Talent, technology and greater tolerance have cast Salt Lake City as one of the nation's 10 "fastest" cities, according to the November issue of Fast Company magazine.

Cities making the cut showed the highest rates of growth in what the magazine dubbed as the "creative class," namely scientists, engineers, artists, managers and high-paid professionals. That group makes up more than 30 percent of the total U.S. work force, the New York-based business magazine said in the issue that hits newsstands Sunday.

Lucas Conley, a staff writer for Fast Company, said the rankings were meant to showcase cities where people aspire to live and work.

The magazine hired Richard Florida, Hirst professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, and Kevin Stolarick, assistant professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University, to crunch numbers on a city's number of new patents, the concentration of high-tech firms, number of different occupations and the percentage of homosexuals in a community.

Cities that made the list, Conley said, "tell you that it is an attractive place for people in a creative class to live."

"The general idea, of course, was to look at where the growth was happening, where the change was happening," Conley said. "You had to be a leader in at least two of those three categories."

Salt Lake scored high in the talent and technology categories, but ranked lower in overall tolerance, mainly due to a smaller homosexual population compared to the U.S. average. It ranked above the national average in the Bohemian index, a measure of the relative concentration of artists.

Each of the three categories used in the rankings were weighted equally.

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson was not surprised to learn the city had made the list.

"My sense is that we're moving a lot faster toward being attractive in many ways to the creative class than a lot of people who live here realize," Anderson said. "If we don't attract young, creative, entrepreneurial types, we are going to get left in the dust. They are important because they are our future for sustained economic development. They're the ones that are going to carry the day."

In its article, Fast Company noted three cornerstones that made Salt Lake City stand out. They were:

• The number of women-owned firms, growing 36 percent from 1997 to 2004.

• Money under management by venture capital firms growing to $700 million.

• The Sundance Film Festival.

Anderson said his efforts to make downtown Salt Lake City a more entertaining place help to draw the creative class.

"It's not necessarily to turn this place into a party town, like a lot of people have characterized it, but rather to let everybody know that their choices are honored," Anderson said. "There is more than one lifestyle. There is more than one way of doing things here, and there's plenty of opportunity for everybody to make their own choices in Salt Lake City."

Other cities on the U.S. list were Sacramento, Calif.; Phoenix; San Antonio; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; San Diego; Portland, Ore.; Madison, Wis.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Colorado Springs, Colo.

The article also listed five global "fast" cities, including Dublin, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland; Montreal, Quebec; Sydney, Australia; and Vancouver, British Columbia.

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