Los Angeles is full of Stress Relievers
In a recent article published by Forbes, they ranked Los Angeles as the second most stressful city to live in. To determine their rankings of the “most” stressful cities, Forbes—using Federal data– analyzed factors including sleep, air quality, drop in home price values, unemployment percentages, as well as the ratio of sunny days per year to non sunny days in order to determine each cities ranking– from most stressful to least.
To be sure, living in Los Angeles can be stressful. For starters, just get on the freeway at rush hour or read the front page news in the LA Times; sometimes you can cut the stress in the air with a knife:
Housing prices are down, unemployment is up, jobs are scarce, people are grouchy, there’s no money, no time, and not much energy.
However, when in turn, I asked my followers on Twitter why they loved living in LA, I received responses like these:
@LisaNewton the WEATHER of course (does living in Long Beach count)?
@LisaNewton – the opportunities, the weather, the amount of stuff do to nearby, the beach, la tech.
@LisaNewton
@LisaNewton Besides everything?
So while it is indeed stressful living in Los Angeles there’s a flipside as well. Just have a look:
“Fishing in the City”
Los Angeles Historic Walks
The Hollywood Reservoir
A Guide to Walking the Venice Canals in Los Angeles
This is only a tiny sample of the things that we do, the stories we write, the places we go, and many of the other great treasures and unique institutions that makes living and Travelin’ Local in Los Angeles, the reasons we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
Travelin’ local offers you the best that our city offers–it’s all here. You just have to know where to look. With the addition of our exciting Mapping Los Angeles Public Art project, you’ll be able to find those places easier as well. We’re here to serve you Los Angeles. We want you to go out and enjoy the city you call home.
Stress is here, but stress relievers abound.
It’s just waiting for you–so let’s get out there, Los Angeles, and lower our “stress!”
Those type of evaluations based on “statistics” always crack me up. They’re of course a good starting point for a discussion, but they aren’t anything more than someone’s opinion. And even if they’re based on statistics, they aren’t based on all of the right statistics. Take your LA example – what criteria did they use? There may be more stress-inducing items…but do they account for the other factors – such as the number of people enrolled in Yoga and other stress relieving activities? What about diet? LA certainly has more diet conscious people than the average city…so even when someone gets stressed, diet helps to taper off quickly. So I would go so far as to say that LA is also going to be one of the most efficient at relieving stress.
Philly just got a tag a while back that we were, allegedly, the fattest city. Digging deeper, I found that the article was based on average weight levels. More importantly, it was based on optional feedback from those participating in a broad-topic survey about several factors including music preferences, average income, etc. What the article failed to mention is that Philadelphia had a higher percentage of replies to the weight question. In contrast, Boston had a lower average weight among those who responded, but they had nearly 33% more “no comment” responses. I don’t know about you, but I hardly believe those within recommended weight ranges are afraid to share their response. It just so happens that in Philadelphia culture – for whatever reason – people are less ashamed about their weight than in Boston.
It’s all a mater of perspective. But at least they’re fun to debate about.
Cheers to LA for having the most stress to potentially be relieved. Now get outside and enjoy the weather…it will all wash out in the end.
.-= D. Travis North´s last blog ..SP@Flickr: “Sepia” by Kika Clore-Gronenborn =-.
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LisaNewton Reply:
September 10th, 2009 at 4:28 am
@D. Travis North, Like you, I often wonder where the data comes from for these types of rankings. Statistics can be read so many different ways, with so many different variations. I still find it amazing how different people can be from one city to the next.
All I know is I’ll be heading out the door and enjoying LA’s stress relievers as often as possible.
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