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Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying. Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families. Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. Millions of good jobs...

A Chinese group known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" has bought up 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan.  Their plan is to construct a "China City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.  Essentially, it would be a little slice of communist China dropped right into the heartland of America.This "China City" would be located about 40 minutes from both Detroit and Toledo, and it would be marketed to Chinese business people that want to start businesses in the United States.  Unfortunately, this is not just an isolated incident. ...

If Economy Is Recovering, Why Are U.S. Cities Going Bankrupt? Interest-Rates / US Debt Mar 09, 2012 - 01:16 PM By: EWI As pundits chatter about an economic recovery, 80 miles east of San Francisco you'll find a city (pop. 292,000) facing bankruptcy: Stockton is on the verge of becoming the largest city in the United States to declare bankruptcy... San Francisco Chronicle (3/4) Bloomberg reports (2/25) that it costs the city $175,000 just to get a consulting firm's fiscal evaluation. Management Partners issued a report which said: ...the city took on a large amount of debt in anticipation of...

Many Americans still are holding off on buying homes in some of the country’s most expensive cities. While home prices fell 23% on average in the largest cities since the housing crisis began, for many home buyers the drop was not enough. Based on a new report released by Trulia, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 metropolitan areas to which no one wants to move. Trulia ranked the 100 largest metropolitan areas by their Metro Movers ratio, which measures homebuyer activity and interest in metropolitan areas. The ratio compares the number of online searches of local residents looking to buy...

<p>Which is worse when you’re traveling: the local driver who blithely cuts you off in traffic or the surly cabbie who gives you attitude right to your face?</p> <p>Such skirmishes no doubt fueled this year’s America’s Rudest Cities contest, voted on by Travel + Leisure readers. Three-time-champion Los Angeles, home of road rage, went head-to-head with classically brusque East Coast cities such as Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. — all of which landed in the top five.</p>

There are a 154 million workers in the U.S., and the current 8.5%, unemployment rate means about 13.1 million Americans are still out of work. A new report commissioned by the United States Council for Mayors and prepared by IHS Global Insight shows that only 26 of 363 metropolitan statistical areas have completely recovered the jobs they lost during the recession. We drew on the report to show the number of jobs these metros lost during the recession, their pre-recession peak level, and the metro area's employment level as a share of overall state employment. Note: The “pre-recession peak” date...

The Advocate, an LGBT magazine, has released a list of what it says are the "gayest" cities in the U.S. The equation breakdown used is a bit different from what you may have expected. The magazine takes into account such parameters as LGBT bookstores and "International Mr. Leather competition semifinalists" among the nine criteria used to compile the list.

Cities have played an important role in human history for over 9,000 years. Jericho, the oldest city on record with a population of 2,000, was the center of commerce and learning in its day. So was Uruk, Mari and other great cities through history to Tokyo, which is the largest city today. Cities are becoming even more important as we passes through the biggest wave of urbanization in human history. Determining the population of any city prior to the late 1700's is no easy task. Even the most casual census was unheard of before then, and studies to nail down...

I'm in a conversation with a lib. I'm sure that the welfare receiving populations are concentrated in the cities... but I can't find an article to show that (and you know libs need proof from a published source). Can anyone help me prove my assertion?

All across America there are cities and towns that were once prosperous and beautiful that are being transformed into absolute hellholes. The scars left by the long-term economic decline of the United States are getting deeper and more gruesome. The tax base in many areas of the nation has been absolutely devastated as millions of jobs have left this country. Hundreds of cities are drowning in debt and are desperately trying to survive. Last year, city government revenues in the United States fell by another 2.3 percent. That was the fifth year in a row that we have seen...

Of the 7,800 bonds in the U.S. secured by state or local governments, only 25 are currently speculative-grade, or junk-bonds, rated by Moody’s Ba1 or lower. Only municipalities received such low ratings, and the reasons vary. Moody’s report, “A Look at Speculative-Grade Local Governments in the Wake of the Recession,” details the economic issues that have lead each into junk-bond territory. 24/7 Wall St. has analyzed the nine worst cities, whose credit rating is Ba2 and lower. Each of these municipalities faces a unique situation, Moody’s explains, and the list is not indicative of a greater trend. Most municipalities, Moody’s...

Unemployment rates fell in roughly two-thirds of large U.S. cities in August, despite zero job growth nationwide. Here are the cities with the highest and lowest rates: Best and Worst Metro areas Figures are in percentages Highest unemployment rates August 2011 El Centro, Calif. 32.4 Lowest unemployment rates August 2011 Bismarck, N.D. 3.0

For the fifth year in a row, crime is down in the United States, according to the FBI. The 2010 final statistics released today show a 6.0% drop in violent crimes from last year's report -- better than the 5.5% announced in the preliminary findings in May. Violent crime is down 13.2% from 2006 and 13.4% from 2001. But parts of the country are getting worse. Flint, Michigan -- the most violent city in America -- saw a 10% increase in violent crime over last year, with 2,208 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Rust Belt neighbor Detroit was only slightly...

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Anthony Watts Urban areas with at least one million inhabitants in 2006. 3% of the world's population lived in cities. Image via WikipediaFrom Yale UniversityGrowth of cities endangers global environmentNew Haven, Conn.—The explosive growth of cities worldwide over the next two decades poses significant risks to people and the global environment, according to a meta-analysis published today in PlosOne.Researchers from Yale, Arizona State, Texas A&M and Stanford predict that by 2030 urban areas will expand by 590,000 square miles—nearly the size of Mongolia—to accommodate the needs of 1.47 billion more people living in urban...

Nine Chicago neighborhoods riddled with foreclosures will get a blitzkrieg of cash and attention to turn those properties around, thanks to a $20 million loan pool unveiled Wednesday. With foreclosures rising by 20 percent in 2010, and resources steadily declining, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying a new approach to combat the epidemic that threatens to tear down entire inner-city neighborhoods. Instead of approaching the problem on a house-by-house basis, the mayor is targeting “small sub-sections” of nine neighborhoods hardest-hit by the foreclosure epidemic: Humboldt Park; Chatham; Chicago Lawn; West Woodlawn; Auburn-Gresham; West Pullman; Belmont-Cragin, Englewood and Grand Boulevard. All nine...

For some time now, residents of some US cities have noted occasional incidents of seemingly random, racially motivated violence in which young Black males are involved. The hot weather and bad economy seem to be combining to generate a small but possibly significant uptick this year. The national media are doing their best to avoid looking too closely at this disturbing phenomenon, and perhaps for good reason. What the United States doesn’t need is a media firestorm that triggers copycat violence. Nevertheless some attention should be paid.

As we have watched horrified over the last week as parts of London and several other major British cities burned, one unspoken thought was; Are we next? In between all the harrumphing by talking heads going on about either turning the water cannons on the little monsters, or how this is just a protest gone wrong is a simple point: The West has created a generation of feral children. This phenomenon is not unique to Britain, or Europe, as the frustrated mayor of Philadelphia[1], Michael Nutter, demonstrated in the wake of a series of recent racially motivated “flash mobs”. Further...

There may have been no rioting in the Highlands, but no one has been watching the arson and looting of Britain’s cities more closely than the Queen. With fewer than six months to her Diamond Jubilee, when celebrations are planned for the length and breadth of the kingdom, the disorder has alarmed aides planning the extravaganza. Central to their concern is not just the damage to the country’s image overseas, but also how quickly the feelgood factor engendered by April’s Royal Wedding has been lost. From her summer home in Balmoral, the Queen has kept in touch with developments and...

From the mid-1990s to early 2000s, pundits blamed “urban sprawl” for soaring infrastructure costs, environmental degradation, increased CO2 emissions, shrinking farmland and even obesity. Today, in Michigan and across the country, this issue has largely disappeared. Strangely, this disappearance is attributable to the government, albeit more by accident than by design. If sprawl is to remain in the rearview mirror, politicians must address their own contributions to its rise. In the 1990s, the number of people moving out of cities and inner-ring suburbs into surrounding areas increased, turning more Michigan farms and open spaces into housing developments and suburbs. In...

Bankruptcy: From Greece To Rhode Island By Frederick SheehanJuly 25, 2011 07/25/11 Central Falls, Rhode Island faces a plight that should be studied for its application elsewhere. It is nearly out of money. This is common news today, whether in Greece or California. The various parties are assumed to possess a means to carry on. This is assumed because it is generally so. The banks had the Fed; General Electric had the Fed and the FDIC; Greece has the ECB; California is prepared to launch a bridge loan. Despite the band-aids, the trend towards insolvency continues. Central Falls has reached...

Americans sweltered today in the scorching heat in what was officially the hottest day of the year in scores of cities across the country. The heatwave covered a million square miles, affecting 141million Americans. New York's Manhattan experienced the hottest ever July 22 recorded, with an overwhelming 104-degree temperature in Central Park. The Washington DC region continued to be smothered in heat and humidity with temperatures reaching 102 degrees but with a heat index of more than 120 - hotter than Death Valley at daybreak

For well over a decade urban boosters have heralded the shift among young Americans from suburban living and toward dense cities. As one Wall Street Journal report suggests, young people will abandon their parents’ McMansions for urban settings, bringing about the high-density city revival so fervently prayed for by urban developers, architects and planners. Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year. Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a...

California cities can protect workers from being fired immediately when their company changes owners, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.The 6-1 decision reinstated a Los Angeles ordinance, struck down by lower courts, that required supermarkets to keep their workforce for 90 days after a new owner takes over. Similar laws covering different industries are in effect in other cities - including Oakland, San Jose, Berkeley and Emeryville - and the state also has a law protecting janitors who work for building contractors. "When you're keeping a business open and all you're doing is changing the name

After years of declining tax revenues, cities and towns across the country are now running out of ways to deal with their ballooning budget deficits. ... Public employee costs account for a large share of municipal budget woes.

The election of the first African-American president was widely hailed as a giant step forward for American racial politics. The future, however, may remember this administration as a giant step back for Black America during a period of deepening alienation, anger and despair in America’s inner cities. Not since the 1960s, when scores of American cities were shaken by one race riot after another, have African-Americans faced such deadly conditions: high expectations and hopes running up against a reality of vanishing jobs, shrinking government budgets and a fractured and fragmented leadership. Barring an unlikely change in economic fortunes we could...

Excerpt only site: Cities like New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles may be some of the most popular and exciting cities in the U.S., but they also happen to be the dirtiest. A list of the most filthiest cities in America has been compiled by Travel and Leisure magazine. Most of the places that made the top ten were some of the most popular in all of the country, perhaps something to do with the number of tourists who frequent there or the street parties and events that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

Which cities top out as best read? Or, at least according to Amazon.com which compiled sales data for cities over 100,000 and came up with this top 10 list: 1. Cambridge, Mass. 2. Alexandria, Va. 3. Berkeley, Calif.4. Ann Arbor, Mich.5. Boulder, Colo.6. Miami7. Salt Lake City8. Gainesville, Fla.9. Seattle10. Arlington, Va.Not surprisingly, most of these cities are big college towns. But Cincinnati was ranked  #18, and Alexandria, VA is hardly a hub for universities. Some more fun facts from Amazon:In taking a closer look at the data, Amazon.com also found that: Not only do they like to read,...

The New Black Panther Party, the racist and radical black power group, has a big day ahead of it this coming Saturday. According to its website, it’s planning a massive 60-city “showdown.” And the day of rage will include a protest of “non-black” businesses. The group says it’s establishing a home base at an office building in Harlem, an area it’s modeling after revolutionary ground zero in Egypt. The site goes on to explain why its rallying: As in other revolutions, protests and uprisings going on around the earth, a showdown is looming for Saturday April 23rd as marchers with...

Over the past decade urbanists, journalists and politicians have hotly debated where Americans were settling and what places were growing the fastest. With the final results in from the 2010 Census, we can now answer those questions, with at least some clarity. Not only does the Census tell us where people are moving, it also gives us clues as to why. It also helps explain where they might continue to go in the years ahead. This information is invaluable to companies that are considering where to expand, or contract, their operations.

For many mayors across the country, including New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, the recently announced results of the 2010 census were a downer. In a host of cities, the population turned out to be substantially lower than the U.S. Census Bureau had estimated for 2010—in New York’s case, by some 250,000 people. Bloomberg immediately called the decade’s meager 2.1 percent growth, less than one-quarter the national average, an “undercount.” Senator Charles Schumer blamed extraterrestrials, accusing the Census Bureau of “living on another planet.” The truth, though, is that the census is very much of this world. It just isn’t the...

The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of Georgia seeking to dissolve the city charters of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Milton and Chattahoochee Hills. Further, the lawmakers, joined by civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery, aim to dash any hopes of a Milton County. The lawsuit, filed in a North Georgia U.S. District Court Monday, claims that the state circumvented the normal legislative process and set aside its own criteria when creating the “super-majority white ” cities within Fulton and DeKalb counties. The result, it argues, is to dilute minority votes in those...

Cities Where Things Are Getting Worse By Morgan Brennan, Forbes.com Mar 29, 2011 It’s no secret the U.S. economy has for the past several years been slogging along at a slovenly pace. Hopeful signs of recovery are peeking through in some areas of the country, but many more continue to struggle under the weight of collapsed housing markets and high unemployment. But even California, home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood and once the darling of the housing industry, is no longer feeling golden. Six California cities claim spots on our list of Cities Where The Economy May Get Worse. Riverside...

WASHINGTON -- Unemployment rose in nearly all of the 372 largest U.S. cities in January compared to the previous month, mostly because of seasonal changes such as the layoff of temporary retail employees hired for the holidays. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate rose in 351 metro areas, fell in only 16, and was unchanged in 5. That's worse than December, when the rate fell in 207 areas and increased in 122. Other seasonal trends, such as the layoff of construction workers due to winter weather, also contributed to the widespread increase. Nationwide, the unemployment rate dropped...

The ongoing Census reveals the continuing evolution of America’s cities from small urban cores to dispersed, multi-polar regions that includes the city’s surrounding areas and suburbs. This is not exactly what most urban pundits, and journalists covering cities, would like to see, but the reality is there for anyone who reads the numbers. To date the Census shows that growth in America’s large core cities has slowed, and in some cases even reversed. This has happened both in great urban centers such as Chicago and in the long-distressed inner cities of St. Louis, Baltimore, Wilmington, Del., and Birmingham, Ala. This...

America's 10 Most Toxic CitiesPhiladelphia Lands on Atop The Most Toxic Towns List By Morgan Brennan March 5, 2011 During the Revolutionary War Philadelphia served as one of America's first capital cities. These days, however, Philadelphia could be considered the capital of toxicity, since the city and its environs ranked No. 1 on our 2011 Most Toxic Cities list. One big reason: The sprawling Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including parts of four states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and one county in Maryland), is pocked with more than 50 Superfund sites---areas no longer in use that contain hazardous waste. **SNIP**...

Technically a housing double dip won't happen until national home prices fall below the 2009 low, as David Blitzer explained on CNBC this morning. But today's Case-Shiller chart sure looks like a double dip. In fact, 11 of the cities in Case-Shiller's 20-city index are at new lows for the cycle. These include Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Tampa. In the coming year, Case-Shiller expects more cities to decline, sinking the national index to a brand new low. CLICK ABOVE LINK TO VIEW THE CITIES AND THE PERCENT DROP

Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency since the early 1990s. You’d never know it from members of the opinion elite, however, who have rarely recognized these successes, much less their provenance. So let’s recapitulate an epic battle about the foundations of social order, a battle that had not just a clear winner but also a clear loser: the liberal policy prescriptions for cities that many opinion makers and politicians still embrace. New York has been at the center of this battle because...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates rose in more than two-thirds of the nation's largest metro areas in November, a sharp reversal from the previous month and the most since June. The Labor Department says unemployment rates rose in 258 of the 372 largest cities, fell in 88 and remained the same in 26. That's worse than the previous month, when the rate fell in 200 areas and rose in 108. [Snip] Many laid-off workers are giving up. In states such as Michigan, unemployment rates are falling because more people have stopped looking for work. Once they do, the government no...

I saw this when Googling the blogs today. Interesting in many ways, but it really ties in with something I wrote back in August which should be a warning as to how far this country has edged towards the very Socialistic government that these people fled from. Many Russian immigrants to the "red borough" of Staten Island are flocking to the Republican Party, saying that the national Democrats' "socialistic" policies remind them too much of the top-down oligarchy they fled in their native land. With many of the borough's Russian arrivees already owning businesses and active in civic organizations,...

This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry. Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.

2011 will be the year of the municipal default. At least that's what analysts like Meredith Whitney predict, as do bond investors that have been fleeing the muni market. There are many reasons to be worried. First, the expiration of Build America Bonds will make it harder for cities to raise funds.

Meredith Whitney, who predicted the global financial meltdown, is now saying that the next credit crisis that threatens financial stability is at the local levels - cities with crushing debt burdens that may cause a rain of defaults: Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch, described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could derail its recovery."Next to housing this is the single most important issue in the US and certainly the biggest threat to the US economy," Whitney told the CBS 60 Minutes programme on...

An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film "Erin Brockovich." The study, which will be released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, is the first nationwide analysis of hexavalent chromium in drinking water to be made public.

Throughout history, forces both natural and human have made cities rise and fall.As the world steadily grows more urbanized, with 50 percent of its population no longer rural, it is more important than ever to ask how cities either perish or manage to survive. The question can be hard to answer. Why, following centuries of periodic depopulation and neglect, are Rome and Athens once again capitals, while Leptis Magna and Ephesus—once-thriving imperial powerhouses on the coasts of Libya and Turkey, respectively—are long deserted? Was it climate, or location, or a larger cultural tradition of resilience that eventually brought Rome and...

The steep fiscal crisis that many states face includes staggering retirement costs for their workers, estimated at some $3 trillion in unfunded future promises. The size of those liabilities has already shaken up some municipal bond investors, and the inadequate, sometimes misleading way that states account for these steep costs has attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But lurking beneath those obligations is another huge set of liabilities from municipal governments, that is, from cities and counties whose politicians have also made astonishing promises to workers that they will have trouble keeping. Unlike states, which can't declare...

As in cities today, the earliest towns helped expose their inhabitants to inordinate opportunities for infection -- and today their descendants are stronger for it, a new study says. "If cities increase the amount of disease people are exposed to, shouldn't they also, over time, make them natural places for disease resistance to evolve?" asked study co-author Mark Thomas, a biologist at University College London... study co-author Ian Barnes, a molecular paleobiologist at University College London, screened DNA samples from 17 groups long associated with particular regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa -- for example Anatolian Turks and the southern...

Subsidizing Sanctuary Cities: Federal Government Reimburses for Jailing Illegals, Even When Locals Obstruct Immigration Enforcement WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum finds that the Department of Justice annually awards millions of dollars in grants to local governments to compensate for the cost of jailing illegal aliens, even when those governments have policies obstructing immigration law enforcement or encouraging illegal settlement. The report includes a list of the 27 sanctuary jurisdictions receiving grants in 2010. The grant program, known as the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), doled out a total of $400 million...

Some cities in California are so bloated in debt and other problems they are considering dissolution. Mercury News asks is this The End of Half Moon Bay? Between budget losses and lawsuit payments, Half Moon Bay's financials have become so dire that if a local sales tax measure doesn't pass this November, officials say they may have to disincorporate. City leaders have been using the "D" word for a few weeks now as they try to persuade voters to pass Measure K, a one-cent sales tax increase that would help the city balance its budget with an extra infusion of...

As a Country, Canada has generally been way ahead of the States when it comes to worrying about the planet. Remember, they signed the Kyoto Treaty. Wind farms are popping up at a fierce pace (to the dismay of some residents). Toronto is so troubled about all the garbage and trash they create, they ship it all to the States (true fact). And now we read where an assortment of Canadian cities are taking steps to force people out of their cars. Montreal has identified 20 streets that "are not useful" and will be closed. City planners are looking for...

A majority of likely voters say the federal government should take legal action against cities that provide safe havens to illegal immigrants and cut federal funds to so-called "sanctuary cities," a Rasmussen Reports survey shows. The survey, released Tuesday, said 54 percent support legal action against sanctuary cities and 60 percent support withholding federal funds from the jurisdictions. Critics of sanctuary cities say the Justice Department is acting unfairly by not pursuing such cities for breaking the law while taking legal action against Arizona for instituting state measures against illegal immigration. "The federal government should be suing San Francisco, which...