"Vibrancy Index"

In 2006, downtown Winston-Salem had 50 restaurants and 15 retail businesses.  The greater city boasted 20 galleries and museums, 13 music venues, and hosted 670 cultural events and 7 festivals per year.  During the time period of July 2010-June 2011, those numbers increased to 81 restaurants and 76 retail businesses downtown, 16 music venues, 22 festivals (not including 2 biennial festivals not held this year), and a whopping 2,519 cultural events.

The numbers speak for themselves.  Interestingly, the information was presciently gathered by the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to quantify the revitalization efforts going on in the city.  While there are a few caveats (such as the fact that "bars" were not counted as restaurants in 2006 but were in 2010-2011), the findings over this time period are nevertheless astounding considering they took place in the face of one of the nation's worst ever financial crises.

Winston-Salem Named in "America's 50 Best Cities" by BusinessWeek

Winston-Salem was ranked as the 46th best city in the country according to the following calculus:

Cities were scored in 16 categories: the number of restaurants, bars, and museums per capita; the number of colleges, libraries, and professional sports teams; the income, poverty, unemployment, crime, and foreclosure rates; percent of population with bachelor’s degrees, public school performance, park acres per 1,000 residents, and air quality.
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/20110920/america-s-50-best-cities/