[www.forbes.com]

(text formatting is ugly..)

San Diego has only 35 sunny days per year and LA 37? I call BS.

I think that by using a "ranking" for the Median Home Price Drop, Unemployment Rate, Cost of Living, and Sunny Days per year is S T U P I D. Percentages of up or down make more sense to me. Except for Sunny Days and then use how many days the city averages. Most of it is probably made up anyway . . .

---

Bill
Flagler Beach, FL 32136

Carpe Vino!

Fermentation may have been a greater discovery than fire.
— David Rains Wallace

The sunny days seems to be a ranking, but also backwards, seems like being #1 in sunny days per year (Portland OR) means the least sunny days, and being #40 (Phoenix) means much more sun.

Note sure what being #1 in median home price drop means, the largest drop or the smallest drop?

I am sorry but living in San Diego was one of the most stress free times of my life. It was 76 degrees every day and I practically lived on the beach.

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zeppo2
San Diego has only 35 sunny days per year and LA 37? I call BS.

It must be rankings. The median home price certainly isn't in dollars.

I also don't really see what sun has to do with it. If you live in a smoggy area, sure. But where the air is clean, the bright burning sun is more stressful than a cool overcast day.

That said, I don't really see how Phoenix has better air quality than Seattle.

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GGD
Note sure what being #1 in median home price drop means, the largest drop or the smallest drop?

Has to be smallest drop. Home prices in San Francisco proper, and in most of the inner suburbs of the Bay Area, have gone down very little. The outer suburbs like Fairfield and Vallejo are a bloodbath, though.

Looks like yet another nonsensical city survey from a major financial magazine. If Agrestic was a real town it would undoubtedly be at the top of all their lists.

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pRICE cUBE
I am sorry but living in San Diego was one of the most stress free times of my life. It was 76 degrees every day and I practically lived on the beach.

SD is rather dirty and to me it seems like a lot of stuff is run down. I find those aspects stressful.

I also find rain and snow pounding against my face very soothing.

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the lower numbers are "more stressful", i.e. worse than higher numbers. It's a bit confusing but some of the things which one would think of as good, i.e. air quality and sunny days per year are ranked so that 1 is the worst and 40 is the best.

Thus phoenix has the worst air quality. You can tell because Riverside county has a ranking of 3 and LA is 7 and houston is 10.

if you don't pay attention to the lists, they'll go away.

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Silencio

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GGD
Note sure what being #1 in median home price drop means, the largest drop or the smallest drop?

Has to be smallest drop. Home prices in San Francisco proper, and in most of the inner suburbs of the Bay Area, have gone down very little. The outer suburbs like Fairfield and Vallejo are a bloodbath, though.

Looks like yet another nonsensical city survey from a major financial magazine. If Agrestic was a real town it would undoubtedly be at the top of all their lists.

Nope it's the largest drop. Prices in the larger bay area have dropped over 20% and look at other problem areas (Las Vegas and Miami are both in the top 10).

We're #4 !!!!

Seriously, I suspect the reality of this listing. We're not stressed in Cleveland. We know we suck. We've sucked for DECADES. So why worry about it ?

Heck with 'em. Have a beer and some pierogies.

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cbelt3
We're #4 !!!!

Seriously, I suspect the reality of this listing. We're not stressed in Cleveland. We know we suck. We've sucked for DECADES. So why worry about it ?

Heck with 'em. Have a beer and some pierogies.

What's to sweat when the river periodically catches on fire right

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Move to Cincinnati; you'll hardly notice the difference, they have a built in losing football team.

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zeppo2
San Diego has only 35 sunny days per year and LA 37? I call BS.

#35 for stressfree sunny days means there are 5 cities with more sunny days or other less stress factors.
There must be more better medicinal herb in L.A..

Surprising to see Seattle that high up the list.
Although I don't hear a lot of good things (recently) from relatives that moved there 20 years ago, especially regarding the traffic.



added: 'recently'



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2009 03:35PM by billb.

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billb
Surrising to see Seattle that high up the list.
Although I don't hear a lot of good things from relatives that moved there 20 years ago, especially regarding the traffic.

I don't get why Seattle is high up on the list. The only thing I can get is they lump Seattle in with Tacoma which is locally known as "Tacompton." Traffic isn't that bad if you live and work in the city.

According to another study, my neighborhood placed in the top 15 best neighborhoods to live in the US.

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You mean Austin doesn't have 40% unemployment?

"Yakima County ranked 328 out of 344 metro areas for crime rates in 2006." We had almost the worst in the nation! Whoohoo! I believe we also score very highly for teenage pregnancy and STD's.

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M A V I C
I don't get why Seattle is high up on the list. The only thing I can get is they lump Seattle in with Tacoma which is locally known as "Tacompton." Traffic isn't that bad if you live and work in the city.

According to another study, my neighborhood placed in the top 15 best neighborhoods to live in the US.

Take an analytical look at what you wrote. No, traffic isn't bad if you live in the city and need to travel to various parts of it. However, the cost of real estate within most parts of Seattle is out of the reach of many people who do work there. That means a whole lot of commuting, either from the north or the south, east or west. Commuting means traffic. If you were to venture out on I-5 during the morning or afternoon rush hour, you'd be better able to understand why people complain about the traffic. And I sure do hear lots of traffic and news reports on the congestion of the routes in and out of the city from the east, and let's not forget delays for the ferries for those who commute from the islands or the peninsula. Just because you don't feel traffic is heavy doesn't mean all others agree with your assessment.

Also notice you said "my neighborhood". One neighborhood does not an entire city - or metropolitan area - make. To say that Tacoma is dragging down the average for Seattle is perhaps not only a bit defensive, it might even be untrue. And notice I said "might", since I don't think either one of us really knows. That list was kind of bizarre.

I was in seattle this weekend, traveling to harborview hospital, and the traffic scared the crap out of me.

were you able to clean out the car OK?

Garden hose always comes in handy.

They sell garden hose in Seattle ?

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billb
They sell garden hose in Seattle ?

They had a warm spell last month; it even hit 104.

[www.weather.com]

An underlying assumption is that population density = stress, and that's downright absurd. Why not use "average commute time" instead?

Anyone have a list of highest per capita suicide USA cities?
Curious how it jibes.

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AlphaDog

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M A V I C
I don't get why Seattle is high up on the list. The only thing I can get is they lump Seattle in with Tacoma which is locally known as "Tacompton." Traffic isn't that bad if you live and work in the city.

According to another study, my neighborhood placed in the top 15 best neighborhoods to live in the US.

Take an analytical look at what you wrote. No, traffic isn't bad if you live in the city and need to travel to various parts of it. However, the cost of real estate within most parts of Seattle is out of the reach of many people who do work there. That means a whole lot of commuting, either from the north or the south, east or west. Commuting means traffic. If you were to venture out on I-5 during the morning or afternoon rush hour, you'd be better able to understand why people complain about the traffic. And I sure do hear lots of traffic and news reports on the congestion of the routes in and out of the city from the east, and let's not forget delays for the ferries for those who commute from the islands or the peninsula. Just because you don't feel traffic is heavy doesn't mean all others agree with your assessment.

I was very careful with my choice of words, and being very analytical. Everything you wrote is fine. However, that doesn't mean Seattle is a stressful city. Traffic issues outside of the city getting to and from the city are just that, outside of the city. Technically, Seattle is fairly small.

Ferries, peninsula traffic, floating bridges... are all outside of Seattle. Sure people may choose to commute. That's their choice. Personally I chose to have a little smaller place so I didn't have to (I used to commute about 100 miles roundtrip.) Some people get bigger places with a nice garage and a yard and all that. It's all part of their choice. If they choose to have that and have to deal with a commute, that's their call.

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Also notice you said "my neighborhood". One neighborhood does not an entire city - or metropolitan area - make.

Yes, that's true. And again I was very specific with what I said. I've got a massive park, grocery stores, movie theater, ball parks... all within a short enough distance that I don't have to worry about traffic. I don't think it's all that accurate to lump in other parts of the city or the region as a whole. Some areas are certainly more apt to offer stress than others. Just stay out of those and you're fine.

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To say that Tacoma is dragging down the average for Seattle is perhaps not only a bit defensive, it might even be untrue. And notice I said "might", since I don't think either one of us really knows. That list was kind of bizarre.

Uh, compare any number of a dozen different metrics. Let's take crime stats:
Violent crimes per 1k residents:
Tacoma: 10.49
Seattle: 6.79

Chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime:
Tacoma: 1 in 95
Seattle: 1 in 147

Murder rate per 1k:
Tacoma: 0.07
Seattle: 0.04

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Maybe we can get Sir Mix-a-Lot to run up and kick some Seattle butts to even things out.

It's not reasonable to break down numbers for specific locations, because that apparently is not the way these "scores" were calculated. There was some kind of aggregate scoring method developed for a rather large geographic area, and we don't know what that is. My little 'hood falls within that area, too, yet I certainly don't live in Tacoma, nor Seattle, nor Bellevue. And I have a very nice little neighborhood with the lowest rate of crime in the city. But to say my neighborhood is nice and safe doesn't say anything that can be extrapolated accurately to describe an area one mile or two miles or 50 miles from me. For you to try to use Tacoma to explain why Seattle wound up on that list just ain't good analysis, because you don't know - any more than I do - how those ratings were developed.

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AlphaDog
It's not reasonable to break down numbers for specific locations, because that apparently is not the way these "scores" were calculated. There was some kind of aggregate scoring method developed for a rather large geographic area, and we don't know what that is. My little 'hood falls within that area, too, yet I certainly don't live in Tacoma, nor Seattle, nor Bellevue. And I have a very nice little neighborhood with the lowest rate of crime in the city. But to say my neighborhood is nice and safe doesn't say anything that can be extrapolated accurately to describe an area one mile or two miles or 50 miles from me. For you to try to use Tacoma to explain why Seattle wound up on that list just ain't good analysis, because you don't know - any more than I do - how those ratings were developed.

I think I understand what you're getting at. However they came up with the ratings, lumping such different areas together does not result in an accurate result, no matter how they came up with it. What's true for Tacoma isn't true for Seattle, so they can't possible have the same result.

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There's probably a nice cool little spot in Hell, too.

I heard it was located somewhere near the Cape.