I was interested to see that Boston/Cambridge/Quincy Metro area ranked eighth on a Forbes.com study of the most stressful US cities to live in.
Topping the list were Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland, Providence, RI, San Francisco, and Detroit; Washington DC was ninth, followed by San Jose, Seattle, Riverside CA, and Philadelphia and, surprisingly, Portland, Ore.
Forbes ranked the metropolitan areas by quality of life factors including medium home price drop, unemployment, cost of living, air quality, sunny days per year, and population density.
The Boston metropolitan area was ranked 17th for media home price drop, 30th for unemployment rate, 7th for cost of living, 20th for air quality, 12 th for sunny days per year, and 5th for population density.
Providence was ranked 4th most stressful overall–based on mainly on high unemployment and cost of living.
Chicago was labelled stressful primarily based on air quality, a low number of sunny days per year and high population density. LA came in second–with high rankings for median home price drop, cost of living, air quality and population density. New York, with the highest cost of living, and population density and relatively poor air quality ranked fourth most stressful.
For a link to the list and Forbes rationale, click here.
—Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the HarrisCom Blog.
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