Zach Brandon: The ranking is Best Place to Live, but what we think about it is it’s the best place to make a life. Make a life, make a career, make a difference.

 

Jason Fields: Madison is ranked number one. Why is that? Because it’s not just a great place to live and work and play, but it’s a great place to live and work and play for everybody. Not just the select few, but you have leaders who take seriously we want to be a place where everybody can come and succeed.

 

Amanda Ellis: Those are the voices of two Madison Wisconsin leaders. Zach Brandon, President of the Greater Madison Chamber, and Jason Fields, President of the Madison Region Economic Partnership. Madison is Livability’s number one Best Place to Live in America this year per our annual research-backed top 100 Best Places to Live. It’s actually their second year in a row at number one and the first time that has happened in our nine years of producing this list. Today, Jason and Zach join us to talk about what makes Madison special, challenges they’re still working through, and how their organizations work together to make things happen. I’m Amanda Ellis, and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development, and talent attraction professionals on how your community can be a better place to live, work, and play. To learn more about this podcast, visit Livabilitymedia.com. And with that, let’s jump in.

 

Amanda Ellis: Well, welcome Jason and Zach to the Livability podcast, and congratulations on your wonderful city of Madison, Wisconsin being named our number one Best Place to Live city in 2022 for the second year in a row, which is the first time that’s ever happened in our nine years of doing this. How do you feel?

 

Zach Brandon: I think what’s important about it, one, we feel it. We live here, so we know. I’m a transplant, I came from elsewhere, fell in love with this place. And so we feel it. So to be acknowledged and recognized for what we know is here and having the data prove it out is just a blessing in and of itself. But maybe the most important thing this year is sometimes you can look at the data and say, maybe it was an anomaly year or it was a fluke, or you had a good year. And what we think about in our world, Jason and I think about with economic development, is trend lines. We’re not looking for specific one time data points, we’re looking for trend lines. And two becomes a trend line, and so that’s exciting to us and we’re very proud to have been recognized as the best, most livable city in America.

 

Jason Fields: Yeah, I think in echoing Zach’s point, it is looking at when you first get the acknowledgement, okay, that’s great, but can you duplicate that? Is this a pattern? Is this a trend? And can you really start to get past this was a one off? And so I think when we looked at and we heard that Madison will be ranked number one again, Zach and I are both competitive. And so we are both competitive. We like to brag, we like to cheer and be cheerleaders for our region. And so for us, this gives us some bragging rights. And so we’re happy about that. And being in this position to say, hey, when you’re thinking about relocating or moving, look at us. Look at what we’re doing and look at how people are ranking us.

 

Amanda Ellis: Bragging rights are a great PR tactic. I endorse this. So we look at a whole lot of data in putting this ranking together, everything from education and healthcare to local economy, affordability is a big focus always, but especially this year with everything that’s been going on. But from your all’s perspective, just as people who live and work in Madison, what do you personally feel like makes it the best place in America to live, and what truly sets it apart?

 

Jason Fields: I think there are a number of things. Number one, and I’ll give it to you from my wife and I moving here recently. And number one, it’s the people. The people who welcome you. And I tell the story how when I got this position, Zach was the first person to send me a welcome, and basically said, “Jason, whatever you need.” And that kind of attitude, regardless of culture, race, creed, belief, that’s echoed throughout this community, we’re here to help. Two, it’s the innovative ideas around what can we do to continue to move in a position where we want to empower and be successful as a community. And so I think when you start out to look at those things and this culture of we want to be a great place to live, work, and play, spearheaded by leaders like Zach, there’s buy in. There’s buy in from the business community, there’s buy in from the elected officials, there’s buy in from the residents. And so I think that’s really what makes it special. It’s not that we don’t have anything to work on, because we do, but I think what you experience here is buy in from a number of different subsets and groups to say, we want this to be the best place to live, work, and play.

 

Zach Brandon: Yeah, I agree with, and I’ll expand on some of the things that Jason just said, but I think that’s great that he both has his lens as a former state legislator from Milwaukee and Wisconsin. So he’s known Madison from afar, from his leadership perch, but now he and his family are experiencing it first hand. And one of the things I think it’s important to note is Madison is a very easy place to network into, both with intentionality. So the leaders that are here open up the network easily. We are not a guarded or closed network kind of community. And you have to be in order to, one, be a great place to live, but also be a place that’s growing and attracting new people. But I think other things that underpin the ranking, one, I would say is we think about it in three categories. The ranking is Best Place to Live, but what we think about it is it’s the best place to make a life, that you’re doing more than just living here, that you’re actually making a life here. And that’s more than a place that you work, it’s a place that you are building a career. And then why are you here? And the answer is to make a difference. So it’s to make a life, make a career, make a difference. And I think that’s the difference in Madison, but the underpinnings of all of that, because you can’t build that on just nothing. And so the foundation that Jason and I work on every single day is, one, we have a very stable economy. We have the most economically diverse region in the country. And that’s not a chamber or idio talking point. That is just, basic analysis says that when you look at our industries, we have more and consistent penetration into every single NAICS code in the country. And so there’s just not a lot of lumpiness when it comes to our economy. It’s very stable across all categories. There’s I think the perfect blend of density and quality of life. And so we know that people want a quality of life, they want to be able to go to restaurants, they want to be able to go to shows, they want culture, they want diversity in that culture. And you need some scale to do that. But there is a tipping point on scale too. And I think that Madison is at that perfect place of balancing density and quality of life. It’s an affordable place. We know by looking at your data, Amanda, that affordability is still top of mind for most people. And that Madison, although if you ask people here, it feels like we’re seeing the increased cost, but nothing compared to our pure cities or to what we would consider aspirational economies. They are a four or five fold increase over what we are seeing in cost living. So it’s a very affordable place to rent or to own. And I think maybe the most exciting for us is this is a community that, because we have grown up in the shadow of a world class research university, that we are all in on the next economy. It’s one of the fastest growing tech sector economies in the country. We always rank in the top three for density of software developers. Our biotech industry has been a long time stable piece of our economy, but growing. And when it makes sense, when you think about its essence, bio is healing people, feeding people and fueling, and that’s not just Madison, that’s Wisconsin and its core. And I think those are the things on top of what Jason talked about, about the human feeling, that’s what underpins all of this success.

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, I love what you were saying about you want a great place to live, work and play. Those are all important and, yeah, you want a community where you can enjoy your personal life, your professional life grow in all of those areas, and do it at a great cost too, especially at the moment. So you represent two separate organizations in the community. So Zach, of course, you lead the chamber and Jason, you lead the economic development entity. What are some ways that your work overlaps considering your related but separate goals as part of those organizations?

 

Zach Brandon: Well, The Chamber created MadREP with a specific purpose. It was the chamber that gave birth to MadREP to do a specific set of things. And for a little while there was one president over the two organizations, and then there was a decision to split them. I don’t know that it’s a perfect model and I don’t know that if we were to do it all over again, we would build this exact same model. But it’s the model we have and the model that we work with. I think the answer to why we are able to work so well together is relationships. We smooth over the rough edges with friendship and with communication and with trust. I think that makes all the difference. And we’re a membership organization. We don’t take any government dollars because we lobby, we do more retail economic development work in the sense of we’re doing brand development, we are really just focused on the metro area to where businesses are located. We focus heavily on the business’s role in the economy, we don’t worry about political boundaries and we lobby, which is why we don’t take government money. We are a lobbying organization. Whereas MadREP has a different and complimentary set of skills. And I think the fact that we have some clear, bright lines and the places where it’s not bright, the fact that Jason and I can any moment pick up a phone, send an email, and we will instantly respond to each other. And we always start with better angels, that we always know that both of us are coming from a place of wanting success for the region and wanting success for both of our organizations.

 

Jason Fields: Yeah. I think it starts with just being really good, I think, colleagues, friends and trust. And as we were talking, Zach made the statement and I said this to other individuals, what I love about this, and even with Zach, is we’re not the kind of people who are rushing to take credit for something. And so even though we’re competitive, I think what we’ve internalized is how can we be better? And I think that’s the pursuit of how can we do our jobs better? And when you look at, even when there were lines where cleared, coming from a state legislator point of view, there were times where I was still stuck in the old mold and having to trust that Zach is doing the advocacy and has been doing it. And again, Zach is a former elected official. So I think it starts with that trust. At MadREP we tend to focus a little bit more on a geography economic development lens where, particularly when you look at 18% of the workforce in Dane County resides in our surrounding cities. And so what we try to do is take some of the things that Zach is doing, best practices, quite honestly, look at how we can maybe duplicate some of those, learn from them and then tie that into a bigger regional picture. And so where Zach is a huge advocate and one of the best, if not the best in the city, what I’m trying to do is be an advocate for our eight county region. And I think it’s easier when you have templates of what success looks like. And then for our other eight county regions, my goal is to make sure they have that in their own way. They’re their own model. And so I think that’s when you look at one of the differences, it is we tend to be a little bit more geographical. We don’t do advocacy, we do more one on one teaching, connecting people to grants, we have government funding. And so those are some of the operational, I think, differences. But what makes it work, I think again, in addition to all the things that Zach said is really a trust in having just a idea of where we want to go and being willing to help, because I think one of the things that we both picked up on is we just want to be successful and for us, not to speak for Zach, but I think you can be successful by empowering people, by people looking at the role that you work or you play in. And if they can come out better because of you, then Zach and I think that’s the best reward for us. And so having that shared vision, that work ethic, I think it just makes it work. And he’s a huge resource, a friend and I trust him. We check in once a month maybe. I think we have a standing meeting once a month-.

 

Zach Brandon: And then as needed.

 

Jason Fields: And as needed. And it’s times where I don’t even think we talk about business, I think. And that’s what makes it work. You know what I mean? Understanding who your partners are and how we can all be better.

 

Zach Brandon: I think one of the things that MadREP does really well, and especially under Jason’s leadership, is there are things that if you did them individually, if you just said, we’re only going to do these couple of communities, even if those were just some of the bright spots or maybe the best stories to tell, it might be easier. But what MadREP does for us as a region and for Madison as a city and for us as a chamber, is they bring in site selectors and are able to show all of the things that are going on here, not just the businesses that happen to be Chamber members or the regions that are at the top of our performance list. They bring in media from around the country and do familiarization tours where they put them on buses and drive them around. One of the things that to be thinking about when you are in these relationships, when I said retail versus wholesale, is who’s really doing the work that is bigger than just any one municipality or one part of the region? And that’s why you need something like MadREP and Jason.

 

Jason Fields: Yeah. And to Zach’s point, thank you Zach, because I appreciate you bringing that to light. One of the things that we do when, and Zach mentions having site selectors, businesses come and our job is to showcase the region. There are times where I’ll call Zach and just get ideas based on his experience. And again, I think when you look at that, here you have two different missions and consistently trying to be better and having our site selectors come in, Zach and the work Zach does is a component of that. You cannot sell the region without including Madison. And so that Madison connection has to always be there. And so what we try to do is sell the region because a lot of individuals want to have the close connection to Madison, they want to look at the supply chains. And what we do at MadREP is say, hey, out of these eight counties, you’re 45 minutes away from the major hub and that’s a good thing. And so I think that’s, Zach stated that’s one of the differences, but it incorporates a lot of work that Zach does at the chamber.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, I’m always interested in how different communities break down those economic development and community growth type responsibilities. And I do think sometimes there’s a push and pull between the different groups that are working on that, and it seems like you all are navigating that really well. So, that was very insightful. So even though you’re a Best Place to Live, of course we’re all also striving always to be better, and you’ve already referenced that a little bit during this conversation. So to that end, I’d love to hear about some challenges that you’re still working on as a community. Jason, I know that broadband is a big area of focus, so could you talk about that?

 

Jason Fields: Yeah, the broadband issue is a huge issue. One of the things that I wanted to tackle when I first got here, and when you look at our region, the two issues that arise is number one, affordability in broadband and then how do you get access to broadband? When we mentioned companies wanting to come and locate here, one of the first things they want to know is it broadband access? Is it ready? Are they capable of being connected? And so what we found was that a lot of smaller areas, a lot of areas outside of Madison and Dane County who need to be connected, they’re not connected. And so what we’ve done was launch a broadband mapping survey, a project that would map who has broadband in our eight county regions? And then in addition to that, looking at ways that we can have affordable broadband delivered. We got tired of hearing mayors from rural areas tell me, hey Jason, our kids are sitting in the parking lot of McDonald’s to get online. And what we wanted to do was go, okay, if we really want to be competitive for a region, then we have to figure out a strategy to get everybody access and capable of having broadband speeds that are affordable. And so that’s one of the initiatives that we took on and it’s a lot of heavy lifting. And my good friend Zach has been in our corner every step of the way. And so I think when you have that kind of coalition and people that say broadband is important from a regional perspective, it begins to catch on and it begins to grow. And so that’s a huge issue. We’re not there yet. We still need to understand, okay, who has it? What are the strategies to get it delivered, particularly that last mile? And one of the issues is a lot of times some of our smaller communities, they just don’t have the, no pun intended, but they don’t have the bandwidth, they don’t have the manpower to take on some of the initiatives. And that’s where a MadREP comes in, helping them apply for grants, helping them build their infrastructure, helping them to negotiate, whether it be with the state or with broadband carriers. What can we do to get you broadband?

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes.

 

Zach Brandon: I don’t have much to add on broadband, I think Jason covered that. I would also say that they are metro or urban broadband is well connected and very fast, but MadREP also keeps the foot on the gas to make sure that even our urban and metro broadband is keeping pace with what national international standards of best practices would be. From our standpoint about what things that we see as the, whether they’re challenges or opportunities, fall into four buckets outside of the economy. So we’ve talked a lot about the economy, Jason and I spending most of our time thinking about those things. But I’ll talk about some things that maybe have connectivity beyond just the economy, and that would be diversity and equity and inclusion, which I’ll leave for last because I know Jason will have a lot of thoughts on that too. So the other ones are childcare, transit and infrastructure, connectivity and then education. And so on childcare, during the pandemic, there was all this debate about why are people not returning to work at the pace that business needs them to or that maybe we expected them to? And there were a lot of theories there was, is it the stimulus dollars, is it early retirement? And so we convened work groups here and we broke them into three categories. We brought in national, we respected demographers and economists, and we asked them, what is your best guess on why people are not returning to work at the pace that we need them to? And then we brought in the businesses and we said, what are you hearing? What are you feeling? What are you seeing about why people aren’t returning? And then we brought in actual talent and said, Are you coming back to work? If you aren’t, why aren’t you coming back to work? And there was only one common thread between all three, and that was childcare or caregiving in general. And what we realized in that moment is Jason and I, and most people in this work are capitalists. We believe that it’s not without fault, but the capitalism is the best and only economic model to truly make progress. But sometimes the market does fail. And when that happens, it’s also incumbent upon business and economic leaders to step in. And so we are doing a deep dive on how do we solve the double market failure of childcare? Because on one hand we need to keep childcare affordable and accessible, and so we can’t drive up costs, but we need to raise costs in order to pay people, in order to remain competitive. And so you’ve got this push and pull on childcare that needs to get solved if we’re going to reach our potential. And so we believe we can be one of, if not the city in America that comes up with a public private partnership that shows a best practice forward on maximizing labor participation through solving childcare challenges. Connectivity is another big one for us. Pre-pandemic, we went from, pre-pandemic we had the fastest growing mid-size airport in the country. We doubled our direct routes from, almost doubled from 10 to 19 before the pandemic hit. And one of those routes was a direct route to San Francisco, which is, that is the holy grail of tech economies. If you can get a direct flight in-.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes.

 

Zach Brandon: … SFO, we got one, actually, they came back to us and United said, we think there’s so much travel that we’re going to do two a day. And then that was December, of 2019 and then the pandemic hit a few months later. And so we have slowly been bringing back our directs. We’ve got our direct New York back, our direct to DC back. The directs that we kept were Detroit and Chicago and Dallas. But that direct to San Francisco is something that we’re working very hard to get back online. And then Seattle and Boston are priorities for us, but it’s not, it’s beyond just airfare or airport, air travel. It’s creating better transit. And the potential for inner city rail that runs from Chicago through Milwaukee, through Madison to the Twin Cities, that’s a game changer for the entire upper Midwest, and something that we’re heavily focused on, I think. But maybe the biggest question, the most vexing thing that we are trying to tackle collectively is how do you continue to diversify this community? How do you create true equity? How do you make our community feel more inclusive and be a place where everyone feels like they belong? And we’ve launched a new initiative called dije, which is the Spanish word for the past tense of the personal sense of said, So dije means, I said, and it’s about keeping your word and doing what you say, but as an acronym, it’s diversity, inclusion, justice and equity. And at its core is a question of can justice be a business term? And I think the answer is yes, because justice at its core is fixing broken things. And that’s what we do every day in business, is that we fix things that are not optimized, that not work well, that are broken, but it will take all of us. It will take MadREP, it will take the chamber, it will take every partner in order to truly accomplish that. But I think that is the biggest challenge in front of us, which is how do we convene our leaders around this and hold them accountable? How do we attract more talent, diverse talent? How do we connect that talent so they feel like this is a place that they own? And how do we track our progress? And then how do we grow our entrepreneurial ecosystem for people of color? If we can tackle that, we’ll be at the top of your list for the next nine years.

 

Amanda Ellis: Forever.

 

Jason Fields: And to Zach’s credit, I think we were talking about this, and I mentioned earlier that some of the things that we do at MadREP may be a template or how do we expand that vision into the eight county region? And when we talk about diversity, and again, I’m not one to blow smoke, but I was always impressed with Zach’s passion. And I remember him saying this, and I don’t know if you remember Zach, but we were talking when I first got here, and this is really where I knew we were going to be really good. Zach said, and I used this, he said, Jason, we know the pitch to the guys at Stanford University, UCLA, but what’s the pitch to the people of color at historically black colleges and universities? And for me, I think when you talk about diversity and what you see Zach in the doing is let’s dig down deep and let’s not just talk about it, but let’s put solutions in a game plan together. And what I’ve done is tried to go, okay, if that’s the game plan, which I believe it is, and we’re all on board, how do we take that same message to rural America, to our rural counties who need talent, who want diversity, who want inclusion, but may not know how to get it, may not know where to go? Here’s where you see that connection to Madison, the business chamber, Zach and his team, because now we’re moving in a region to take diversity, equity, and inclusion seriously. And it started with quite honestly, a person in Zach’s position to really be truthful about it and to really not just talk about it, but be about it. I don’t know if you ever got a chance to go to Zach’s icebreaker, but if you ever get a chance to go to Zach, Zach brand’s icebreaker, listen, you will be writing a story about that. It is one of the most phenomenal events that I’ve seen. And again, it just about when we have issues, when there are things that we can improve, let’s have a game plan, let’s put it together. And in that spirit, I’ll tell you one of the things that we’ve been working on here is when you look at lab space, Zach mentioned biosciences, BioHealth. When we talk about the economy, that’s huge. In fact, during the pandemic regular rental space for offices were down maybe 17%, but for lab space and the sciences technology, less than 5%. And so now you see this after the pandemic a rush for places like Madison in our MadREP region to be focal points or hubs for biosciences, we’re seeing getting international attention. Here’s what a diversity and equity and inclusion piece comes into play. And I wrote an article about this, and Zach and I have had these discussions. We need more people of color in the STEM areas, in the STEM fields. And in order to get to that point, we have to have this collaboration, this work ethic between Zach and I and the leaders here, but then more importantly, or just as important, is people need to know, hey, Madison’s a ranked number one. Why is that? Because it’s not just a great place to live and work and play, but it’s a great place to live and work and play for everybody. You know what I mean? It’s a great place for everybody, not just a select few, but you have leaders who take seriously, we want to be a place where everybody can come and succeed. And for those who are here, there’s a pipeline, there’s a system that says if you put in the work and you are a child of color, a BIPOC member, or a community of BIPOC, you have a place here and we want you to stay here. And so I think those are the things that you see Zach and I working on and working on it from a, we may not be around to see it, or to see it and come into full fruition, but I think I can speak for both of us and say, we’ll be damned if we don’t have a part to play in it.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. Well, and diversity is part of this ranking too, so you’re scoring highly on it now, but as we said, always looking to how we can improve, that was a super informative answer and great to hear, even though you’re doing so many things well, you also have a great pulse on what you want to do even better, which, of course, is equally important. So we do some of our own research at Livability on people’s relocation habits and have done that for a few years. And the things that come up time and again that are important to people are affordability, which we’ve talked about a good bit already during this conversation. Close people are to their families. Recently, the amount of living space they can get for their money has been a key thing people are thinking about. Another big one is climate. And I just thought it might be interesting to ask you all, because I know you get some pretty cold winters there, but here you are, best place to live in the whole country. So I just wanted to let you all weigh in on that. How does that play into your marketing? Do you have any advice for colder communities? When we talk to communities, they always think, Oh, climate. Well, that means you have to be warm. Well, not really. People like different things. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

 

Zach Brandon: Well, one, I would say just look at your own rankings. The listeners should look at your rankings, is that when you look at the top 12, I think, all of them are above the 40th parallel, which means they all have four seasons. And when you look at the top six, five of them are above the 42nd parallel, which means they get winters, and real winters like the kind of winters that we’re used to, the upper Midwest winters. But diversity of climate is a positive thing. Some people take climate to mean a beach or it’s a place that’s perennially warm all year round. But what you give up in that is in places like Madison, but specifically Madisons who are talking about this great city is that you get the greenest of springs, you really get to see how green a place can be. You get hot summers. Summers are real here, it gets up into the nineties where thankfully we’re not in those 110 kind of temperatures, but it gets up into the nineties and stays in the eighties throughout the… So you get really great winters. The falls are breathtaking. It’s just when you see the change of color and the canopies here, it is something that just takes your breath away. And the winters are real and they’re here, but they’re not gray and wet. And we have so many days of sunshine. I always joke with people that if you just looked above the horizon, you would think it was 70 degrees outside, because it is a blue sky with very few clouds and crystal white snow. It’s not raining and drizzly and that damp chill that you get in a lot of other places. And maybe the most important thing is that you can engage in both water and land during those all four seasons. And I think that’s an important thing to think about. If you haven’t been to Madison, I’ll help you visualize it. It is Lake City, lake, lake, lake. We have five lakes around this city and we are on an isthmus. And we’re one of only two cities, the other one being Seattle that are built on an isthmus. And so you get a tremendous amount of land and amazing amount of water, and you can play on both of those in all four seasons. And then when you think about what does that land look like? The soil here is truly black. It is the darkest of soil, which is why agriculture has done so well in the state of Wisconsin. But it’s also the place where the glaciers stopped. So it creates amazing difference in diversity and terrain because everything that got pushed down from Canada into the United States before it receded is all planted right around Madison. And then finally, I would say for people who maybe are wondering about the cold, I would say, come here in the winter because is a city that never freezes. Now, I don’t mean that it doesn’t get below 32 because it does. What I mean is, is that we keep moving that on a winter day, regardless of the weather, or the temperature. When you come to Madison, you’re going to see runners, joggers, bikers abound everywhere. And I’ll give you one fact that proves that point is that in Madison, we plow our bike paths before we plow our roads because people commute to work in the wintertime on bikes.

 

Jason Fields: Yes, they do it. And it is fricking amazing to me.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, I was going to say that’s a little amazing to me too.

 

Jason Fields: Yeah, it is true. It is. You got to be here to see it. It’s fascinating. But to Zach’s point, our incoming board chair, Peter Tanas from Malaysia, and he chooses to be here, he loves the winter. And I think what you’ll see is, as Zach said, we keep moving here. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve sat in around economic development and tourism that encompasses the winter all four seasons. From the bike paths to snowmobile trails to skiing, to candlelight snowshoeing events. It is a asset to have all four climates. And we have a lot of individuals that take advantage of it. And it is quite fun. And I think, again, when you’re around areas where the people keep moving in all four seasons, it just adds to the energy, it just adds to the atmosphere because, and again, me coming from a place where I didn’t see a lot of that, Zach is absolutely right. They literally are riding bikes in the snow and it’s like a regular thing. It’s not surprising. And so you become acclimated to that kind of stuff. And so now for me, me and my wife are out looking for bikes and I’m thinking to myself, how cool would it be to ride a bike in the winter? I’m not there yet, but the idea.

 

Amanda Ellis: You’ll get there. What’s that saying? There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing for the weather.

 

Zach Brandon: It’s Norwegian.

 

Jason Fields: But the idea has been sparked. But that’s the beauty of it. We’re always moving. It’s always something to do. And that’s, it just adds to our energy.

 

Zach Brandon: And then one last piece of that is, I just want to plant a seed for people, is that when we think about climate resiliency, when we think about climate change and what it’s doing to cities across the world, places like Madison and the upper Midwest are strategically positioned to be resilient in a climate change scenario. And that’s a long term opportunity of the diversity of climate gets you.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, that’s a great point. I was talking to someone recently, I won’t name their location, but it was somewhere that gets colder even than you all do. And they were talking about what they liked about their community and they were like, well, no one lives here who’s not tough. So I was like, well, that’s one way of looking at it. So, well, we are almost at time, but I always close out our episodes with a fun question that I’m going to pitch to you all. So what is the one bucket list item that someone visiting Madison should make sure to do if they had to pick one thing?

 

Jason Fields: Oh wow. If they had to pick one thing, I think you have to get out on the lake. I think you have to experience one of the lakes, either fishing, canoeing, but you have to get out there and sit and enjoy the view and take in the energy, because it’s absolutely beautiful.

 

Zach Brandon: Yeah, that would’ve been my top one too, whether you have a drink on the Monona Terrace or the Union Terrace where we activate our waterfront in a real and non-commercial way. But because Jason said it, I think we both agree that would be number one. I would say as much as we talk about water and land, I would say if you come to Madison, you should experience all the vibrancy and energy that is downtown. But give yourself time to get 15 minutes and literally 15 minutes outside of town. You are in some of the best biking and hiking, rock climbing places in the country. And so give your time to experience how quickly you can be out of a dense and vibrant city and into amazing rolling terrain that will just allow you to disconnect and enjoy life.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yes. Well, thank you all so much for coming on today and talking and sharing about Madison. And congrats again on being our 2022 Best Place to Live. It was great having you.

 

Zach Brandon: Great. Well, thanks for the invite.

 

Jason Fields: Thank you.

 

Amanda Ellis: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-size cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode, email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.