I read the methodology and individual sector (financial stability, safety, education etc) rankings on the linked ‘WalletHub’ page. That gives a bit better idea though still hard to gauge the details within each sector or item in a sector
I don’t think it’s as simple as small v large though there’s an obviously fairly strong correlation there just looking at the results. Stuff like commute time is an almost direct function of that, but some of other things aren’t really as much.
I think there’s some merit to the criticism that the study purports to measure well run but many of the metrics are a function at least in part of city demographics rather that city govt directly. Minus the cheap shot on OP about race, I actually find it a bit refreshing if many posters on this left leaning forum realize that issues like racial disparity in educational achievement and health are not simple functions of ‘inadequate public services’ or some simple thing ‘racism’ which can be just be combated by calling everyone who disagrees on any policy or political question a ‘racist’ until they ‘stop’. It’s a very intractable problem. It can be ameliorated by reforming govt policies (agreeing which ones is the rub obviously), but not necessarily ‘solved’ by them.
Another is cost level. NY for example, ranking very well in safety, a very important thing some big and medium cities struggle mightily with, besides education and finances gets dinged for relative cost of public services. As with education, this is to some degree a function of even the reformist GOP/quasi-GOP (Guliani/Bloomberg) mayors of recent times having limited appetite to engage the unions, DeBlasio has zero interest in that. But even if that was done, it’s still just expensive to hire people in NY to do basic jobs because they have to buy or rent property somewhere relatively near…and that’s expensive.
In short I find it less than ‘complete BS’ to rank city govt’s this way. It’s plausible that smaller cities particularly in some regions of the country are better run than most big cities. The counter assumption that all US cities are run about equally well and matters entirely beyond the city govt’s control account for all differences in outcome would be complete BS IMO. However how much the lower ranked cities could ameliorate their weaknesses strictly at the local govt level (and as with education how exactly you’d do that) is open to wide debate.
New York City has a population greater than all those cities combined. Hell, it has a population greater than 37 American States. More than some countries, fer crying out loud. None of those cities has to face the challenges that NYC does.
I don’t see any recent annexation for Minneapolis, but “10% since 2010” is exaggerating things a tad:
“The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro is now an estimated 3,600,618 residents. That is a 251,759 increase from the 2010 census, according to figures released Thursday.” (March 22, 2018 article).
The clickbait - I mean study - is complete BS because I live in the worst rated city on the list, but it’s actually quite well run. If DC is the worst on the list, then most other cities on that list ranked higher must have fused Japanese and German efficiency to create a supercity that runs on unicorn farts and the residents experience continual orgasms at no cost to anyone.
Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over Washington DC. That they delegate that authority to a municipal government (Home Rule Act, 1973) does not absolve them of their responsibility to govern it effectively. Congress treats the ability to meddle in the city’s government as a right only, casting all blame on the municipal government elected by its people, failing to take responsibility. It’s quite likely that the capital city of the US has certain problems that necessitate intervention from the Federal government, especially where they have been explicitly been given this authority. Blaming it on the elected officials is like…well, the next city on the list…
Detroit had some terrible race riots. People with the means to leave left. Who are left in Detroit are only the people who couldn’t afford to leave. Can you really expect that the remaining citizens, from whom the most talented self-selected themselves out of the citizenry, to be all that capable of turning things around? It’s certainly getting better, and electing someone with real administrative experience who knows how to run an organization, as was done with Mike Duggan, is a great first step, as opposed to electing a son of a representative who had no other credentials and promptly stole as much money as he could and has been in prison pretty much since he left office. Detroit faces a lot of issues with respect to being simply too low densely populated any more for the given infrastructure that they have. There are now blocks and blocks of open land in the city as the government manages to get people to move out of the lowest populated areas and into other areas so that city services can be shut off to those areas until development slowly creeps back to include it once the city starts growing again.
That’s one opinion of one city. I live right next to a quite low on the list I’m originally from and have lived in or right near most of my life, NY, and it’s not ‘complete BS’ to say NY is fairly poorly run IMO. I was surprised to see it close to the bottom, and that might be questioned, but it’s not actually well run within the realm of human possibility IMO.
To some degree it depends how you define it. A few posts ago it was said NY has challenges other cities don’t. As just a function of population it was implied; I don’t see how pure population would be an excuse, but I agree it does have challenges some other cities don’t. But some of them are IMO the result of cumulative past policies of the city govt. So, a reformist mayor/city council willing in theory to consider anything to address the issues would face a big problem of inertia and lots of pain to try to fix these problems that have accumulated. A place that had been better run along would not. I would be willing to grade on a curve somebody who truly made an effort to fix the problems, yet still in a larger sense the city hasn’t been well run.
This is true also on a state level in my state NJ. The public finance problem is intractable because of past decisions. Now NJ has nearly the highest taxes of any state but still a big problem to fulfill commitments it made to public employees. Even higher taxes will exacerbate its problems as a poor business climate (unicorn farts: that’s where people deny there’s any connection between high state taxes and attracting new economic activity, it would be really cool if there wasn’t). But cutting through that knot is really hard. You can only judge whether people are making any effort. Christie made some effort I’d give a fairly low grade to. The new guy believes in unicorn farts. Some day it will really have to be dealt with. It’s not surprising the judgment calls made in evaluating ‘well run’ come down to politics. That’s what local politics is supposed to be, judging if people get practical things done, and less about lofty ideology and ‘moral issues’.
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. Detroit always makes these lists and I don’t see it. I go there often and think Detroit is a fine city with a lot of tech growth and new construction everywhere. I think the point of this list, and the OP, is to bash Democrats.
I used to live in Lincoln and it’s basically one big sprawling suburb that has gobbled up lots of little towns as it expanded, with a university (and football stadium!) at the center of it. Population is somewhere around a quarter of a million IIRC but very little of it is what you would envision as being “urban”.
I mean, I liked Lincoln a lot but it ain’t New York. It’s not even Omaha.
Yeah, sure, clickbait. I must admit though, I was a fan of Mayor Marion Barry.
As for the city of DC, the transportation needs work, and cost of housing is out of control. Crime is an issue in some areas. Approximately 60,000 residents are ex-convicts. The public Schools aren’t very good either.
If the nation’s capital wasn’t in this city, well they are lucky it is.
The +'s for DC is there are some excellent museums and monuments built there.
I love Chicago, was born here, live here, and will probably die here, but taxes is absolu-fucking-lutely why a lot of people leave (and their perception of crime here runs tied with taxes). It’s not like they mostly leave to warm climes. I mean, they move across the border to Indiana, to Michigan, to the next county over. It has absolutely nothing to do with weather for the very most part. The vast majority of people I grew up with who lived in the city moved out of the city for those reasons. They’re still in the area, but not in Chicago.
It is clickbait. The so-called author of the article produces his own brand of listicles: best states for women. Best states to be a cop. Best states to be a dentist. Best cities to be a biker. Best counties to fall off the turnip truck. All for a website that sells credit scores.
I lived here during his mayorship, and at that time I would agree that it was the worst run city anywhere. That isn’t true today.
Housing is out of control because this city is attracting so many people because it isn’t just a government town anymore. Why? Because the city has done a great job over the last 20 years of developing and attracting businesses.
Seriously, you have to be a total idiot to think DC is the worst run city in the US. It’s an absurdly stupid assertion based on someone with no qualifications throwing some data of unknown provenance and no particular relevance together in order to drive traffic to a website selling meh services… and the company that owns the website is based in Washington, D.C.
No annexation, but MSP did not get hit as hard by the recession than most of the rest of the country, and recovered quicker - there have been jobs here when there weren’t other places. There has been a lot of migration from outstate to the cities for economic opportunities, and we have a large immigrant population - in 2010 MSP had about 25,000 Somalis - our Somali population is now close to 75,000 - a pretty significant chunk of that number.
It is, apparently, very hard for Minnesota companies to recruit people from out of state to live here - our weather reputation isn’t good. But once here, people don’t tend to leave - and even retirees will snowbird and spend everything but January and February here. (stay through Christmas for the kids, and by March it isn’t bad).
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.
