Is Portland the unhappiest city in America?
04:21 PM PST on Monday, March 2, 2009
By FRANK MUNGEAM, Kgw.com Staff
The Rose City is no Disneyland, if a new survey is to be believed.
Portland is the unhappiest city in America, according to a ranking published in Business Week.
In an article entitled “Recession Takes Its Emotional Toll on Cities”, BusinessWeek.com presents its ranking of the “20 unhappiest cities” in American, and Portland comes out on top – or the bottom, depending on how you look at it.
According to the magazine’s rankings, Portlanders were even more unhappy than those in living in unhappy cities like Detroit, Las Vegas, and New Orleans.
“We gave most emphasis to suicide and depression rates, crime, and economic factors,” writes Prashant Gopal in the story.
According to the article, Portland fared worst of the cities measured due to high depression and suicide rates.
The story cites a 71% year-to-year jump in calls to Oregon’s suicide and drug and alcohol helpline. The suicide data, according to the article, were five years old.
Cities were ranked based on their rates of suicide, depression, divorce, unemployment, job loss, population loss, crime, amount of green space, and cloudy days.
The rankings
20 Seattle Wa
19 Mineapolis Min
18 Tuscon Az
17 Louisville Ky
16 Indianapolis Ind
15 Memphis, Tenn
14 Pittsburgh, Pa
13 Kansas City, Mo
12 Sacramento, Calif
11 Milwaukee, Wis
10 Atlanta, Ga
9 Cincinnati, Ohio
8 Nashville-Davidson, Tenn
7 Las Vegas, Nev
6 Jacksonville, Fla
5 Cleveland, Ohio
4 Detroit, Mich
3 New Orleans, La
2 St. Louis, Mo
1 Portland, Ore
And here I thought you U and W'ers like Mace and Luth were happy sing song people.
