Survey: Washington DC, Detroit, New York Among The Worst-Run Cities InU.S.
One or two cites on the list might shock you. In terms of politics, some of these cites have a lot of tax revenue. What in your opinion is the problem?
Washington D.C.
Detroit,Mich.
New York City, N.Y.
San Francisco,Calif.
Gulfport, Miss.
Oakland, Calif.
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Flint, Mich.
Cleveland, Ohio
Hartford, Conn.
This study is full of shit.
DC has problems with crime, health, poverty, and education, no question. But the government itself is massively, MASSIVELY improved since the 1990s when it was little more than a kleptocratic, self-serving disaster.
If you go into a DC DMV, the service will be of good quality. If you report a pothole or a missed trash pickup, those issues will be addressed pretty promptly. When there’s snow, the city is actually far better than its suburban neighbors about getting roads cleared very fast.
A study that finds that serious social problems haven’t been totally fixed by government, therefore government has failed, is a completely bogus metric for ranking governments. All it means is that if a community is wealthy, government is a success – an obviously stupid conclusion to draw.
But clearly, the OP has a problem with cities that have large minority populations and just wants to point that out.
[hits buzzer] “What is ‘Assuming Some Credit Reporting Company Has Any Special Insight Into Municipal Governance’?”
Wow, what a terrible metric. Just eyeballing it, the correlation between population and final score is strikingly large (and inverted, of course). I think the biggest take-away is that municipal services scale non-linearly. And if you count road quality, air pollution, and crime against a city while COLA-adjusting things like income (but not debt) you are rigging things against large cities pretty fiercely.
I would also quibble with the definitions in some cases. Living in St. Louis I know that these surveys almost always look just at the city of St. Louis, which is completely unfair since many more people live in St. Louis County, where the services are generally much higher rated (and crime is much, much lower).
What do you think is the problem, is it only one problem and is the problem the same in every case?
IMO, this should be moved from Elections to IMHO.
[/moderating]
Not every city can be run as well as, I don’t know, Moscow for instance. Do you have an example of a well run city that can be used as a comparison tool?
Indeed. I don’t even see Moscow, Idaho on the list. Must be a great place.
Their top-25 best run cities:
1Nampa, ID
2Provo, UT
3Boise, ID
4Lexington-Fayette, KY
5Missoula, MT
6Sioux Falls, SD
7Durham, NC
8Lewiston, ME
9Nashua, NH
10Oklahoma City, OK
11Las Cruces, NM
12Greensboro, NC
13Cedar Rapids, IA
14Huntington Beach, CA
15Billings, MT
16Raleigh, NC
17Rapid City, SD
18Fort Wayne, IN
19Fargo, ND
20Virginia Beach, VA
21Aurora, IL
22Bismarck, ND
23Lincoln, NE
24Columbus, GA
25Arlington, TX
The survey is so obviously skewed towards small cities and bedroom communities that it best highlights why these type of comparisons are useless.
8 of the top 25 are in Idaho, Montana, or the Dakotas. I’ll, uh, take San Antonio (#99, baby! Top 100, yeah!) any day. Or LA. Or NYC.
It’s obviously not a list of “cities with a future” or “places you want to move to”, so I’ll give them credit for that. Nampa is, I’m sure, a nice city. But the fact that it is “better run” than San Antonio has zero bearing on whether I would move to it. The kajillion feet of snow? The lack of economic and population growth? Yeah, that impacts my decision.
Don’t speak for me sir. Such hateful and baseless accusations should be reported.
I don’t think the problem is a large minority demographics, rather it’s the politicians who run them.
So who are the politicians that run a good city?
The top ten are:
Huntington Beach, CA
Nashua, NH
Virginia Beach, VA
Sioux Falls, SD
Boise, ID
Bismarck, ND
Fargo, ND
Austin, TX
Provo, UT
Madison, WI
Aside from Austin (#11 - 950,000), those are all pretty small cities.
Edit: Oops, I was looking at the Quality of City Services rank although JohnT hit the same basic point about city size.
Thank you.
I would say visionary politicians that bring in or create jobs, lower the crime rates, and fairly tax their citizens is the best formula for success. I also think the pension-related jobs, need to be realistic, as people are living longer these days.
I wonder where Chicago would rate, as it lost the highest amount of residents. With a very high county tax, 8% I believe, residents just can’t afford to live there and are supporting a past economic model of pension based employees.
Chicago area leads U.S. in population loss, sees drop for 2nd year in a row – Chicago Tribune.
#11.
In your FACE, Hartford, CT!
People leaving Chicago has nothing to do with taxes. Chicago is a great city, but the winters can be a bit harsh. It’s not surprising that retirees are choosing to leave for warmer climates.
In all seriousness, do you think that people’s opinion of whether their city is doing well should factor into the equation of whether the city is being successful or not?
To me it looks like a survey that starts out with the premise that Democrats are bad, Republicans good.
I’ve lived in or near two of the “cities” on that list, and it is to laugh. They’re basically large towns, with some high tech and retail.
That’s not the only thing about this thread that shares that premise.
Minneapolis MN has brutal winters and yet its population has grown around 10 percent since 2010. Chicago has stayed flat.