I think in any large metropolitan area where there are large numbers of non-English speakers and impoverished neighborhoods you are going to find a low number of people interested in reading/writing English, going to school and in general doing the sort of things this measurement of "literariness" seems to be assessing. Personally, I find the whole thing rather suspect, and not just because Philadelphia is #46 on the list. In the education section, for instance, it says that two variables were measured and then lists three. Um, Philadelphia may not be the most literary place in the country, but at least here we can do a bit of math. (The population numbers for the overall ranking and for the education ranking did not match, either.)

And I find it just plain ODD that Plano, TX is so high up on the ranking of places with highly educated folks. In fact a lot of the locations high on the list for this attribute are probably university towns (nothing else happens there, in other words). However, despite the fact that there are a lot of universities in Philly (and more doctors are educated here than in any other single place in the country), many, many of the folks associated with the universities choose to live right outside of the city. What this really seems to be is a ranking of cities with enough people to support a literary community but a place that doesn't attract a lot of immigrants/poor folks and where there might be at least one university nearby.