Forbes Magazine came up with this ranking of the "most miserable cities" in America. Having grown up in suburban Philadelphia and continue to make frequent visits there, I was extremely surprised to see New York City as "more miserable" than Philadelphia.
Forbes Ranking
1 Detroit, MI
2 Stockton, CA
3 Flint, MI
4 New York, NY
5 Philadelphia, PA
6 Chicago, IL
7 Los Angeles, CA
8 Modesto, CA
9 Charlotte, NC
10 Providence, RI
Chicago more miserable than LA? Chicago was Fast Company's Fast City 2008 and having personally spent time in both, my vote is that LA is a dirtier, less happy place than Chicago.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. The flaw with the Forbes methodology is given equal weight to commute time and violent crime, equal weight to income tax rates and superfund sites (obviously a proxy for pollution). However, I suspect most of us would prefer an extended commute than to be robbed or stabbed. I also assume that most of us wouldn't mind paying slightly higher than average taxes than live next to a toxic waste dump.
So I decided to play with the numbers, giving more weight (1.5x) to unemployment and violent crime, holding superfund sites constant, and giving (0.5x) to commute time, income tax rates, and weather. Miserable maybe, but certainly a second tier of misery.
Zaanlooper ranking:
1 Detroit, MI
2 Stockton, CA
3 Flint, MI
4 Modesto, CA
5 Los Angeles, CA
6 Philadelphia, PA
7 Charlotte, NC
8 Chicago, IL
9 New York, NY
10 Providence, RI
This seems more reasonable based on my own observations of said locales (although I have not personally been to Stockton, Flint, or Modesto)
Do you think a crowd-sourced survey of U.S. cities would yield similar results?
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