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Orlando, the vacation destination for millions of families worldwide, is getting a bit of a smackdown: Children's Health magazine, in an issue on newsstands Tuesday, has ranked the 100 best and worst cities to raise a family -- and Orlando finished almost last. Burlington, Vt., came in first, while Orlando finished 98th, ranking just above Miami and last-place Detroit. What doesn't Orlando have? Editors at the magazine dinged the City Beautiful for its relatively low per-pupil spending, high crime rates, low homeownership rate, high unemployment and the number of sex offenders and missing children per capita. Burlington, by contrast, was...

Chicago leads list for second year; housing woes weigh on nation.

DAYTON, Ohio -- Here's an idea for saving Rust Belt cities: Tell bloggers and radio stations to stop calling your town a basket case. That was one suggestion from representatives of eight of the 10 cities labeled last year as America's fastest dying. They met at the Dayton Convention Center last weekend to swap ideas about how to halt the long skid that's turned cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., into shorthand for dystopia. The city representatives lunched on $6 sloppy Joes and commiserated through Power Point strategy sessions: Lure back former residents, entice entrepreneurs and artists, convert blighted...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River. Eviction notices went up -- and then were suspended by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, who said housing for the homeless should be found first. A year later, little has been found -- and Nashville, with help from local nonprofits, is now servicing a tent city, arranging for portable toilets, trash pickup, a mobile medical van and visits from social workers. Volunteers bring in firewood for the camp's 60 or so...

Poverty in Our Cities. City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level 1. Detroit , MI 32.5% 2. Buffalo , NY 29.9% 3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8% 4. Cleveland , OH 27.0% 5. Miami , FL 26.9% 6. St. Louis , MO 26.8% 7. El Paso , TX 26.4% 8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2% 9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1% 10. Newark , NJ 24.2% U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007 What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate all have in common? Detroit , MI (1st on the poverty rate list)...

10. Radiant City Radiant City first appeared in 80s’ comic Mister X. Published by Vortex Comics, it’s quirky storyline and new-wave, post-atomic style graphics made it something of a cult hit – British style mag The Face loved it. Mr X became a very cool secret for nerds and hipsters only. Here’s Canadian Dean Motter on his creation. ‘It is a noir tale set in the futuristic present as envisioned in 1939. It concerns a city – Radiant City - designed to be a utopia, but its subliminal design flaws are driving its citizenry insane. Mister X is one of...

The 10 metropolitan areas where the unemployment rate has risen the most in the past year, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are all major manufacturing centers, many with ties to the automobile industry. CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR THE SLIDE SHOW

More than 180 California cities have passed resolutions threatening to sue the state if lawmakers approve a budget plan that would seize $4.7 billion in local funds to help close the state’s massive deficit, according to the League of California Cities. Judy Mitchell, mayor of Rolling Hills Estates and president of the League of California Cities, described the budget proposal as a “ponzi scheme that passes off responsibility to future governors, legislators and to our taxpayers.” The plan announced Monday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders uses a variety of means to essentially shift part of the state’s $26.3-billion...

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

As I read founder of Creators Syndicates Rick Newcombe's explanation of why he is moving his business out of the increasingly corrupt confines of Los Angeles and the anti growth policies of California in general, I had to wonder. Business aren't the only one who relocate to get away from high taxes and arbitrary, out of control bureaucrats. Americans have been voting with their feet for decades now. During the last half of the 20th century, all across America, married people with children voted with their feet rather than take on the dirty job of trying to reform the nation's...

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted: * A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors. * A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average. * A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members. * A powerful government employee union that does the same for its members. * A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the...

The Big Easy is making a big comeback. New Orleans has steadily won back some of the population it lost in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to a government report released Wednesday. New Orleans lost more than half its residents during the deluge. Few large U.S. cities have ever had to cope with disaster on that scale. Since then, it has been one of the country's fastest growing cities. Only a couple of instances can compare. Galveston, Texas, was also devastated by a hurricane in 1900, a storm that remains the most lethal natural disaster in U.S....

The 10 metro areas where salaries are falling the most, and which towns are bucking the downtrend. It's nofile:///C:/Users/Public/Desktop/EPSON%20Scan.lnkt the best time to make a new start of it in New York state. Although the state's unemployment rate is better than much of the country's, a recent study shows that average wages are falling more rapidly in New York cities than metropolitan areas elsewhere in the country. Six of the 10 cities where wages have fallen the fastest this year are in New York, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, released last week. From the fourth quarter of...

A new nationwide study released by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) ranks the political leanings of every American city and finds that Detroit, Michigan is the most liberal and Provo, Utah the most conservative. In all, the BACVR researchers examined voting patterns of 237 American cities with populations of over 100,000 and ranked them each on liberal and conservative scales. The list of Americas most liberal cities is dominated by cities with large African American populations that are concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest and California. Conversely, the study found that the staunchest conservative cities are clustered...

Many cities in the US’s so-called “rust belt” have been in decline for years—losing both jobs and population. Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan has proposed leveling portions of these cities in order to reach a more optimal balance between living accommodations and needs. “The idea is that rather than continuing to waste society’s resources maintaining unnecessary housing, we demolish the surplus units and move people closer together to gain economies of scale,” Kildee said. While Kildee’s focus is on cities already in a decaying state, the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, sees a...

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2009 – American combat troops are on pace to leave Iraqi cities by the June 30 deadline stipulated by the U.S.-Iraq security agreement, U.S. officials in Baghdad said yesterday. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Walker, commander of the Iraq Assistance Group, said in a news conference that security throughout the country has continued to improve. The security agreement calls for all coalition combat forces to be out of the cities by the end of the month. “We will adhere to the security agreement,” Walker said. “So, all combat forces will be out of the cities unless there is...

America's Pink-Slip Capitals By Maurna Desmond May 20th, 2009 Mass layoffs hit some areas worse than others in 2009. When Alex Hill and 40 of his colleagues were corralled into a conference room at Dell's Austin, Texas, headquarters last November, he was a little nervous. "I started cracking jokes that gas was going to start coming down in James Bond fashion or something," he said. Close. Everyone in the room was fired, their jobs shipped overseas. While Hill understands the business reasons behind what happened, the 38-year-old Web designer still feels betrayed. "It kind of felt like I’d made a...

Nearly a decade ago, after making a donation to a volunteer-run radio station in Austin, Texas, local librarian Red Wassenich was asked why he chose to support a broadcaster with penchant for playing strange crooner music. "Because it keeps Austin weird," he said. Since then, the phrase "Keep Austin Weird" has become the city's official rallying cry against the establishment of large chain stores near mom-and-pop shops-- more generally, for maintaining the city's eccentric feel. The city may be weird, but perhaps more redeeming is that it's also bargain to live there: Austin is the place where people pay the...

(1) Vienna (2) Zurich (3) Geneva (4) Vancouver and Auckland (tie) (6) Dusseldorf (7) Munich (8) Frankfurt (9) Bern (10) Sydney

A recent study and findings report released by the US Census Bureau entitled Income, Earnings and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey reports that Plano Texas is now the Most Affluent big city in America.

In March 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with eight felonies, including perjury and obstruction of justice. In August, he violated his bail agreement and was thrown in jail. His actions were deplorable for anybody, but Kilpatrick was no Average Joe--he was the mayor of Detroit. Unfortunately for the Motor City, Kilpatrick, 38, is just one ripple in the area's sea of crime. Detroit is the worst offender on our list of America's most dangerous cities, thanks to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 people. "Detroit has, historically, been one of the more violent cities in the...

Over the past five years, Michael Shires, associate professor in public policy at Pepperdine University, and I have been compiling a list of the best places to do business. The list, based on job growth in regions across the U.S. over the long, middle and short term, has changed over the years--but the employment landscape has never looked like this. No. 1: Austin-Round Rock, Texas No. 2: Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas No. 3: San Antonio, Texas No. 4: Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas No. 5: Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas No. 6: Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash. No. 7: Salt Lake City, Utah No. 8: Raleigh-Cary, N.C. No. 9:...

From Vice, a post-apocalyptic photoessay of public schools left abandoned in Detroit. The above image is captioned: A box elder tree grows from a soil made of ash and pulp from science textbooks in the Detroit Public Schools' Roosevelt Warehouse. A man's body was discovered in a frozen lift shaft here. It is assumed he had been there for some months as his face had decomposed. More Detroit gothic here. More on the failure of the Detroit public education system here. More money for the city's schools here.

Yesterday's New York Times featured this story contemplating the very real possibility that there could soon be a major American city with no daily print newspaper. Richard Pérez-Peña discusses the imminent demise of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's print edition (scheduled to cease next week). The Hearst Corporation, which owns the Post-Intelligencer, has also threatened to close The San Francisco Chronicle, which lost more than $1 million a week last year. The Hearst Corporation...founded by William Randolph Hearst...upon whom the title character of Citizen Kane is not so loosely based. Hmmm. (Cue Twilight Zone music, play video above.) OK, so instead of...

Something like the purges of the Kulaks during the Russian Bolshevik Revolution is about to happen to many of California's Central Valley farmers. Only in a Capitalist society like ours the government just adjudicates the de facto taking of your property only without additionally hanging you like Lenin did the Kulaks. But why are California's coastal cities not joining with agricultural water districts to appeal the court order which has blocked 85% of water deliveries through the California Aqueduct to both farmers and Southern California? Don't they both have something to lose? For those who haven't been following what is...

As if we needed any reminder that times in America have changed, there is further evidence that the nearly decade-long rally of prosperity and reduced crime has ended. We are officially in a recession, a panel of experts told us last week, after months of speculation and hundreds of thousands of layoffs. At the same time, many big cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Boston and Pittsburgh are reporting an increase in homicides this year, potentially signaling an end to the slide in violent crime. In Chicago as of last week, police had recorded 612 murders so far in 2001...

Residents in these 10 spots are experiencing the most economic upheaval. Plummeting housing prices, a growing cost of living and high unemployment have people leaving Los Angeles in droves. How fast are they ditching the basin? If you add up all the households abandoning Detroit, Miami and New York, three of the country's fastest-changing cities, it's still less than the net outflow of Los Angeles. That ranks the City of Angels first. Forbes evaluated the 40 largest U.S. cities to determine where the economic landscape has changed most over the last year. These cities are not Census-defined metropolitan statistical areas,...

Holding signs reading "Stimulate Business, Not Government," "Families Against Porkulus" and "Say No To Generational Theft," protesters opposed to the $787 billion stimulus package have been mobilizing across the country. It started last Monday in Seattle, then moved Tuesday to Denver, where President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. That was followed by another one in Mesa, Ariz., where Obama unveiled a mortgage rescue plan. Another protest was planned for Saturday outside the office of Rep. Dennis Moore in Overland Park, Kan. The Democrat voted for the stimulus. His office didn't return calls seeking comment. A New Populism? As...

The Obama administration is close to creating an office of urban policy to allocate funds to urban areas for a range of initiatives, including job training and the creation of new jobs, BlackAmericaWeb.com has learned.

Top Ten Conservative American Cities 10. Cincinnati, Ohio Home of GOP Rep. Steve Chabot (ACU lifetime: 98%; 2005: 96%) who won his seat by campaigning for the balanced budget amendment and against abortion. 9. Boise, Idaho Boise's 2nd District is described as "one of America’s most Republican districts" by The Almanac of American Politics. 8. Mesa, Ariz. Founded by Mormons. Republican Jeff Flake (ACU lifetime: 94%; 2005: 96%), who led the fight for Arizona's charter school law and favors eliminating the income tax and creating a national sales tax, represents Mesa’s district. 7. Clarksville, Tenn. Home of Fort Campbell (though...

The city of Lakewood, WA is requesting 457,552,435.00 from the U.S. Tax Payer in the name of Stimulus. They claim this will create 7370.5 jobs. Lakewood, WA has a population of $60,000 people. Doing the math, the money from the stimulus is equal to 7625.87 for every resident in the city of Lakewood, WA. Each job and the expenditures associated with that job will cost 62,078.89. The entire budget for this city in 2007 was $92,696,050, and in 2008 it was $100,119,480, roughly 4.5 times their entire budget for all city services for an entire year.

The following chart presents the December 2008 unemployment rates in 369 major metropolitan areas, as well as the change from 2007. The chart can be sorted by any of the lead columns. Some areas are aggregated across state lines. Source: Labor Department

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In a sign that job losses are felt in every corner of the nation, unemployment rates rose in 98% of metropolitan areas across the country in December, according to a recent government report. ... Morgantown, W.Va., had a rate of just 2.7%, the lowest in the country. Morgantown houses West Virginia University, which is the town's largest employer. The University has a large hospital and pharmaceutical manufacturing component - areas of the economy that are actually adding jobs. Of the 49 metropolitan areas with a population of at least 1 million, Detroit had the largest unemployment...

JERUSALEM, Jan. 7 -- When thousands of heavily armed Israeli soldiers poured into the Gaza Strip on Saturday night, Hamas pulled back. Rather than stand and fight against the Middle East's strongest army, the Islamist movement opted for a tactical withdrawal, with its fighters melting away into the strip's sprawling cities and refugee camps, according to Gaza residents and Israeli military analysts and officers. Now, Hamas appears to be daring the Israeli troops to follow. "They're hitting here and there with antitank missiles and mortars. Overall, though, they're not confronting the Israeli presence in Gaza," said retired Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak,...

Md. Files Criminal Charges Against Councilman

U.S. cities are racing to fix security vulnerabilities revealed by the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai, and many hotels remain “sitting ducks,” experts tell Newsmax.

"Belgian police arrest Al Qaeda terror suspects," from Agence France-Presse, December 11 (thanks to Alex): AFP - Belgian police on Thursday arrested 14 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including a man believed to have been planning a suicide attack, officials announced, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. "We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. "It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or

When the city of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy protection in May, the logical question was: Is this a sign of things to come? Now two more California cities – Rio Vista and Isleton – are considering bankruptcy protection as an option as they face large budget shortfalls and staggering debt. While experts caution against ringing the alarm bells just yet, they do say tough economic times could push municipalities already on the brink over the edge. "I think it's quite possible municipal bankruptcies could become somewhat more common but will still be very rare," said Jason Dickerson, budget and policy...

“Yep - the cities. Reuters reports that Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are asking U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to release funds from the $700 billion financial bailout authorized by Congress last month. Somehow I have a feeling that these three won't be the last ones.”

– Three major American cities buffeted by the global financial crisis are requesting at least $50 billion in federal funds to help pay for infrastructure improvements, pensions and short-term borrowing. Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are asking U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to release funds from the $700 billion financial bailout authorized by Congress last month. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will hand-deliver the request to Paulson on Friday, spokesman Luke Butler said. Five or six other cities, including Chicago, may also sign on, Butler added.

I might be accused of being a 'Chicom lover', but China is going through the same growth trajectory that the US underwent at the turn of the twentieth century. There is a link to several cityscapes in China below. We (and our kids) have to work very hard. The Chinese will breath down our necks sooner than later.

Local residents and Iraqi government officials celebrated the opening of a bridge Aug. 28, 2008, uniting the cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad. Among those officials attending was Iraq Vice President Adil Abdal-Mahdi who said the project shows the government’s commitment to improve people’s lives. USACE photo. KUFA --- During the recent opening ceremony of a new bridge south of Baghdad, Iraq's vice president said the $6.5 million project shows the Iraqi government's commitment to improving people’s lives in poorer areas that were ignored by the former regime. "Projects such as the new Imam Ali Bridge will help...

Where's it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities--Detroit and Flint--making the ranking.

Mayors from across the country are in Madison this week for the Mayors Innovation Project summer conference. They'll be sharing ideas about how to run progressive communities in tight economic times. But they will, as well, be wondering whether they are going to have a partner in the federal government. That's something cities have lacked for the past eight years.This week in an interview with MayorTV, an initiative of the Drum Major Institute think tank to focus on urban leaders and issues, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss argues that the Bush/Cheney administration's response has been characterized by "ignorance" as opposed...

Eugene, OR (AHN) - Eugene city officials fed up with crime are mulling an ordinance that will keep convicts and would-be criminals out of the downtown area for up to one year. Under the proposal, which is awaiting the council's vote pending the conclusion of a public hearing, a person charged with a crime such as robbery or assault would be banned from downtown Eugene for 90 days. Convicted criminals will not be allowed downtown for one year.The proposal from councilors Andrea Ortiz and Mike Clark drew mixed reactions from the police and merchants supporting the ban and human rights...

High gas prices are getting most people down these days -- unless, perhaps, they live in San Francisco. The city was named the country's most walkable, according to a list released on Thursday by Walk Score, a Web site that assigns grades to addresses based on the proximity of amenities surrounding them. Chinatown, Financial District and Downtown were the most walkable neighborhoods in the city, according to the site. New York followed at a close second, mainly due to the high walkability of neighborhoods including Tribeca, Little Italy and Soho. The rest of the top 10 walkable cities were (in...

Census Bureau says New Orleans is the fastest-growing large city in the nation, recovering from being wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After being pummeled by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans is showing signs of recovery - ranking as the fastest-growing large city in the nation, according to a government report released Thursday. The Census Bureau said New Orleans' population rose 13.8%, to 239,124, in the year ended July 1, 2007. That was a faster growth rate than any other city with a population of 100,000 or more.

If you've seen HBO's "The Wire," you know why those of us who live in Baltimore are often asked whether our city really is the hellhole it is portrayed to be on TV. Our answer is, well, yes. Baltimore deserves the Third-World profile it has developed because it has expanses of crumbling, crime-riddled neighborhoods populated by low-income renters, an absent middle class, and just a few enclaves of high-income gentry near the Inner Harbor or in suburbs. This wasn't what Baltimore looked like in the 1950s. Then it was a prosperous, blue-collar city. [Snip] Today, the city has a population...

Life on the fringes of U.S. suburbia becomes untenable with rising gas costs ELIZABETH, Colorado: Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the outer edges of metropolitan areas. As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a restructuring with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs. [...] Some...

Philadelphia has one of the most backward and incompetent city governments in America. It suffers from a combination of failed civic institutions, a deeply embedded racial paranoia that undermines law enforcement, and a local culture that has come to shrug at the urban chaos this produces. In 2006, the one-or-two-a-day-and a-dozen-on-weekends murder spree that earned "Killadelphia" its rap as an urban abattoir resulted in 406 people dead. It's clearly not all about poverty. Miami, America's poorest major city, saw 79 homicides in all of 2006. In March 2006, more Americans died violently on the streests of Philadelphia than in Iraq...