How Depressing: Portland Is Number One Again

City officials are probably not going to brag about this one. Business Week wanted to find out which are the the nation’s unhappiest cities. It used criteria such as green space, crime rates, unemployment, and divorce, but weighted things like depression (based on antidepressant sales) and suicide rates more heavily. Oh, yes, it also considered the number of cloudy days per year.

Portland is number one! And not just on number of cloudy days, but also on antidepressants. It is pretty high up on suicide rates too.

By comparison, Detroit, which nobody would use as a model city, has the lowest suicide rate and one of the lowest rates of depression. The magazine still ranks Detroit number 4 based on its high crime and unemployment rates.

This is really just one of those slide shows designed to get you to see as many ads as possible. To spare you, here is Business Week‘s ranking:

1. Portland
2. St. Louis
3. New Orleans
4. Detroit
5. Cleveland
6. Jacksonville
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8. Nashville
9. Cincinnati
10. Atlanta
11. Milwaukee
12. Washington
13. Kansas City
14. Pittsburgh
15. Memphis
16. Indianapolis
17. Louisville
18. Tucson
19. Minneapolis
20. Seattle

Although Business Week considered the nation’s top 50 cities, it only listed the rankings of the top 20. We’ll just have to assume that Houston ended up being number 50.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

11 Responses to How Depressing: Portland Is Number One Again

  1. the highwayman says:

    O’Toole, it’s interesting of you to show how you get jollies from a news story touching on suicide.

    It also makes me wonder at the same time why you haven’t moved from Bandon to the Houston area yet?

  2. Frank says:

    the highwayman said:

    It also makes me wonder at the same time why you haven’t moved from Bandon to the Houston area yet?

    You haven’t been paying attention, have you highwayman?

  3. Frank says:

    I agree that Portland can be a pretty depressing place. My sister works for a suicide prevention line, and the calls have been increasing over the last year. All the bridges have signs with suicide prevention hotline phone numbers. I do know a lot of people here on anti-depressants and one or two who have attempted suicide. The cloudy days affect moods, especially of people I know who moved here from Arizona or Florida. And finding a job in Portland is very, very tough indeed.

    But yeah, this indeed seems like one of those slide shows to increase ad viewing.

    If the “study” would have included data on the per capita ratio of sexworkers/strip clubs and breweries, it might have had a different result. They didn’t include percentage of hipsters in the population, as that would heavily skew their findings. And thankfully, they also overlooked the “ability to merge” category.

  4. prk166 says:

    Oh BusinessWeek and their glossy “best of” and “worst of” lists. I’d be curious what sort of other attempts to look at this sort of thing are out there.

  5. bennett says:

    “Business Week wanted to find out which are the the nation’s unhappiest cities.”

    WTF??? There is no data set that could give you a real answer. In fact, there is no such thing as an unhappy city. I can’t wait to see how they judge Americas Freakiest Cities.

  6. ws says:

    Businesweek also ranked Portland the #46 most livable city in the world, and #6 most livable city in the nation:

    http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/livable_cities_worldwide/

    So Portland is one of the most livable but the least happy. Probably the most contradictory statement ever.

    PS: What the H does this have to do with antiplanning and why are you posting this?

  7. ws says:

    I love the methodology for determining actual depression:

    “The depression rate is based on drug company data on antidepressant sales.”

    BusinessWeek must have learned their data collection skills from ROT himself.

  8. Dan says:

    What the H does this have to do with antiplanning and why are you posting this?

    Well, its obvious, see, because the traaaaaiiiiiins make everyone unhappy!!! The vibraaaaaant city causes suicide!! The aaaaaamenities drrrrive people craaaazy!!

    Or something. Who the he– knows.

    DS

  9. craig says:

    I find the DAILY anti-Antiplanner comments depressing.

  10. the highwayman says:

    Well, I find the DAILY anti-anti-Antiplanner comments to be really retarded!

  11. Pingback: No Joy for Smart Land » The Antiplanner

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