkability in Birmingham (and Alabama)

WalkScore screenshotWalk Score‘s recent aggregation of scores for the nation’s 2,500 largest cities had us wondering just where Birmingham ranked. The site determines the “walkability” of any location based on how close it is to amenities like banks, groceries and restaurants.

We compared the city’s score (40) with those from cities that the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce visited as part of the B.I.G. trips taken between 2002-2008. They’re listed in the order that they were visited:

  • St. Louis, MO – 61 (348,366)
  • Baltimore, MD – 65 (652,670)
  • Charlotte, NC – 39 (564,023)
  • Nashville, TN – 39 (545,623)
  • Pittsburgh, PA – 67 (334,059)
  • Denver, CO – 64 (553,515)
  • Austin, TX – 51 (661,212)

It’s interesting to note that none of the cities listed above were the most walkable in their state, though they all made the top ten lists of their respective states.

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The new search engine on the block

There are a few folks this morning that are enjoying the newest search engine out there, Cuil. Taking its name from an old Irish word meaning knowledge, one reason for the buzz is because it was built by former Google employees.

Compare the results from Google and Cuil for Birmingham, AL. Then let us know what you think.