Method#

CommonScore Methodology#

The CommonScore measures city-wide participation space across 16 dimensions. For each dimension:

1. Availability (0.0–1.0): What fraction of weeks per year can you participate?
2. Scale (0.0–1.0): How much participation capacity exists, relative to what a major facility could provide?
3. Score = editorial weight × availability × scale

Weights sum to 100. A perfect score means every dimension offers participation space every week at convention-center scale. The full methodology documents the formula, weights, calibration benchmarks, and the participation vs. consumption distinction.

Sourcing Standards#

The almanac follows a hierarchy of sources:

1. Primary documents — Audited financial statements, bond official statements (EMMA), legislation, public records, official websites
2. Authoritative statements — CEO/CFO public statements with date and venue, board meeting minutes, rating agency reports
3. Journalistic sources — Named reporter, named publication, date, direct quotes
4. Derived figures — Calculations from primary sources, work shown

Claims that can’t be sourced are italicized as unverified or excluded.

Scoring Calibration#

Scores are calibrated against established data points:

• Oodi gaming room (Helsinki): Avail 1.0, Scale 0.2 — purpose-built, daily, free
• Phoenix Comics (Seattle): Avail 1.0, Scale 0.1 — nightly organized play, retail-scale
• Pike Place Market (Seattle): Avail 1.0, Scale 0.7 — daily vendor participation at institutional scale
• Singapore hawker centres: Avail 1.0, Scale 0.7 — 122 centres, UNESCO heritage, vendor-operated

New city scores are normalized against these benchmarks. If a city’s maker space scores higher than MassRobotics (Boston), the estimate needs justification.

Known Limitations#

City-wide scope flattens geography. A city where participation infrastructure is concentrated in one neighborhood and absent from others gets the same score as one with even distribution. Cape Town’s profile discusses this directly.

Consumption/participation boundary is editorial. Is noraebang (karaoke) participation or consumption? We say participation — you sing. Is attending a convention participation? We say yes for Industry Networking — you network, you demo, you present. Reasonable people can draw the line differently.

Scores are estimates, not measurements. Availability and scale are assessed from research, not measured with sensors. Field verification improves accuracy. Italicized claims are unverified.

Convention center economic impact figures are almost always overstated. The almanac cites them as reported but flags the methodology when known. See Heywood Sanders, Convention Center Follies (2014) for the academic critique.

Updates#

Entries carry date and lastmod fields. All previous versions are preserved in git. The ./generate script rebuilds the leaderboard and city rankings from score data in city pages.

The almanac is maintained by Ivan Schneider.