Study lists top 50 worst U.S. cities

[Idiot]

According to my Texas Tech daughter...

When my brother was in law school at TTU, he had the door blown off of his AMC pacer by the wind.  @thackney


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv0LOTnH_Cw

[Idiot]

I don't get Chattanooga, which is my real home.  Booming economy, low cost of living.  Housing is a little strained because do any new people moved in.  It has  symphony, ballet and dozens of theatre and arts venues.  The parks system doesn't compare to Greensboro (where I live right now), but on the other hand there are a wealth of natural assets within a few minutes drive.  I don't know too much about the school system, but my gifted grandson attends a school for K5 thru 12 for gifted students.  It requires tuition payment but that is based on income.

Chattanooga makes this l u st and Cicago does not!

I was in Chattanooga in the 70's for a national tennis tourney.  We stayed in some hotel downtown, which was quite nice.  We also rode the tram up Lookout Mountain.  It's a beautiful place....  Not sure how it made the list.

[Wingnut]

When my brother was in law school at TTU, he had the door blown off of his AMC pacer by the wind.  @thackney

Had a Frat brother who started a pot farm in his pacer.  With all that glass he said it was a natural greenhouse and four wheel terrarium.

[Joe Wooten]

 

[Fishrrman]

TomSea wrote:
"Salt Lake City? I don't know. The list is bogus."

The time I spent in Salt Lake was more than 30 years ago.
Back then, it was the only large city I thought was livable and attractive -- I was very impressed.

Of course, again, that was more than 30 years ago.

[Smokin Joe]

Chitcago escapes the list?    Well that ruins it credibility right there.

Chicago and Washington D.C. have both been the nation's murder capital, and neither made the bottom 50? I agree.

[truth_seeker]

TomSea wrote:
"Salt Lake City? I don't know. The list is bogus."

The time I spent in Salt Lake was more than 30 years ago.
Back then, it was the only large city I thought was livable and attractive -- I was very impressed.

Of course, again, that was more than 30 years ago.

In other news today, they are considering calling out the National Guard to deal with homeless problems in SLC.

[Frank Cannon]

When my brother was in law school at TTU, he had the door blown off of his AMC pacer by the wind. 

Big deal. You could blow the hatchback off a Pacer if you broke wind in a closed car. AMC had serious quality problems.

[goatprairie]

Salt Lake City? I don't know. The list is bogus. I'm not criticizing Toledo, Ohio but often, it is on these kinds of lists.

  Yes. I'm sure a number of those cities are pretty bad, but Milwaukee is worse than Camden?  I highly doubt that.  I'd much rather live in Sudstown than some cities not on the list...like NYC.

[Jazzhead]

I won't even drive through Camden, NJ (#48) as there are NO safe places. Camden is a garbage dump with bad pollution and no redeeming qualities. I would have put Camden at #2 on the list, with a big gap between #2 and #3.

Ah, Camden, the City Invincible (the city's motto, from a poem by Walt Whitman): . 

I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;   
I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;   
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest;   
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,   
And in all their looks and words. 

Most folks these days drive through Camden to get to other places.   It is a yawning chasm of poverty, but it has one Fortune 500 company headquartered there (Campbell's),  the same number, ironically, as Philly (Comcast).  Other big drivers include Cooper medical center and Rutgers satellite campus, but those don't add much to the tax base. 

It's not clear to me why Philly is on the list - my city has come alive in recent decades, with a higher percentage of folks living in the core downtown area than anyplace else in America outside of Manhattan.   Believe me,  this is not like Atlanta where the business center shuts down and is deserted after six.   Restaurants and culture abound - there's no better city for craft beer outside of Portland. 

So why is it on the list?   One strong possibility -  the lack of business dynamism.   Philly has the hardest time creating jobs because so much of the city's revenue comes from the wage tax.   That in turn is the result of the fact that so many of the city's big corporations are non-profits, and don't contribute to the city's coffers through property taxes.   Penn, Drexel, Temple,  the many teaching hospitals and cultural treasures - these are all beacons that create vibrancy but so little in the way of tax revenues that Philly is forced to rely on the job-crushing wage tax.   A number of folks I know live downtown for the culture but work in the suburbs where the jobs are!     

[Oceander]

What were the criteria used?   One can get almost any list one wants through picking the criteria carefully. 

[Smokin Joe]

What were the criteria used?   One can get almost any list one wants through picking the criteria carefully.

Excellent question. I seriously doubt the people making the picks for this list would have used the same desirability criteria I might.

[goatprairie]

Excellent question. I seriously doubt the people making the picks for this list would have used the same desirability criteria I might.

I think many of them might be of the hipster variety for whom having multiple ethnic restaurants is more important than crime considerations.
I read an article a few years ago by some liberal scribbler who moved his family with young children into a seedy section of LA because he liked having a number of ethnic eateries nearby.
He only moved out after several shootings near his home.

[truth_seeker]

Hints about bad parts of cities; You know you are not where you should be, when you see street signs with....

Martin Luther King Blvd.



Caesar Chavez Blvd.

[Jazzhead]

What were the criteria used?   One can get almost any list one wants through picking the criteria carefully.

The methodology, according the 24/7 Wall Street link:

To determine America’s 50 worst cities to live in, 24/7 Wall St. considered the roughly 550 cities that the U.S. Census Bureau reported as having populations of more than 65,000 residents in 2015. Only the top performing city in each county was considered in our ranking. Data were collected in nine major categories: crime, demography, economy, education, environment, health, housing, infrastructure, and leisure.

Within each category, specific measures contributed to a city’s overall category score. For example, the economy category included median household income adjusted for cost of living, the ratio between a city’s and its state’s median household income, poverty and unemployment rates, as well as a city’s three-year employment growth. Each measure was adjusted to range from 0 to 1 using min-max normalization, with lower scores indicating better outcomes.

Normalizing each measure, as opposed to aggregating category scores in other ways, allowed us to assign weight to individual measures for added importance rather than entire categories. It also enabled us to expose the principal components of our index — those measures with wider variation that disproportionately determine the rank of a city’s composite score. The housing category, for example, had the widest range, giving it the greatest pull in our index. Crime and economy also had large variances.

We did not include any measures in the demography category in our composite index. However, this category provided exclusion rules. Cities that are better to live in often attract job seekers and their families. Conversely, labor market slack, unaffordable housing, high crime rates, or a myriad of other negative factors may induce people to move to a different city with better prospects. Thus, we excluded cities with negative five- or 10-year population growth rates. Population figures are from the Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey (ACS).

The crime category consists of both violent and property crime rates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2015 Uniform Crime Report. High crime rates have the potential to make a city less desireable. As a result, cities with crime rates lower than the national rates were rewarded, while cities with higher crime rates were penalized.

A strong economy and labor market are, for some, the only considerations when determining where to live. The economy category includes a city’s 2015 unemployment rate and employment growth from 2013-2015, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, we considered the poverty rate, which, if too high, may deter prospective residents from moving to the city. Cities were penalized for having poverty rates above the national rate of 14.7%. Our goal was to identify cities that were liveable for everyone, not just the rich. Still, if incomes are too low, a city may not be desireable. To that end, we adjusted median household income for cost of living in the city. Cities were penalized if cost-adjusted incomes were less than $44,000 or more than $112,000 a year, roughly 80% to 200% of a typical household’s income nationwide. Poverty rates and median income came from the 2015 ACS. Cost of living data came from property and real estate data provider ATTOM Data Solutions.

A strong school system may be another consideration for parents looking to move. As a proxy for school system strength, we considered high school standardized test scores relative to state scores from ATTOM Data Solutions. Test score data are for 2015 or the most recently available year. Additionally, the education category included the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree from the ACS, as well as the number of colleges and universities in a city per 100,000 residents from the Department of Education. Both measures are as of 2015.

For people who like being outdoors — either for work or pleasure — a city’s air quality and weather may be of chief importance. Whereas other measures in this index are specific to an individual city, many metrics in this category describe the county in which the city is located because weather is likely similar, if not the same, in these two geographies. In this category, we included an air quality index to assess the levels of a variety of pollutants on a given day. Additionally, we considered an index measuring natural hazard risk, as well as average monthly rainfall. All data in this category came from ATTOM Data Solutions.

Access to quality hospitals may be another reason Americans live in the places they do. From the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), we calculated 30-day risk-adjusted mortality rates of heart attacks, COPD, heart failure, pneumonia, and stroke. Also from CMS, we examined the rate at which individuals were readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of being discharged. This category also includes preventable hospitalizations — the share of hospitalizations that could have been treated with outpatient or ambulatory care for every 1,000 Medicare recipients from County Health Rankings.

For many American homeowners, homes constitute the vast majority of wealth. An investment of this magnitude requires careful consideration and may be the chief reason that people decide to live where they do. In our housing index, we considered the ratio of a city’s median home value to the statewide median home value. Cities were penalized if a city’s home values were worth less than 90% of statewide home values. Conversely, if home values were typically 25% higher than across the state, high barriers to entry exist that can make a city unaffordable. As an additional measure of affordability, we included the ratio of median home value to median annual household income. This ratio — called a price-to-income ratio — helps identify cities that are liveable for a broad audience. We also considered median property taxes as a percentage of median home value. All data in this category came from the 2015 ACS.

Proximity to work may be another factor in determining where to live. According to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Americans waste nearly 7 billion hours — or $160 billion — due to commuter traffic congestion. From the ACS, we considered the percentage of commuters travelling to work by foot or public transportation. Additionally, we reviewed the average time it takes to travel to work each day. Lastly, we included the number of airports in the metro area in which the city is located. There are, for example, no airports in New York County, the primary county of New York City. However, at least three major airports exist outside county limits — and within the metro area — that service people who live in the city. Airport data came from the Federal Aviation Administration and only consider operational public-use and commercial airports as of 2015.

The leisure category can be broken into two parts: activities that take place in the city and outside it. Within a city, residents may take advantage of restaurants and bars, libraries and archives, theater companies, fitness and recreational sports centers, museums, movie theaters, hotels, or amateur and professional sports teams. To engage in other pastimes — skiing, for example — residents likely have to leave city limits. Thus, we included in this index the number of zoos, nature parks, ski resorts, and golf courses in the counties surrounding the city. All data in this category were aggregated to the city level from 2014 Zip Code Business Patterns, a program maintained by the Census and adjusted for the city’s 2015 population.

[Joe Wooten]

A strong school system may be another consideration for parents looking to move. As a proxy for school system strength, we considered high school standardized test scores relative to state scores from ATTOM Data Solutions. Test score data are for 2015 or the most recently available year. Additionally, the education category included the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree from the ACS, as well as the number of colleges and universities in a city per 100,000 residents from the Department of Education. Both measures are as of 2015.

That criteria right there would put Chicago in the top 3. They have absolutely the worst public school system in the US.

[Just_Victor]

One fine morning in early February when I was in the 6th grade, the day started off bright and sunny, temperatures in the 50's, no wind, with the promise of another mild but muggy West Texas winter day. Very few wore their coats to school. During morning recess, we all noticed the sky to the northwest was a deep, very dark blue. A Blue Norther was rolling towards us. BY noon, we were in a raging dust storm, temperatures were dropping fast too. By 1 PM, it was in the mid 30's with winds howling at 20+ mph, when thunder was heard and it started raining. At first it was raining mud until the dust was cleared. Temperatures kept dropping and by 3PM it was snowing. It was a long cold ride home on the bus that afternoon. Luckily we lived within 30 yards of the main road, so my brothers and I scampered into the house fairly quickly. The snow had stopped by dark, and the wind died. Overnight, the blue norther played out and winds shifted out of the south and temperatures warmed to well above freezing by dawn and the snow was gone.

I remember marching band practice south of Houston, that started off with temps in upper 80's.   Everyone was in shorts and t-shirts.  Halfway through rehearsal a rolling gray cloud blew through without rain.  The temps quickly dropped into the 30's, but the band director wouldn't let us go.  It was frigid.

Of course I didn't complain since the girls in t-shirts were all exibiting the signs of the cold weather.

[Joe Wooten]

I remember marching band practice south of Houston, that started off with temps in upper 80's.   Everyone was in shorts and t-shirts.  Halfway through rehearsal a rolling gray cloud blew through without rain.  The temps quickly dropped into the 30's, but the band director wouldn't let us go.  It was frigid.

Of course I didn't complain since the girls in t-shirts were all exibiting the signs of the cold weather.