Columbus leaders may say the city is “doing amazing,” but data and nationally-published opinions continue to reveal the opposite. 

Despite a decade worth of development efforts from the city and its public/private partnerships, the Fountain City was recently ranked as one of the worst places in the country to enjoy your golden years. 

According to a study conducted by WalletHub — a renowned network that produces data reviews for financial advisors — Columbus, Ga. ranked a lowly 161st out of 182 cities across the nation as a place to retire.

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Many other southern cities fared far better than Columbus, showing the problem isn’t simply a  regional issue but is specific to the city of Columbus itself. Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, ranked much higher at 87th overall. Nashville, Tenn., ranked 61st, and Atlanta ranked 13th out of the 182 cities examined. Columbus scraped the bottom, coming in at lowly 161st place.

The local Ledger-Enquirer newspaper — a long-time media shield for the city and its downtown agenda — also felt it in their best interest to cover this study, as dreary national opinions and piles of measurable data about the city’s failed efforts become increasingly impossible to avoid. 

The drivers of Columbus’ bottom-feeding ranking came from its low scores in healthcare and available activities. When compared to healthcare quality in the other 181 cities within the study, Columbus ranked dead-last at 182nd place. The city’s score for activities was also terribly inferior at 158th, and quality of life scores left the Fountain City at a measly 146th of the 182 cities analyzed across the nation. 

Overall, Columbus ranked a harrowing 161st place out of 182 across the nation as a whole.

There was, however, one metric in which Columbus excelled. The fountain city ranked much higher in affordability, coming in at 19th place out of 182. The ranking comes as no surprise, as it demonstrates Columbus continues to excel at one thing: being poor while having little to offer. 

As revealed in a leak by an employee of Uptown Columbus, Inc., tourism efforts for next month's ICF Kayak World Cup are expected to produce a financial loss, adding to Uptown’s growing multimillion-dollar deficit which accrued over the past decade.

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The Fountain City’s scores in the WalletHub study appear to coincide with other measurable effects of the city’s decade-long development failures. Poverty, for example, has continued to rise in Columbus while rates in Atlanta, the state of Georgia, and the nation as a whole have largely improved. As of 2020, one-in-five (20%) of  Columbus residents are living in poverty. 

It is also noteworthy that deaths from drug overdose have doubled from 2020 to 2021 in Muscogee County; a statistically relevant correlation that tends to reveal itself as poverty rises within a given area.

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This all begs the question of, “How could Columbus rank so low, especially with all the programs and initiatives geared toward revitalizing the city of Columbus?”

To answer that question, we have to look at what the data tells us. Poverty, the most prevalent metric of a city’s success, can help us do that. 

The timeframe of when the Columbus poverty rate began to rise and deviate from that of the state and nation coincides with the administration of the city’s previous mayor, Teresa Tomlinson. While famed by many altruistic Columbusites for the short-term “feel good” effects of starting economic development initiatives, the unsustainable long-term side effects were also forewarned of at the time; many simply chose to ignore them in exchange for the short-term “feel good” effects.

The actions taken by these economic development efforts have quite obviously backfired. We are now witnessing those long-term effects that went ignored for years as they took root.

The “Columbus 2025” initiative is a case-study example. Designed and implemented by a private/public collaboration of Columbus elite in 2014 — many of whom Tomlinson held long-standing personal relationships with — Columbus  2025 continues to wield huge political influence applied through the locally-acclaimed social status and checkbooks of a few wealthy and influential Columbusites. 

For eight years, the initiative has specifically aimed to reduce poverty as one of its core objectives. However, while Columbus 2025 may well have good intentions and genuinely seek to create a more competitive and prosperous region, their level of competence in actually doing so has measurably fallen short. 

The group was also responsible for the development of the city’s new logo, the backstory of which was covered in an opinion piece published by The Muckraker. While intended to attract people to Columbus in an effort to grow the area economically, the logo quickly made satirical headlines across the nation and continues to repel people away from the city. The logo was ironically received by the public as an example of the city’s incompetence — the exact opposite of what Columbus 2025 was tasked with achieving. 

Another cultural anomaly readily observable within the influential circles of Columbus is a megalomania-like tendency to run off talented employees, ironically shrinking the pool of talented and educated people residing within Columbus who could have otherwise helped solve the problems faced by the city.

This same sort of irony can be seen through the measurable effects of programs like Columbus 2025 across the board. Their political influence and power — largely bought through social and monetary capital in lieu of competence and merit— have categorically resulted in increased poverty, rampant drug use, and death.

Now, these effects are becoming recognized at the national level. Professional organizations and advisors like WalletHub do not care about serving and protecting Columbus’ internal nepotism; they care about the measurable results. They follow the data and advise their national readers and clientele accordingly. They do not care to pay attention to the “man behind the green curtain,” but rather only to how the City of Oz is actually performing compared to others — and readers across the nation and world are advised by their findings. 

The WalletHub scores are, statistically speaking, likely to be yet another unfortunate result of lending local political power to the altruistic and socially-wealthy instead of to the analytically competent who are capable of solving these problems long-term. 

Competence matters, and the long-term measurable results reveal a lack of it. Perhaps it’s time the influential elite of Columbus tried something else.

Columbus residents can voice their opinions about the ten-year-long measurable failures of Columbus’ development efforts by reaching out to their city council members through the city’s website here.