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Which city BESIDES NYC is the most stressful to live in, in terms of 'rat race'/ mentality; many workers working overtime; general sense of rushing & 'Keeping up with the Joneses'; high sense of uncertainty & distrust among fellow inhabitants? Plus other factors such as standard of living/ costs of living, traffic congestion, crime rates, growth rates, access to 'stress-relieving' measures (outdoor recreational opportunities)
Which city BESIDES NYC is the most stressful to live in, in terms of 'rat race'/ mentality; many workers working overtime; general sense of rushing & 'Keeping up with the Joneses'; high sense of uncertainty & distrust among fellow inhabitants? Plus other factors such as standard of living/ costs of living, traffic congestion, crime rates, growth rates, access to 'stress-relieving' measures (outdoor recreational opportunities)
I voted for DC. Not only does it have a high cost of living, lots of traffic and high crime rates, but many of the people who live there base their livelihood on which political party is in charge. For those people it's an amazingly stressful environment.
(But for those of us who don't live there, it's a great place to visit!)
bizjournals: Stress rankings for 50 metros (http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/pages/153.html - broken link)
Most Stressful Metro Areas, 2008
1 Detroit
2 Cleveland
3 St Louis
4 Riverside-San Bernardino
5 Los Angeles
6 Chicago
7 Memphis
8 New York
9 Philadelphia
10 Atlanta
11 San Francisco-Oakland
12 Pittsburgh
13 Cincinnati
14 Houston
15 Washington DC
16 Buffalo
17 Baltimore
18 Birmingham
19 Milwaukee
20 Dallas-Ft Worth
Which city BESIDES NYC is the most stressful to live in, in terms of 'rat race'/ mentality; many workers working overtime; general sense of rushing & 'Keeping up with the Joneses'; high sense of uncertainty & distrust among fellow inhabitants? Plus other factors such as standard of living/ costs of living, traffic congestion, crime rates, growth rates, access to 'stress-relieving' measures (outdoor recreational opportunities)
Personally I have to say Philadelphia... It encompasses all of what you mentioned and not enough of the latter 'stress-relieving' measures,mostly due to the fact that a large percentage of the inhabitants do not have access or do not take advantage of the outdoor recreational opportunities.
There's just an overall sense of anger here. I've heard it many times as well as observation.
I know I'll probably get jumped by people for saying that(as I usually do),but that's the other component here,denial
Its not on your list, but it rates just ahead of Boston, and that is Portland, I didn't live in Boston, but I moved to Portland from that region. I find Portland alot more stressful for different reasons than cost of living etc. I find it very stressful because it is barely 2 million in the entire region but it has few suburbs to its metro makeup, it is denseley populated because of a urban growth boundary. One cannot get away from the crime and problems here as evidently is easier in bigger metro areas, it is right in your face here, The have and have nots and the many social problems that this area seems comfortable with can take its toll on a person. So stress for one may not be for another, I found Massachusetts except for some areas of Boston alot less stressful than Portland for the above mentioned reasons. I was not surprised to see Portland be that one notch ahead of Boston on the 50 list. I agree with the above post the other component that many do display is denial. There seems to be an abundance of people here in very low incomes that cannot or are not interested in stress relieving measures or for that matter employment. So drugs and crime seem very rampant here but on a much larger scale for a metro area as small as this.
One cannot get away from the crime and problems here as evidently is easier in bigger metro areas, it is right in your face here, The have and have nots and the many social problems that this area seems comfortable with can take its toll on a person.
That can be said for many cities though.
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