NEW YORK — Whenever Forbes Magazine puts out a list of most miserable, stressful or otherwise impaired cities, Chicago always seems to be on it.
The latest Most Miserable Cities list is no exception, although there may be some small comfort in the fact that Chicago has dropped to the 10th most miserable city from its ranking last year at third.
The city’s high sales tax rate of 10.25 percent was cited as the reason the city is “miserable,” as well as long commutes.
Forbes also highlighted the city’s failure to win the 2016 Olympics last October despite a last-minute plea by President Barack Obama during final presentations in Copenhagen.
Forbes had much the same complaints about Chicago when the magazine ranked the city the third most miserable city in the country in 2009, and sixth most miserable in 2008.
The magazine has also rated Chicago the nation’s most stressful city for two years in a row, because of the unemployment rate, air quality, and high population density.
Cleveland was at the top of this year’s Miserable Cities List, and Forbes even went so far as to use the derisive moniker, “The Mistake by the Lake” in describing the problems there.
Forbes rated Cleveland most miserable for its “brutal winters, high crime and a tortured sports history,” and the loss of 71,000 people from the Cleveland metropolitan area over the past five years.
Stockton, Calif., last year’s list-topper, was ranked second, for “jarring unemployment and violent crime.” Memphis came in third, for having the second worst violent crime rate in the country and an “alarming” amount of public corruption.
Ranking fourth was Detroit, where thousands of homes are selling for less than $10,000 a year, and fifth was Flint, Mich., where the city government is buying and demolishing houses to shrink the city to a sustainable size.
Ranking sixth through ninth were Miami; St. Louis; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Canton, Ohio.
Last year, Chicagoans told CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine they didn’t feel miserable at all. But Forbes Associate Editor Kurt Badenhausen explained the Most Miserable Cities lists weren’t compiled by polling the residents, but by “looking at the factors they have to deal with on a daily basis.”
In the past, there have been occasions when magazine surveys listing the nation’s worst cities have drawn ire and protests. As was famously shown in the Michael Moore documentary “Roger & Me,” Flint residents held a public burning of Money Magazine in 1987, when the publication named their city the worst place to live in America.
As for the Forbes surveys, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper said last year that he wished the magazine would do away with them. “They don’t help your publication and they don’t help the cities that are being ranked,” he said last year.
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