New York Is the Worst Big City in North America to Live In

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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New York Is the Worst Big City in North America to Live In

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It would seem that New York City would be among the best places to live in the world. It is the largest city in North America, with a population of 8.5 million people who call it home for some reason or another. A new study of the best and worst places to live in North America puts it at the bottom of the list.
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The Economist Intelligence Unit recently ranked the best and worst cities worldwide. It ranked a total of 172. The experts then turned to North America and looked at 25 cities. New York ranked near the bottom and was the worst among large cities. The yardsticks are “stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.”
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Other cities near the bottom include dying metros Detroit and Cleveland. Each has lost about half its population since 1950 as large industrial companies have left. Most of these were tied to the automobile industry in one way or another. New York’s population is up over a third during the same time.

Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver topped the list. The highest-ranked city was Toronto.
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What is wrong with New York? Certainly, it is not known for its education, at least at the pre-college level. New York remains one of the dirtiest cities in the country and the one with the largest rat population. Subways and bus services used by millions of people are aged. The health care system works for the wealthy but is relatively expensive for everyone else. Crime, once relatively low, has returned to high levels. The city administration has no solid plan to improve these problems.
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New York has long been a city where people have to live. This is true of hourly workers and rich bankers. They cannot live in many other places if they want consistent work. Calgary may be a better place to live, but it is in a remote part of Canada and has a population of only 1.3 million.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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