Over the last several days, my social media feeds have groaned under the weight of a frequently-posted 'study' - a better word might be clickbaity shitpost - that asserts Virginia Beach to be the "Best Big City of 2017". You can read the study (though I wouldn't recommend it) here.

To their credit, WalletHub.com, my second-or-third-favorite CreditKarma knockoff, did thoroughly explain their methodology. Needless to say, it is absurd. Yes, they have a lot of numbers, and yes, they have an elaborate weighting system - but there is just no particular reason to think that "Building Permit Growth" should be worth 2.22 "points," whereas "Quality of Public School System" should be worth 1.82. That is only one example. All 50 "relevant metrics" from "Violent Crime rate" to "Beaches per capita" (Virginia Beach did well on that one, no doubt) have an arbitrary number assigned them, as though giving something a number makes it a legitimate data point.

My problem with the study, however, is not really its ridiculous design. Of course it has a ridiculous design. Even those who enthusiastically trumpet these results, like Virginian Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty in her column "Virginia Beach the Greatest City in America? Of course!", notes that these sorts of studies are "arbitrary and capricious" in their ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ approach to methodology. My problem is also not that I hate Virginia Beach, or that I resent people who like living there. I like Virginia Beach. I love the beach itself, Gringo's Taqueria, my job, my house, its porch, my friends, and my girlfriend and cats. (To be fair, the final items on that list would be equally great if I moved somewhere else.) Like Kerry Dougherty, I like Spanish moss, sunrises, and good stop sign behavior, though I might mention that none of those things are endemic to Virginia Beach. And unlike Kerry Dougherty, I don't consider the city administration to be composed of corrupt operators who think their "dubious backroom deals" are now vindicated by the coveted WalletHub #1 ranking. (I know you probably didn't click the link to the column, but you really should. And if you've got some time and blood pressure to spare, I recommend checking out her archive of hot takes here).

My problem is the lack of awareness I've seen in Beach residents about how and why Virginia Beach does so well on these metrics. The main reasons Virginia Beach did as well as it did on the ranking were its low crime (worth 5 points!), its low poverty, its high graduation rate, and its high homeownership. These are all good things, obviously, but what I think my fellow citizens don't recognize is that the reason Virginia Beach succeeds on these measures is because we are not a big city, despite our large population. We're a catchall white-flight suburb of 3 real cities: Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Hampton, and as such, we've shunted all of the difficult things about having a city - like having poor residents, or creating an inclusive community - onto them. In other words, we've been able to remain as prosperous as we have because of exclusionary policies towards poor people and people of color.

Here's an example: I live in Shadowlawn, which is a very pleasant neighborhood. There are kids in the streets; dads on the lawns, and it's easy to walk or bike to a lot of great places, like the beach, the Pizza Chapel, Back Bay Brewery, or the aforementioned Gringo's. There's a lovely multi-use path connecting all of these things, and the city recently put in a sidewalk along Mediterranean, which makes my walk to Rudee's Cabana Bar much safer and more pleasant. Compare this to Atlantis Apartments, or Harbor Club Apartments, the Judeo-Christian Outreach Center (a homeless shelter) or the Colony Mobile Home Park just across Norfolk Ave. These places serve poor people, especially of color, and they're utterly cut off from my neighborhood - there is a massive chain link fence that runs the length of Norfolk Ave., separating these low-income housing projects from the multi-use path that would allow people who live there to get easily to the beach, or the taco shop, or the Brewery, or anywhere else in my neighborhood that they would want to go. Instead, they've got to go down their neighborhoods' windy roads that open onto the much less pleasant and safe Virginia Beach Boulevard, or Birdneck Avenue - both busier and with much less pedestrian infrastructure. And these are just the physical barriers. Ever noticed how many police patrol the Food Lion on Birdneck? You know, the one people call the Hood Lion? In my three years of living in Shadowlawn, I've interacted with a policeman once. He came to my door to conduct a survey about how safe I felt in my neighborhood. I wonder if people who live in Atlantis Apartments would describe their relationship to the police in the same way.

Here's a map. My house is the little gray house in the lower right quadrant. Notice how the streets are an interconnected grid. Then, look at the windy, disconnected, self-contained, dare-I-say-segregated streets of the upper left quadrant. That's what I'm talking about. See the little path along the north edge of Norfolk Ave, right down the center of the map? That's where the fence is, directly separating those communities from a path that could help them get places, like, for example, the Pizza Chapel.

And imagine if they took down the fence. You may have heard of an app called NextDoor. It's a social networking app for neighborhoods, or in Shadowlawn's case, a person-of-color reporting system, allowing frightened white people to alert the neighbors to any 'suspicious' people spotted on our streets. I can't imagine expanding access to my neighborhood would go over particularly well; I would imagine that the next time the cops came by to give us a survey, they'd get some pretty sharp comments about all of those 'suspicious' people getting tacos. Oh, and I forgot to mention - the city is moving the homeless shelter to make room for new development. It will be relocated to the section of Witchduck Road between Interstate 264 and Virginia Beach Boulevard, a place only slightly more friendly to pedestrians than the surface of Venus. I imagine it's only a matter of time until the mobile homes and the Atlantic Apartments go too.

Here's my point: my neighborhood is a microcosm of Virginia Beach as a whole, and this is exactly why we're able to get the #1 spot. We're not a real city, with the difficulties and obligations, (or the moral legitimacy, diversity, or dynamism) of an inclusive community. We're a relatively white, relatively prosperous place cut off from the poorer, blacker areas nearby. Take a closer look at this section of Kerry Dougherty's column:

That means that even without the pricey fripperies that some cities have – you know, the bike paths and the oxygen bars – the Resort City is numero uno.

Turns out a low crime rate – the Beach scored highest in that category – and low levels of poverty and taxes are more important than mass transit, coffeehouses and intricate networks of footpaths.

Who knew?

Lots of Beachites, actually.

Looks like the folks who voted to keep taxes down by not throwing money at a ludicrous light rail system had their priorities straight after all last fall.

The light rail system (which, by the way, would have been almost entirely paid for by an existing state infrastructure fund, which will now be spent elsewhere in Virginia), would have made it easier for people without cars to get between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. I heard people tell me that the light rail would be bring crime to the Oceanfront; I heard people say that we have a lovely suburban community here in Virginia Beach, and we don't want to make it any more urban than it already is. I think we know what these arguments are really saying. They're saying that we don't want poor people and people of color being able to live easily in Virginia Beach.

Needless to say, the light rail proposal was soundly defeated at the polls last November. Also, by the way, I'm not sure what coffee desert of a neighborhood Kerry Dougherty lives in, but Virginia Beach has a lot of coffeeshops. She is correct that we don't have any oxygen bars, though.

Now, I know the hipsters with their "pricey fripperies" like bike paths, footpaths and mass transit (you know, those useless infrastructure projects that help poor people live their lives), might look down on us "Beachites" and make us feel bad because of how racist, exclusionary, and uncool we are. But aren't they right to do so? Shouldn't we be ashamed of how our city got to be first on WalletHub's Best Big Cities to Live of 2017?

Let me tell a quick story. Three years ago, about a year after I moved to Virginia Beach, I invited a bunch of my college friends to visit me for the 4th of July. While walking to the beach to go see the fireworks, someone in the passenger seat of a car yelled a racial epithet - I'll bet you can guess which one - at one of my friends. I have never been more ashamed of myself and my city. My friend has not been back, and I don't blame him. Virginia Beach has been my home for three years, and I love many things about the city. But let's be honest about why this city is the way it is.