You may have heard the buzz. It has already been mentioned several times over town this past weekend. Yes, we are up to something and, yes, Santa Fe was recently named the most creative city in the United States.
But now we have the study to prove it.
Peter Zandan, is a Santa Fe resident and the founder of IQ2 Analytics and Insights. His new report concludes that Santa Fe is the most creative city in the United States when measured by per-capita creative concentration — a distinction grounded not in branding or tourism slogans, but in independent data, institutional depth, and centuries of continuous creative practice. Peter’s is the first analysis to synthesize multiple national data sets into a single, comprehensive argument for Santa Fe’s creative primacy.
The impetus for all of this was a simple question posed by Owen Lipstein, founder of Santa Fe Magazine. Lipstein believed that pound for pound, by every per-capita measure, Santa Fe is the most creative city in America. He brought the question to Zandan — a friend, but also a researcher whose reputation rests on not telling clients what they want to hear.
“I fully expected Peter would come back and tell us we were wrong,” says Lipstein. “That’s what he does.”
“The goal was an honest answer, grounded in evidence, written for the people who actually live here,” Zandan writes. “Not as a slogan, not as tourism marketing. If the data had pointed elsewhere, that’s what I would have reported.”
We are fortunate to be a part of every single day, and that is the creative community of Santa Fe at its finest. Actors, poets, iconoclasts, directors, chefs, scientists, poets, writers, thinkers, sculptors, painters, rule breakers, risk takers, decision makers and every single one of you combine to make Santa Fe the Creative Capital of America.
