Most Stressful Cities

Sperling's Best Places ^ | 2/19/05 | Sperling's Best Places

[freedom44]

100 Largest Metro Areas (Ranked in order from most stressful to least stressful)
Rank Metro Area
1 Tacoma, WA
2 Miami, FL
3 New Orleans, LA
4 Las Vegas, NV-AZ
5 New York, NY
6 Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA
7 Mobile, AL
8 Stockton-Lodi, CA
9 Detroit, MI
10 Dallas, TX
11 Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA
12 West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL
13 Houston, TX
14 Fort Lauderdale, FL
15 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA
16 St. Louis, MO-IL
17 Denver, CO
18 Jacksonville, FL
19 Jersey City, NJ
20 Phoenix-Mesa, AZ

[Salvation]

6 Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA

Oregon Ping

Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.

[onyx]

That's rather surprising.... except MS is often omitted in almost everything.
Also a little surprised that San Diego is only #75.

[7mmMag@LeftCoast]

There is not too much of a difference. We're south of 512 between Waller and Canyon (The outskirts of Tacoma, Alomost Puyallup) and I certainly am not surprised that Tacoma is this high on the list.

The Traffic is horrible, crappy little track homes are going for 200,000+ and seeing that every 3rd episode of Cops features the Lakewood Police, Tacoma Police or Pierce County Sheriff's office pretty much speaks volumes.

Otherwise most people are pretty friendly and overall it's been an enjoyable 8 years. But I certainly can't see myself retiring here.

[dixiechick2000]

I would think that living in Jackson
proper would be a tad stressful.


"Also a little surprised that San Diego is only #75."


I'm not.
After all...us folks who live in high stress
areas find San Diego very relaxing. ;o)

I'll put it this way.
If I have to live in a blue state, I would
really enjoy San Diego.

[onyx]

I guess they didn't ask the SD folks who have to pay the high rents. :)

[justshutupandtakeit]

Its from the We Are Weenies Alliance.

Chicago is just sooo stressful I just have to zzzzzzz.

[dixiechick2000]

LOL! You're probably right.
They asked a bunch of us webfooted people. ;o)

[ORECON]

I went through all of their criteria and rated my preferences. The best city that came up on my personal list was San Francisco. I have lived there and it is the very last place I would choose to live.

I would prefer to live in Key West, Florida on a large sailboat. My wife's criteria include living within five miles of all of her family, never going on a sailboat, and never being anywhere near another hurricane. That is why we live in Salem, Oregon.

[OldFriend]

You have my deepest sympathy.

[discostu]

And the traffic's not that bad. People gripe but people always gripe about traffic. Even at the height of afternoon rush hour unless there's an accident or construction you're not going to spend more than 2 cycles at most lights. Gotta watch out for certain intersections but most of the time traffics mellow.

[Grampa Dave]

I wonder how many of these stressful cities are left wing Blue cities?!

[Grampa Dave]

Re Portland/Vancover being #6, this is not a surprise to many of us. Compare Portland now to Portland in the early and mid 1990's.

[SilentServiceCPOWife]

LOL Sounds like you've lived here. Yeah, traffic can be a pain, but other than that, we like it. And we don't have a reason to spend time in Ocean View, especially at night.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the ping.

During our brief stops in Eugene, the past 12+ years, there is a certain amount of stress level there. Most seems to be generated by the older career hate America pseudo students.

[lawgirl]

OH yeah I do agree with you about customer service type of politeness- STL was indeed nice that way. :-) I live in Milwaukee now and people are kind of the same way- closed to outsiders- but not bad. I have a few friends that are native MKE, but others that are from Chicago and MKE seems like a small town to them!

[Dog Gone]

I can't understand how Stockton/Lodi made the list. They're about two of the most boring places on the planet, right behind Yuba City, California.

[SamAdams76]

Boston ranks 77th on this list!

If there are 76 other cities even more stressful than this place, then maybe I should consider moving to Montana.

[Magnolia]

LOL...we're about halfway between OK City at 61 & Wichita at 58 and such a small town we don't show up on the scale! Works for me!

[Final Authority]

Somewhere down the list is Boston lumped in with NH and ME. If Boston was not lumped in with NH and ME then it would be at the top of the list. Manchester NH and Portland ME are polar opposites of Boston in almost every conceivable category that to lump them in with one another doesn't differentiate the cities or the way of life one has in NE living just 50 miles or so from Boston. For example, the crime index normalized in the USA for purposes of comparison is 100. In my town the index is 1 or 2. In Boston it is always near 100 where cities like Houston is usually slightly above.

Essentially, this list is pure BS.

[Boiler Plate]

Geez DC is 83, man I feel sorry for 82 and up!