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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...

Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, Calif., recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city's budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million. To keep all its swimming pools open and staffed, the city is replacing some city workers with contractors. "These are cases where the question is being asked, 'Is this a core service at the city level?' " said Michelle McGurk, senior policy adviser to the San Jose mayor. After years of whittling...