These Major Cities Are At Risk Of Crashing

[Razor]

Yes, it's from another MSN article, so it should be taken with a huge grain of salt. I just stumbled onto it, so I thought I would post it on here. Lots of the cities mentioned are from developing countries, but both Houston and Calgary made this click bait list..I think it's a little over sensationalized myself because both of these cities, while (in Calgary's case), oil dependant are wealthy and resilient enough to bounce back, and the term "crashing" may be a little extreme for both of them. Moscow also made this list. Your thoughts?

http://http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/these-major-cities-are-at-risk-of-crashing/ss-BBYr5Eo?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout#image=1

[JManc]

I live in Houston and we are in no danger of crashing. The article cited a 2% economic decline from 2014-2016 which sounds about right and we're not out of the woods even though we've rebounded somewhat but to lump us along with Calgary in with cities in some of the most unstable regions in the world is some grade-A sloppy journalism. Plus, the article also referred Houston as 'the Texas capital region'.

[Steely Dan]

Headline: Clickbait Garbage List is Clickbait Garbage

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by JManc

I live in Houston and we are in no danger of crashing. The article cited a 2% economic decline from 2014-2016 which sounds about right and we're not out of the woods even though we've rebounded somewhat but to lump us along with Calgary in with cities in some of the most unstable regions in the world is some grade-A sloppy journalism. Plus, the article also referred Houston as 'the Texas capital region'.

The boom and bust in oil business is just part of the game, It might not look great on paper but Im pretty sure Calgary and Houston know how to deal with it well.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Obadno

The boom and bust in oil business is just part of the game, It might not look great on paper but Im pretty sure Calgary and Houston know how to deal with it well.

Yes exactly..Scrub journalism..Should of done their homework about how these cycles work.

[llamaorama]

Clickbait titles suck

[The North One]

Moscow will never ever crash. It probably has the most guaranteed position of any city on earth.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Obadno

The boom and bust in oil business is just part of the game, It might not look great on paper but Im pretty sure Calgary and Houston know how to deal with it well.

They should know better, it happens every few years it seems. Prices go up then fall back, rinse and repeat. Houston is a lot more diversified than Calgary though. Same for Denver which the energy industry, once a large piece of the local economy, is now a much smaller piece of the pie with booming finance and tech industries largely replacing it.

Smaller oil & gas cities like Midland and Williston ND are in a much more precarious position while mid-sized cities like Oklahoma City and Tulsa are definitely affected but also have somewhat diversified economies with sizable healthcare, finance and aviation sectors.

[Pedestrian]

I truly do worry about west coast cities with extreme Progressive politics. San Francisco, where I live, used to be a place most residents loved and we were known for a snobbish attitude about the place. But no more. Not only does the media--especially the conservative media but not exclusively them--constantly deride the homelessness and crime, but residents themselves are now up in arms about it.

SF, while it still has a fairly low violent crime rate, supposedly has the highest property crime rate in the US and I can believe it. Shop-lifting is rampant--virtually every time I go into a Walgreen's or CVS I witness it: People literally filling shopping bags with merchandise off shelves and walking out without paying. And the store staff just shrug when told about it (I'm sure the store adds the cost of this "shrinkage" as its known in the business to their overhead and thus the prices they charge paying customers). And one can no longer park on the street without expecting a car window to be broken, even if there's nothing inside to steal; nor can one walk down the street holding (or sit in a cafe using) an electronic device without a real risk someone will grab it (it has a name: "Apple picking").

This, along with the general high cost of living, is driving people, and now businesses, away. After years, Oracle decided this year to hold their annual convention elsewhere (Las Vegas). Charles Schwab and McKesson are leaving (as a result of mergers but still . . . .). A number of tech companies have thrown in the towel in the edgier parts of town and moved to relatively better ones but relative is really a marginal difference.

On the good side, we still have an extremely low office vacancy rate and about the highest commercial rents in the country. So we aren't yet "crashing". But if the young techies whose desire to be in the city lures the companies that need them or that, in many cases, they found decide it's no longer a place they want to live, we could be in real trouble.

It's something we need to worry about and pay attention to, and developments like the recent election of an extreme Progressive DA--the child of a pair of 1960s cop killers in the "Weather Underground"--who calls most of the issues I mentioned "quality of life" matters he's not interested in prosecuting doesn't help (I keep hoping somebody will snatch HIS laptop with a lot of irreplaceable work on it). Also, CA has decriminalized the theft of anything worth less than approximately $900 so the cops aren't even interested in such as the shop-lifting I described above. It's now a "just take what you want" society.

San Francisco may be the most extreme example of all this--I don't know, rumors are Portland is close--but as near as I can tell almost every West Coast city has related issues: LA, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and maybe some smaller ones too.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I truly do worry about west coast cities with extreme Progressive politics. San Francisco, where I live, used to be a place most residents loved and we were known for a snobbish attitude about the place. But no more. Not only does the media--especially the conservative media but not exclusively them--constantly deride the homelessness and crime, but residents themselves are now up in arms about it.

SF, while it still has a fairly low violent crime rate, supposedly has the highest property crime rate in the US and I can believe it. Shop-lifting is rampant--virtually every time I go into a Walgreen's or CVS I witness it: People literally filling shopping bags with merchandise off shelves and walking out without paying. And the store staff just shrug when told about it (I'm sure the store adds the cost of this "shrinkage" as its known in the business to their overhead and thus the prices they charge paying customers). And one can no longer park on the street without expecting a car window to be broken, even if there's nothing inside to steal; nor can one walk down the street holding (or sit in a cafe using) an electronic device without a real risk someone will grab it (it has a name: "Apple picking").

This, along with the general high cost of living, is driving people, and now businesses, away. After years, Oracle decided this year to hold their annual convention elsewhere (Las Vegas). Charles Schwab and McKesson are leaving (as a result of mergers but still . . . .). A number of tech companies have thrown in the towel in the edgier parts of town and moved to relatively better ones but relative is really a marginal difference.

On the good side, we still have an extremely low office vacancy rate and about the highest commercial rents in the country. So we aren't yet "crashing". But if the young techies whose desire to be in the city lures the companies that need them or that, in many cases, they found decide it's no longer a place they want to live, we could be in real trouble.

It's something we need to worry about and pay attention to, and developments like the recent election of an extreme Progressive DA--the child of a pair of 1960s cop killers in the "Weather Underground"--who calls most of the issues I mentioned "quality of life" matters he's not interested in prosecuting doesn't help (I keep hoping somebody will snatch HIS laptop with a lot of irreplaceable work on it). Also, CA has decriminalized the theft of anything worth less than approximately $900 so the cops aren't even interested in such as the shop-lifting I described above. It's now a "just take what you want" society.

San Francisco may be the most extreme example of all this--I don't know, rumors are Portland is close--but as near as I can tell almost every West Coast city has related issues: LA, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and maybe some smaller ones too.

Does San Francisco think it invented "Apple picking"?

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I truly do worry about west coast cities with extreme Progressive politics. San Francisco, where I live, used to be a place most residents loved and we were known for a snobbish attitude about the place. But no more. Not only does the media--especially the conservative media but not exclusively them--constantly deride the homelessness and crime, but residents themselves are now up in arms about it.

SF, while it still has a fairly low violent crime rate, supposedly has the highest property crime rate in the US and I can believe it. Shop-lifting is rampant--virtually every time I go into a Walgreen's or CVS I witness it: People literally filling shopping bags with merchandise off shelves and walking out without paying. And the store staff just shrug when told about it (I'm sure the store adds the cost of this "shrinkage" as its known in the business to their overhead and thus the prices they charge paying customers). And one can no longer park on the street without expecting a car window to be broken, even if there's nothing inside to steal; nor can one walk down the street holding (or sit in a cafe using) an electronic device without a real risk someone will grab it (it has a name: "Apple picking").

This, along with the general high cost of living, is driving people, and now businesses, away. After years, Oracle decided this year to hold their annual convention elsewhere (Las Vegas). Charles Schwab and McKesson are leaving (as a result of mergers but still . . . .). A number of tech companies have thrown in the towel in the edgier parts of town and moved to relatively better ones but relative is really a marginal difference.

On the good side, we still have an extremely low office vacancy rate and about the highest commercial rents in the country. So we aren't yet "crashing". But if the young techies whose desire to be in the city lures the companies that need them or that, in many cases, they found decide it's no longer a place they want to live, we could be in real trouble.

It's something we need to worry about and pay attention to, and developments like the recent election of an extreme Progressive DA--the child of a pair of 1960s cop killers in the "Weather Underground"--who calls most of the issues I mentioned "quality of life" matters he's not interested in prosecuting doesn't help (I keep hoping somebody will snatch HIS laptop with a lot of irreplaceable work on it). Also, CA has decriminalized the theft of anything worth less than approximately $900 so the cops aren't even interested in such as the shop-lifting I described above. It's now a "just take what you want" society.

San Francisco may be the most extreme example of all this--I don't know, rumors are Portland is close--but as near as I can tell almost every West Coast city has related issues: LA, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and maybe some smaller ones too.

working in the bay area for a month this year sort of closed the book on me ever living in california. seeing how much homelessness has spread around the state, the COL issues and how they were affecting people that i work with along with experiencing the fires first hand just felt like a jarring, dystopic sort of compartmentalized overlay to a version of california that i consider paradise otherwise. california style politics are just another scapegoat, a bumbling non-reaction to these absolute colossal drivers that are rapidly changing california.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Does San Francisco think it invented "Apple picking"?

Well, Silicon Valley invented Apple so we do have a proprietary view of the term.

Does that bother you?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Well, Silicon Valley invented Apple so we do have a proprietary view of the term.

Does that bother you?

"Apple picking" is so 5 years ago. I'm surprised that the terminology is still being used.

Apple helped cut down on the problem years ago with the "Find My iPhone" feature. I believe device theft has fallen quite a bit because it's so much easier to track them now.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

california style politics are just another scapegoat, a bumbling non-reaction to these absolute colossal drivers that are rapidly changing california.

Politicians guilty of a "bumbling non-reaction" are part of the problem, not just a "scapegoat". "Scapegoats" are innocent. Politicians who don't react appropriately to problems are not innocent--fixing problems is their job, the only reason they get paid. But California's politicans IMHO are guilty of more than non-reaction. They are actively causing some of the decline, whether the issue is "bumbling" regulation of the state's largest utility (which even the pro-business WSJ agrees they have done), letting thousands of unrehabilitated criminals out of jail with no means of support and sending them to live on city streets, or contributing to anarchy by saying stealing a $900 cell phone is no crime worth the attention of police.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

"Apple picking" is so 5 years ago. I'm surprised that the terminology is still being used.

Apple helped cut down on the problem years ago with the "Find My iPhone" feature. I believe device theft has fallen quite a bit because it's so much easier to track them now.

I don't know if anybody but me uses it but I think it fits so I still use it. Call it an eccentricity. Why is that an issue for you?

It's such a silly distraction from the issues here. And the "find my phone" feature has not at all eliminated the problem. You are risking your life going into the projects and demanding your phone back if you have the idea of doing that. The cops won't help you in CA.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I don't know if anybody but me uses it but I think it fits so I still use it. Call it an eccentricity. Why is that an issue for you?

It's such a silly distraction from the issues here. And the "find my phone" feature has not at all eliminated the problem. You are risking your life going into the projects and demanding your phone back if you have the idea of doing that.

You can't wipe the phone without the credentials. The phone is useless to another person unless they somehow break the security features. Petty criminals usually aren't that sophisticated. Unless your average San Francisco based "apple picker" has the capabilities of a government spy agency, I would be curious why San Francisco's thieves are still engaged in the activity. Like I said, it's so five years ago.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by BG918

They should know better, it happens every few years it seems. Prices go up then fall back, rinse and repeat. Houston is a lot more diversified than Calgary though. Same for Denver which the energy industry, once a large piece of the local economy, is now a much smaller piece of the pie with booming finance and tech industries largely replacing it.

Smaller oil & gas cities like Midland and Williston ND are in a much more precarious position while mid-sized cities like Oklahoma City and Tulsa are definitely affected but also have somewhat diversified economies with sizable healthcare, finance and aviation sectors.

Calgary already crashed and should prove resilient to the next general economic decline. After a 20 year, mega boom, the local market was way over-heated, which actually hurt economic diversification. I left in 2001 but still have strong ties to the non oil and gas segments of the economy as I worked for several tech companies there. Companies struggled to compete with the high paying energy sector and shifed jobs away from the city. The reverse is happening now as depressed real estate prices and stagnant wages have made the city competitive again. The same thing happened after the 80's energy bust and 90's government cut backs. Despite the poor economy, the region's population growth is 1.6%, in the same league as supposedly booming cities like Toronto. Of course compared to the 3% plus annual growth over much of the pervious two decades, current conditions seem slow.

I'd be more concerned about the west coast US cities, Vancouver and Toronto where so much wealth is tied up in highly leveraged real estate. A sudden change in credit conditions could trigger a crash. While the Bay Area and Seattle have deep corporate bases that would be the envy of any city, they will likely slowly bleed corporate HQ's to business friendlier locales like Dallas and Austin.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Apple helped cut down on the problem years ago with the "Find My iPhone" feature. I believe device theft has fallen quite a bit because it's so much easier to track them now.

That and locked devices (esp. Apple) is essentially worthless. My mother in law recently had her iPad swiped at the airport only to have it returned without the case. The case had value, a brand new locked iPad wasn't worth the bother.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

You can't wipe the phone without the credentials. The phone is useless to another person unless they somehow break the security features. Petty criminals usually aren't that sophisticated. Unless your average San Francisco based "apple picker" has the capabilities of a government spy agency, I would be curious why San Francisco's thieves are still engaged in the activity. Like I said, it's so five years ago.

Stealing phones is so five years ago? Could have fooled me.

[love sosa]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I truly do worry about west coast cities with extreme Progressive politics. San Francisco, where I live, used to be a place most residents loved and we were known for a snobbish attitude about the place. But no more. Not only does the media--especially the conservative media but not exclusively them--constantly deride the homelessness and crime, but residents themselves are now up in arms about it.

SF, while it still has a fairly low violent crime rate, supposedly has the highest property crime rate in the US and I can believe it. Shop-lifting is rampant--virtually every time I go into a Walgreen's or CVS I witness it: People literally filling shopping bags with merchandise off shelves and walking out without paying. And the store staff just shrug when told about it (I'm sure the store adds the cost of this "shrinkage" as its known in the business to their overhead and thus the prices they charge paying customers). And one can no longer park on the street without expecting a car window to be broken, even if there's nothing inside to steal; nor can one walk down the street holding (or sit in a cafe using) an electronic device without a real risk someone will grab it (it has a name: "Apple picking").

This, along with the general high cost of living, is driving people, and now businesses, away. After years, Oracle decided this year to hold their annual convention elsewhere (Las Vegas). Charles Schwab and McKesson are leaving (as a result of mergers but still . . . .). A number of tech companies have thrown in the towel in the edgier parts of town and moved to relatively better ones but relative is really a marginal difference.

On the good side, we still have an extremely low office vacancy rate and about the highest commercial rents in the country. So we aren't yet "crashing". But if the young techies whose desire to be in the city lures the companies that need them or that, in many cases, they found decide it's no longer a place they want to live, we could be in real trouble.

It's something we need to worry about and pay attention to, and developments like the recent election of an extreme Progressive DA--the child of a pair of 1960s cop killers in the "Weather Underground"--who calls most of the issues I mentioned "quality of life" matters he's not interested in prosecuting doesn't help (I keep hoping somebody will snatch HIS laptop with a lot of irreplaceable work on it). Also, CA has decriminalized the theft of anything worth less than approximately $900 so the cops aren't even interested in such as the shop-lifting I described above. It's now a "just take what you want" society.

San Francisco may be the most extreme example of all this--I don't know, rumors are Portland is close--but as near as I can tell almost every West Coast city has related issues: LA, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and maybe some smaller ones too.

Not true.