# Survey: Washington DC, Detroit, New York Among The Worst-Run Cities InU.S. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 11, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716 "2018-07-11T15:40:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/41 "2018-07-13T15:05:23Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#): > > I can learn something. Please tell me why these cites are doing so poorly. I said its their leadership. The thing you should learn is this: > [@BobLibDem](#): > > Lists like these generally reflect the biases of the creator. Start with the result you want, tweak the rating factors and their scores until you get that result, and then publish. And this: > [@Jas09](#): > > 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. Before you can consider “why these cities are doing so poorly” you have to consider whether the metric being used to determine how well they’re doing is relevant and unskewed. This one does not appear to be. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/42 "2018-07-13T15:31:42Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > The 10 percent figure was for the city of Minneapolis proper, in response to a comment specifically about Chicago. Minneapolis proper has been going through a Renaissance. There is a ton of new housing downtown. Nordeast has become one of the hottest neighborhoods around - and remains relatively affordable. Even Phillips looks a ton better than it used to. There is still some blight - I had a client near Emerson and Broadway in North Minneapolis - but a ton of money has been poured in to increase the number of housing units in the city so that more people can live in the city - and because their are jobs and places to live, people want to. It isn’t like Minneapolis has low taxes. And Phillips has a lot of the Twin Cities Somali population which also drives the increase. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/43 "2018-07-13T15:31:53Z")
I don’t even think it is skewed politically, it simply that what they measure lends itself better towards smaller cities. Commute time? Access to rural locations? Homeless population? Air quality? All things which favor small towns and bedroom communities. Had they measured such things as number of radio stations, access to symphonies, international flights, and # of H1B1 visas, this list would pretty much be flipped. But they didn’t, so it’s not. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/44 "2018-07-13T16:09:52Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#): > > The point was directed at Zimaane who said he thinks Chicago’s population has stayed flat. That has not been the case for the past few years. I’ll let the facts rule. > > I can learn something. Please tell me why these cites are doing so poorly. I said its their leadership. The cities aren’t doing poorly, in general. NYC and DC and many or most of the others still have great jobs with high average incomes, high property values, and lots of people that want to live there. But large cities are inherently harder to manage than smaller cities – more people, more traffic, more crime, more of everything, good and bad. So this is a bullshit list. A poorly run city won’t have people wanting to move there, get jobs, live there, raise families, etc. Most of the cities on the list still have lots of people wanting to move there, lots of jobs, etc. It’s a bullshit list mostly designed to bash Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/45 "2018-07-13T18:02:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The cities aren’t doing poorly, in general. NYC and DC and many or most of the others still have great jobs with high average incomes, high property values, and lots of people that want to live there. But large cities are inherently harder to manage than smaller cities – more people, more traffic, more crime, more of everything, good and bad. > > So this is a bullshit list. A poorly run city won’t have people wanting to move there, get jobs, live there, raise families, etc. Most of the cities on the list still have lots of people wanting to move there, lots of jobs, etc. It’s a bullshit list mostly designed to bash Democrats. To that end, DC now has the highest possible bond rating from one agency (I think it’s S&P) and the second highest possible bond rating from another (I think that’s Moody’s, but I could be getting those flipped – just read this on the news yesterday). Obviously, being a poorly run city and having a sterling credit rating are not things that you’d usually see together… building on the point that it is a bullshit list. ---
**Author:** ![ohiomstr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/82dd89/32.png) [@ohiomstr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ohiomstr2)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716/46 "2018-07-13T22:10:05Z")
I grew up in and around DC, lived therefor 60+ years. I don’t know the exact numbers but I do not recall the city being more/less well run than any other. Some things worked just fine, some things didn’t. Considering that DC is a Federal enclave and it’s government is heavily scrutinized by Congress i am not sure a direct comparison is even possible My view is that overall the city provided police, fire, transportation, etc about as well and often better than where I live now. Crime and poverty exist alongside great wealth and privilege certainly, but what city anywhere does not have this? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/survey-washington-dc-detroit-new-york-among-the-worst-run-cities-inu-s/817716.md?page=2)