PROVIDENCE – If you feel stressed today, take heart: a national magazine says the problem is geographical.
That’s because the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metropolitan area is tied with Cleveland as the fourth-most stressful city in the country to live in, according to rankings put together by Forbes.
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The city is in good company, however. The magazine found Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City to be the three cities that are more stressful than Providence and Cleveland. Next on the list are San Francisco, Detroit, Boston and Washington, D.C.
“To find the country’s most stressful cities, we examined quality of life factors in the country’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or metros – geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics,” Forbes explained.
The magazine’s metrics included June unemployment figures, the cost of living, median home-price declines, population density, weather and pollution.
Out of the 40 metros, the Providence region ranked fifth-worst for unemployment; 10th-worst for cost of living; 12th-worst for sunny days per year; 13th-worst for population density; and 16th-worst for median home price drop. The area did have the 10th-best air quality, however.
On the other hand, Dr. Stephen Dinwiddie, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago – and thus a resident of the nation’s most stressful city – said one positive aspect of living in a metropolis is that it offers plenty of distractions.
“It’s easy, for example, to go to the beach or catch a Cubs game,” Dinwiddie told Forbes. “Although,” he added, “I suppose some people wouldn’t consider that to relieve stress.” (The Cubbies have not won the World Series since 1907.)
