More bad news for Motown: A study has found that Detroit is the unhealthiest city in America, based on numerous factors measured in 150 U.S. municipalities.
The quality-of-life report by WalletHub, a website that specializes in personal finance issues, found that Detroit ranked very nearly at the bottom in three major areas: health care, food/nutrition, and physical fitness. The city’s overall score put it at No. 150.
The researchers evaluated 34 key indicators in four broad categories. In the health care first category, WalletHub looked at issues such as premature-death rate, family doctors per capita and the quality of the public hospital system. For food, they evaluated the number of farmer’s markets, the obesity rate and the number of dietitians per capita, among other indicators.
In the green spaces category where Detroit fared best (ranked 120th), the study researched parkland acres, hiking trails and bike lanes per capita. Belle Isle probably played a leading role in keeping the Motor City above the bottom of the list.
The report released last week comes on the heels of a study published earlier this month that essentially called the “Detroit comeback” a fraud. In that report, two Michigan-based professors concluded that, outside of the downtown/Midtown area, many of the city’s neighborhoods still suffer greatly from poverty, unemployment, housing and crime.
In the new study about the city’s overall health, Detroit ranked just below Brownsville, Texas, and Memphis, Tenn.
San Francisco came out on top, followed by Salt Lake City, Scottsdale, Ariz., Seattle, and Portland, Ore.
The only other Michigan city included in the report, Grand Rapids, ranked 63rd.
