Any mayor will tell you that running a modern US city isn’t an easy task. Even wealthy enclaves in the middle of a gentrification boom sometimes have trouble providing basic services (have you ridden the New York City subway lately?). While dysfunction abounds in municipalities across the US, researchers at WalletHub recently challenged themselves to come up with a formula for evaluating the best and worst-run cities in the country.
After deciding that cities should be judged by the quality and efficacy of services delivered to taxpayers, WalletHub put together a “Quality of Services” score made up of 35 metrics grouped into six categories. They then compared that with the city’s per-capita budget.
The results may surprise some readers. The largest US city in the top ten was Oklahoma City, which ranked as the 10th-best run city in the US. Instead, the top of the list was mostly dominated by smaller cities like Nampa, Idaho and Provo, Utah.
Top 10 Best-Run Cities in the US:
- Nampa, Idaho
- Provo, Utah
- Boise, Idaho
- Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky
- Missoula, Montana
- Sioux Falls, South Dakota
- Durham, North Carolina
- Lewiston, Maine
- Nashua, New Hampshire
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
The respective ranks of each of the 150 largest US cities can be found below:
WalletHub also broke down its ranking by different metrics like lowest debt and highest high-school graduation rate:
I would bet that the best run cities have a relatively small population of niggers.
shhhhhhh, too blindingly obvious to mention.
Durham, NC? What a sh*thole. Well managed??? It’s far and away considered the crappiest large city to live in the state. Dook is is its only saving grace. Hey, Mike Nifong, who are you charging with rape today?
The joke in Dunham is if going out at night arm yourself
I grew up in Detroit, and personally witnessed the destruction of a once-great city. There are a number of reasons for Detroit’s decline that have never been explored or discussed.
1. “Blockbusting” by greedy real estate agents. Real estate agents would send out postcards with the following: “A new family is moving into your neighborhood. If you want to sell your house, please call me at xxx-xxxx”. A “new family” was a euphemism for black families, and was used to “encourage” whites to sell their homes.
2. HUD (Housing and Urban Development) speculators and real estate hustlers conspired to “buy up” and raze the best houses on every block, in certain sections of the city. Quite often, “shacks” were left standing while decent housing was purchased by HUD and razed. This was done purposely to depress property values, to make it easier for speculators to purchase properties at “bargain basement” prices.
I realize that items 1 and 2 counteract each other and are at cross purposes, but they were a reality in 1960s Detroit.
3. The 1967 riots did much to push whites out of Detroit. A little-known aspect of the Detroit riots was the application of spray-painted words on the exteriors of black-owned businesses. The words “soul brother” was spray-painted on businesses owned by blacks so that the “angels of death” (actually rioters) would spare them from destruction. Whole business districts around the city were destroyed, never to regain their former selves.
4. The election of Coleman Alexander Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, who was overtly racist to Detroit’s white citizens while “getting along just fine” with the “movers and shakers” (big business people) of the day (as long as the campaign donations kept coming in)….
5. The abolition of the STRESS (Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) program. This anti-criminal program was put in by mayor Young’s predecessor and was quite successful in “cleaning up the streets” of criminals. In this program, police officers would disguise themselves as vulnerable old people and walk through neighborhoods as “decoys”. Predatory criminals would attempt to rob these elderly citizens and quite often, were dispatched to “the great hereafter”. One of Young’s campaign promises was the abolition of the STRESS program as too many of “his people” were being eliminated. Upon the election of Young, the program was disbanded.
These are 5 reasons for this once-great city’s demise.
As a truck driver that went there a lot got so bad a loaded 45 was with all the time once a great place now a shit hole and we all no why
Funny, the counties surrounding Detoilet where the (((real estate developers))) lived were in the Top 10 wealthiest counties in the US….
….when .gov money was still flowing in to “rebuild” and “make equal”, that is…
Anarchyst, east side or west, in your youth?
We have some common ground.
Interested in exchanging contact information, via Admin?
Lewiston,Me.?!I really do not see how one of the top cities!Tough economy/problems with a lot of Somalis dumped there/a lot of issues.Nothing against Lewiston but if that is one of the best we as a country in a lot more trouble then I thought!
Some Somalis yuths recently attack and killed a man in Lewiston. This caused the city to indefinite suspend the planned Immigration Celebration. Go figure. What a shithole Lewiston is.
Lewiston is a shithole. Somali Nation. WTF? Went to school there for a few years back in the 80’s before the Somali scum and it was still a shithole. Cheap dive-bars though, gotta give it that. Blue Goose ?
Durham? Ha ha ha ha. Good one.
Best run doesn’t necessarily imply best to live in.
Montana here I come.
Damn cold in the winter.
Keep’s the bugs down for a few months
Though only one of the criteria, I always find graduation rates to be a joke. Just because someone graduates doesn’t mean they have any skills or education whatsoever (especially the ones who graduate at the bottom). For the most part it is about steering clear of NCLB mandates and other political ramifications, and so grade inflation, test cheating, and the general “passing the buck” agenda rules the day.