My city's collective I.Q. is higher than yours

With every year that passes I hope to be smarter. I like to read, watch and expose myself to things and experiences that will challenge me to think in a different way. That being said, I was recently thinking about how the city you live affects your intelligence. Basically, how smart is your city?

An interesting concept I think. Some cities just have a pulse of creative and intellectual energy. Universities and other institutions of higher learning everywhere, libraries, theatres, galleries and other outlets that I feel are representative of an "intellectual" city. Judging how smart a city is really consists of developing criteria upon which to judge cities. An interesting task in itself.

Right away some of the indicators I thought of included:
- the # of universities, colleges, post-secondary schools and their enrollment as a % of total population
- the # of citizens with degrees (undergrad, grad, ph.d)
- reading level of local newspapers
- accessibility to arts and cultural institutions

Some things are easy to judge, but I think that there are probably some indicators out there that some of us might not think of. The reading level of the local newspaper was one of those that I thought was a telling indicator. For example, 24 Hours, a local daily newsaper is nothing more than a glorified tabloid, yet given it's focus on commuters has a huge readership. So high, that it took out another younger focused paper that in my opinion had a far more intelligent readership and focus.

200 years ago, the world's most intelligent cities were probably easy to identify. Paris, Rome, Beijing, Istanbul, Moscow, Vienna and the list could probably go on. Now, however with accessiblity to so much information and an exchange of ideas all across the globe it would be interesting to think about where these dens of higher thought are, how to identify them and how to make our own cities look more like them.

Personally, I think N. America probably has a couple of good ones to contribute. Hell Microsoft probably created it's own and Silicon Valley has got to be considered a contender. With consideration of the smartest city, it seems only natural to think "just where is the stupidest city around?".