Miserable city?

The Gipper

@baseballboomhauer said:
....of 2008. here's this year's list http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/11/americas-...es_slide_2.html

Well, in reality, Cleveland/Akron/Canton/Youngstown is essentially one "city". I mean, they are all within the same 45-50 mile radius. The same issues that afflict one will afflict them all: unemployment, the weather, no sports titles, it is all the same for all of them.

So? If the Cavs win the NBA title, will they all drop out next year? And I will tell you right now, a winter in Cleveland is better than a summer in Miami or Phoenix.

And another thing: how can all those cities that were so bad one year earlier not still be on the list? Kind of a bunch of bogus criteria.

And why does people "moving out" make it more miserable? One of there criteria for misery is "overcrowding", like in NY or LA. So why would a town that is becoming more "undercrowded" be a negative?

CLEVELandMILIDH

Cleveland's not even in the top 40 in terms of crime rate by city

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States...s_by_crime_rate

Were not in the top 100 in terms of coldest cities with atleast 50,000 in population

http://www.city-data.com/top2/c456.html

And as far as sports, atleast we have a team in the three major sports, Indians, Cavs, Browns. Weather or not a Team has won a championship in the last decade isnt a barometer as to weather the cites miserable to live in. Columbus has no professional teams and a higher crime rate. There reasoning for selecting Cleveland #1 has no merit.

SiperBowl

I thought that Wheeling, WV wouldv'e been on top of the list. Its bad enough that they live in the northern pan handle of WV and are viewed as poor hill billy, meth using, fat slobs who are missing their teeth. But then they live so close to Pittsburgh as well.

The Gipper

nmills said:
Cleveland's not even in the top 40 in terms of crime rate by city
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States...s_by_crime_rate

Were not in the top 100 in terms of coldest cities with atleast 50,000 in population

http://www.city-data.com/top2/c456.html

And as far as sports, atleast we have a team in the three major sports, Indians, Cavs, Browns. Weather or not a Team has won a championship in the last decade isnt a barometer as to weather the cites miserable to live in. Columbus has no professional teams and a higher crime rate. There reasoning for selecting Cleveland #1 has no merit.

Uhm, Columbus does have a team in one of the Big Four: the NHL Bluejackets. (and of course they have the Columbus Crew in the still...in my opinion...minor league sport of soccer, the MLS Columbus Crew)

The Gipper

OK, so I have been giving some thought to this so called Forbes Magazine listing of Cleveland as the most "Miserable city" in the USA. I have to believe that they came up with a predetermined answer on this because what they say makes absolutelty no sense. They don't follow their own criteria.

Forbes Criteria for determining their most miserable city, they claim was based on the following factors:

1. Location of Superfund sites in an area...this relates to essentially ground/water pollution only. (Superfund has nothing to do with smog/air pollution)

2. Unemployment rates

3. Local tax rates

4. Commute times

5. Crime Rate

6. Weather

7 Sports team performance

Lets look at these in turn (I may make several posts of this so as not to lose continuity in its separate parts):

1 Superfund. I will give you here a map of the Superfund sites in the US:

Look at Cleveland. Not a single red dot. Red Dots are cites that need cleaned up. Green dots are sites that have been cleaned up satisfactorily. There are a few red dots in the Akron/Youngstown area. But compare this area to much of the East Coast which is covered in red dots, or to the likes of Charlotte, St. Louis, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston. this area is a garden of eden compared to many of those. And while I could not find a Superfund listing by city, I did find a ranking by state, and the top 10 states are:

New Jersey

California

Pennsylvania

New York

Michigan

Florida

Washington

Illinois

Texas

Wisconsin

the there was Ohio at 11.

Oddly, the state with the least Superfund sites was Nevada with only 1 site. You want to bet they excluded nuclear waste dumping sites for their "pollution index"?

So, obviously, apparently, it is not the location of Superfund pollution sites in Cleveland that spur its #1 most miserable ranking. It must be something else.

I will continue in another post.

The Gipper

OK, the next Criteria of Forbes Most Miserable City list I will tackle is that of Local Tax Rates. Now get this: The following is FORBES MAGAZINES list of Highest local tax rates for major US cities (not in order):

Chicago

Los Angeles

New York

San Francisco

Seattle

New Orleans

Houston

Dallas

Charlotte

Las Vegas

Philadelphia

Atlanta

Cleveland is not on this list at all.

ABC News put out a report of the highest tax rates in various cities, including smaller ones. Here were their top 5:

Bridgeport, Conn.

Des Moines, Iowa

Providence, RI

Newark NJ

Manchester NH

Also, of all the state, Ohio has only the 21st highest effective Sales tax rate.

Ohio also ranks only 38th highest in State income tax rates.

So, apparently it is not Cleveland Tax rate which spurs its No. 1 most miserable city ranking. It must be something else.

The Gipper

Onward to the next criteria for Forbes Ranking: The Crime Rate

Per the FBI's list of cities with the most violent crimes per capita, the following top the list:

1. New York

2. Los Angeles

3. Chicago

4. Houston

5. Phoenix

6. Philadelphia

7. Las Vegas

8. San Antonio

9. Dallas

10. San Diego

11. San Jose

12. Honolulu

Where does Cleveland sit? 33rd

So, apparently it is not Cleveland's Crime rate that rate's it as America's #1 most miserable city. It must be something else.

The Gipper

Moving on to the next criteria on Forbes list: Commute time.

Here is the list compiled by...who?....FORBES Magazine on the cities in America with the worst traffic and commute time:

1. Los Angeles

2. San Fran/Oaklan

3. Washington D.C.

4. Atlanta

5. Houston

6. Dallas/Ft. Worth

7. Chicago

8. Detroit

9. Riverside/San Bernadino

10. Orlando

11. San Jose

12. San Diego

Cleveland is not even in the Top 30 of their list.

So, apparently it is not "Commute Time" that puts Cleveland on the top of the "Most Miserable city list. It must be something else.

The Gipper

Alright, next up to bat is the following criteria established by Forbes for its list: Unemployment:

According to the March Department of Labor statistics, ALL of the following cities have higher Unemployment rates than does Cleveland, Ohio:

El Centro CA

Yuma Ariz.

Stockton CA

Palm Coast FLA

Ocean City NJ

Flint, Mich.

Bend, Oregon

Santa Cruz CA

Elkhart, Ind.

Riverside CA

Vero Beach FLA

New Bedford Mass.

Las Vegas

Atlantic City

Reno

Providence

Sacramento

Tampa

San Jose

Orlando

Jacksonville

Charlotte

Los Angeles

Miami

Portland Ore.

San Francisco

San Diego

St. Louis

Louisville

Memphis

Cincinnati

Cleveland, Tennessee!!

Milwaukee

Columubus

In fact, Cleveland only ranked 179th in the nation in unemployment rate.

So apparently it is not "Unemployment" rate that gave Cleveland its #1 rank as most miserable city. It must be something else.

The Gipper

OK, so let's move along in this analysis. The next criteria on Forbes list is: Weather.

Here are several sources on weather: First, The Farmer's Almanac ( a pretty reliable source, fair to say?) Here are their top worst weather cities in America:

Quillayatte. Washington

Astoria, Oregon

Marquette, Michigan

Syracuse, NY

Elkins WVa

New Orleans

Eugene, Ore.

Hilo, Hawaii. (doing a double take? Yea, Hawaii)

The Farmer's Almanac takes in all criteria: obviously including snow, Cloudy days, and humidity. the Oregon locations suffer from the cloudy, humid issue...as does Hilo. Syracuse and Marquette obviously get the snow and cold.

Another poster noted the cities in America that are cold. I will simply reference that post to show how we here are not nearly as cold as many, many other places around. And I have always said, I would rather spend a winter around here than a summer in Florida. And you can add several other locatins to that phrase.

Citydata.com gave this list of the cities with the worst, hottest/muggiest summer weather:

Brownsville, Texas

Columbia, SC

Ft. Meyers Fla.

Houston

Jackson, Miss.

Laredo Texas

Miami

New Orleans

Oklahoma City

Palm Springs

Phoenix

Yuma

Why on earthe would Forbes not do a list of worst overall weather?

Forbes did do a "Worst Winter Weather" list. Notice they only did "winter". Here was their list:

10. Baltimore

9. Detroit

8. Columbus

7. Indianapolis

6. Minneapolis

5. Chicago

4. Minneapolis

3. New York

2. Boston

1. Cleveland

OK, so they have Cleveland on this list because we get a lot of snow in winter. (I notice that Buffalo, which gets more snow is not on here...but I am not here to pile on Buffalo)

But, note this, the following cities all get more snow in the winter on average than Cleveland: Denver, Anchorage, Portland,Maine; Salt Lake City. So, what? If you get a lot of snow but you have some nice ski resorts nearby they think that somehow the Winter weather doesn't suck just as bad there? Pretty arbitrary in my view.

I am not saying that Cleveland doesn't have bad winters that we would like to do without, but, note, for those areas affected by lake effect snow, Cleveland has about the least amount of snow. Rochester, Buffalo, Sault St. Marie, all up and down the western coast of Michigan there is tremendous snow. And I guess Forbes must exclude Alaska from the "bad weather" thought process...but note: Valdez, Alaska gets an average of 326 inches of snow a year, compared to Cleveland's 57 inches.

So far though, based on their own incestuous ranking, this is the ONLY criteria so far that Forbes can claim that Cleveland has it a bit more miserable than other places.

But still, there must be more to it than that.

The Gipper

OK, I see that Forbes final, newly added criteria is "Sports team success".

Now, we know that Cleveland has had poor luck with the success of its sports teams, but what constitutes "success"?

I mean, let's ask this: Is it better to have a team and have it disappoint? Or to not have a team at all?

Let's look at a couple of factors:

1. Yes Cleveland has not had a major team title since 1964...Browns NFL. So, let's compare "misery" along that lines with another city:

Let's take: San Diego!! And compare on all fronts with Cleveland: San Diego has not had a major team title since 1963, when the Chargers last won an AFL title. And San Diego LOST the Clippers to LA. Cleveland kept our team when it tried to move. The San Diego area is quite a bit larger now than the Cleveland, almost twice the size, yet it has only 2 major sports franchises compared to Cleveland's 3.

And how about the others: A. On the Superfund map, San Diego seems to have a couple of major sites. Cleveland has none. B. San Diego has the 10th worst crime rate in the US, Cleveland 33rd. C. San Diego has the 12th worst commute time, Cleveland is not even in the top 30. D. San Diego has a higher unemployment rate than Cleveland. E.On the report that noted that Ohio's tax rate ranked 38th, it also noted that California's effective tax rate was like third highest in the country.

On every criteria...San Diego is worse than Cleveland: pollution, crime, congestion, unemployment, sports team failure, tax rate....every criteria but one: Winter weather.

Does San Diego's nice weather trump ALL the advantages that Cleveland has over it? (Well, maybe...but really?)

On the sports team failure criteria also consider: Is Cleveland's failure to win a title as bad as losing two NFL teams like LA has? I have talked about San Diego which is double the size of Cleveland having only 2 team, and I mentioned LA having no NFL teams, but also consider these:

1. The Seattle area, which is larger than the Cleveland area by far also has only 2 teams, having lost their NBA team (and that city has had no title since 1979).

2. St. Louis..larger than Cleveland... lost their NBA and NFL teams before getting one back.

3. Baltimore...larger than Cleveland has only 2 teams and now has to glom off DC for hockey and NBA.

4. Portland, Oregon, a metro area only about 200,000 people less than Cleve. is a one horse town with only an NBA team

5. The same is true for Sacramento, only about 400K less people than Cleveland.

6. The same is true for San Antonio. If you include the Austin area it is bigger than the Cleveland area...has only 1 horse, the Spurs.

7. Las Vegas, a no horse town is now only about 400K less in population than Cleveland.

8. The same is true for the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area. No teams at all.

Is it better to have a team and lose or to have no team at all?

And, again, what happens if the Cavs win?

Then Forbes will having nothing to fall back on except that we are a town that gets some snow in winter, but less than Denver or Salt Lake.

So much for this analysis.

ballpeen

Red dots/green dots can also be perceived as places that still have manufacturing and places that don't....I think Detroit has a green dot.

You can't tell me that place is cleaned up....it just isn't polluting the way it was since everything is shut down..

The Gipper

@ballpeen said:
Red dots/green dots can also be perceived as places that still have manufacturing and places that don't....I think Detroit has a green dot.
You can't tell me that place is cleaned up....it just isn't polluting the way it was since everything is shut down..

Well, for this purpose, one of Forbes criteria was the presence of Superfund sites. The map notes in red the sites that are still of concern, and in green the sites they say are cleaned up.

Dots don't represent specific cities...they are physical locations of concern to the Superfund. Theoretically a single city could have 10 or 12 dots I suppose.

Pumpkin Eater

excellent analysis, Gip. Who knows what Forbes was thinking. Someone should also tell them that it was municipal stadium that was called the Mistake by the Lake, not Cleveland itself. Morons.

The Gipper

@pumpkin-eater said:
excellent analysis, Gip. Who knows what Forbes was thinking. Someone should also tell them that it was municipal stadium that was called the Mistake by the Lake, not Cleveland itself. Morons.

Precisely. I figure that some editor in some building in New York made the decision that because Cleveland was kinda cold and snowy that it should lead the list.

The only other thing the article says about Cleveland is that it is losing population. Yet, overcongestion was one of the factors they cite to make a city miserable. I would think that losing people would lead to less congestion...and thus more happiness.

And I agree. I once spent 4 hours in traffic in rush hour around Washington D.C. Give me a little lake effect snow all winter long as long as I didn't have to deal with that every day.

The Gipper

Wanted to bump this up now to again see how absurd this analysis was. And if you take one factor: team success, since I posted this Cleveland of course has had the Cavs win a championship and the Indians appear in another World Series, and What happened in San Diego? They lost another team that left town. And another thing is with global warming the winters here are slightly milder than they used to be. No they’re not as good as San Diego but again Cleveland had a better rating than San Diego in 11 out of the 12 criteria. I don’t know if there was ever a follow-up to this in the last five years but But I thought I would dig this up just again to show how idiotic it was

mjp28

Well my old favorite Forbes magazine 20 happiest and unhappiest cities in 2019........hello Ohio?

Top 20 Happiest Cities in America https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2019/03/12/20-happiest-and-20-unhappiest-cities-in-america/#7a6bad483a70

Plano, Texas
Irvine, California
Madison, Wisconsin
Fremont, California
Huntington Beach, California
Fargo, North Dakota
Grand Prairie, Texas
San Jose, California
Scottsdale, Arizona
San Francisco, California
Bismarck, North Dakota
Overland Park, Kansas
Santa Rosa, California
Austin, Texas
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Pearl City, Hawaii
Glendale, California
San Diego, California
St. Paul, Minnesota
Charleston, South Carolina

20 Unhappiest Cities in America

Detroit, Michigan
Toledo, Ohio
Charleston, West Virginia
Birmingham, Alabama
Cleveland, Ohio
Gulfport, Mississippi
Little Rock, Arkansas
Huntington, West Virginia
Newark, New Jersey
Mobile, Alabama
Augusta, Georgia
St. Louis, Missouri
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Cincinnati, Ohio
Akron, Ohio
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Columbus, Georgia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Memphis, Tennessee
Shreveport, Louisiana

DieHardBrownsFan

I wonder how they came up with 'happiest' city. What a load of crap.

The Gipper

@diehardbrownsfan said:

I wonder how they came up with 'happiest' city. What a load of crap.

You are right I am sure that this is just a complete pile of horseshit. And not likely having actually used any of the data that they had available to them.

mjp28

@the-gipper said:

You are right I am sure that this is just a complete pile of horseshit. And not likely having actually used any of the data that they had available to them.

Yeah I'm sure the Dakotas are the happiest places on Earth.