There’s a new analysis of the best cities in the U.S. to be quarantined in. It takes into account average apartment size (very important), prevalence of high speed internet (crucial), amount of park land (so you can get out and still social distance), and number of takeout food options (which says nothing about variety or quality).
Here’s the top 10 they came up with:
- Scottsdale
- Irvine
- Las Vegas
- San Diego
- Virginia Beach
- Chandler
- San Jose
- Raleigh
- Orlando
- Austin
Since you can’t go anywhere, or see anyone, I suppose it doesn’t much matter if you’re in Las Vegas. That’s a place to visit but in normal times I wouldn’t want to live there.
And because nobody has money anymore, or jobs, income tax rates and risk of being an employer in California don’t much go into the decision-making calculus. Still I’m not sure a methodology that spits out Irvine as the best California city right now can possibly be right?
Austin is working out well for me. Though there’s a dense downtown area the number of people living there are limited. I lived downtown when I first moved here in 2014, but live just outside the city now and I’m grateful to have a yard (and not live in a building with an elevator). That’s great for stocking up on toilet paper and for receiving deliveries. Internet is good and parks are abundant. I consider myself grateful.
Here are the 10 worst places to be right now, in order:
- Newark
- Hialeah FL
- Paterson NJ
- Buffalo
- Laredo TX
- Tucson
- Cleveland
- Arlington TX
- McAllen TX
- Wichita
Frankly these strike me as among the worst places to be, even when you aren’t quarantined.
Notably though the criteria for where you’d want to be doesn’t take into account prevalence of the virus, although there’s going to b relationship between cities with larger average apartment sizes and more park land and greater distance between people, therefore in some cases less of a concentration of COVID-19 cases.
New York City though comes in at 64, compared to Newark at 99, because of the huge array of takeout and delivery options for food.
Ultimately though even prevalence of the virus may not matter for quarantine life, if it’s a case of “get it now or get it later” of course the reason to prefer to get it later is hoped-for treatments which will improve patient outcomes, shorten hospital stays, and help to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
Perhaps then the most important factor left out of this analysis is concentration of jobs that can transition to work from home. Those are going to be much more available in major urban areas – not that you need to be in those areas while you’re working from home, but those types of jobs where you can transition from an office to remote work tend to cluster around bigger cities.
Where are you quarantined and how is that location working out for you? Are there places that seem like they’d be better?
Personally Southeast Asia seems like it would be desirable in many ways. Even though Singapore is experiencing a ‘second wave’ within their immigrant worker community the city itself offers options and quality health care. Vietnam as a whole has done exceptionally well. Normal life continues in Bali without seeing significant spread. I think I’m just increasingly hungry for good laksa and prawn mee soup.
Laredo and McAllen aren’t bad places to be but I assume they measure this by how much doordash available food there is. That seems short-sighted. They also think Patterson NJ is a good place to be, basically in the NYC metro area, with the highest cases and deaths in North America. Major flaw. Wichita is also an error. Sure Wichita isn’t that much fun but it’s a fairly nice town with a good restaurant selection. It suffers from some crime but is also in Kansas which is low on the list of states with Covid19 outbreaks. Basically this list makes me think someone with USA Today came up with it. Either that or Chris Elliott.
I’m surprised Denver isn’t on the list. My daughter is in Denver now, and despite the fact that she was uprooted and relocated indefinitely to Denver from her London flat with only 24 hours’ notice–a rather hectic night of packing and travel prep–she says Denver is a great place to be, if one has to be confined to an apartment. She is in downtown Denver and within a 3 minute walk of a major park and grocery stores. The weather is perfect, and she can have her window open during the day for fresh air. The Denver community is behaving itself, unlike other places where the yahoos come out of the woods and spout their nonsensical egotistic blatherings.
I wonder if this took into account current stay-at-home orders. Parks are less great when the stupid government won’t let you use them.
I would have just said / PHX metro verses Scottsdale and Chandler (both cities in the area). I’ve been glad to be here during this but the 100 plus days are coming and the club pool is off limits for now. Luckily our golf course is open!
Stay safe everyone!
Garbage in, garbage out.
When you plug in your chosen variables and it spits out these lists, how do you not just trash the whole thing and go back to square one? This is basically saying “big but not super dense city is good” and “small city with no takeout bad”. Don’t you think the people who live in Buffalo or Laredo, TX have already normalized to the level of restaurant variety/availability and are just cooking from home more?
What’s wrong with Hialeah? Miami Lakes neighborhood is in Hialeah. One of m my favorite places I’ve ever lived. And oh the amazing Cuban food ! These lists are usually made up of people who know nothing
@ Gary — Seems to be a warm weather bias, which I guess is good for laying in the sun to kill COVID-19. They must also have a good supply of Lysol.
@Gene – many people are saying that if you drink a full bottle of Lysol it kills the Covid!!! Bonus points if you do it while sleeping in your suntanning bed.
@ UA-NYC — It will kill the COVID and the host. Fox News should definitely promote this idea.
Washington, DC is not bad. I can ride my bikes in the Mall area without worrying about cars, tourists, etc that allow me to ride in areas I would normally avoid……if not riding we’ve been walking around the Capital grounds without impediment of cars as the traffic simply doesn’t exist…the air is cleaner then it has been in years….part of me wishes this lack of traffic would continue in the future and we all start to work from home …it’s showing most businesses you really don’t need to be in the office every day in the modern world…sure there are roles and jobs that require f2f but wow I can’t tell you how empty the roads are when I drive to VA…the DMV has great bike paths if I want to go that route..it is a short ride to open golf courses and State parks in VA..and it has every imaginable food group available for delivery and the grocery stores are pretty stocked up…the weather has been cool and rainy thus far this spring, so we’ve avoided the normal humid hot weather that starts right about now. The internet choices here are VZ, CMCSA or a few smaller dish firms and in many parts it’s fiber….do I miss restaurants, bars, the Cap/Nats, the Zoo – you bet….
This must be a white persons opinion. McAllen, TX should not be on the list of worst places. There are lots of plentiful parks and they even have outdoor gyms and play areas for kids. They also have great internet and their food options are plentiful. There are a ton of ways to make money there as well with lots of people who have started doing traits, which they already had, so no need for remote work. Just because it’s 90% Hispanics doesn’t make it a worst city idiot.
Obviously did NOT consider leadership and being offered up as part of a control group. The mayor of Las Vegas is a COVIDIOT.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/04/22/las-vegas-mayor-carolyn-goodman-reopen-coronavirus-entire-interview-anderson-cooper-sot-nr-vpx.cnn
Criteria *should* include number of hospital beds per capita (and ICU beds per capita).
Second marriage. Wife’s house in outskirts of Raleigh, nice development, good walking. We have Food delivery and pick up, haven’t ventured into take out. My house in N.C. mountains about as safe as you can get. Bummer, my wife rarely comes up. I go back and forth. Up here, no deliveries, pick up is 50miles away. I am finding it difficult to buy steaks which I live on up here. Real hardship, right? No complaints. I don’t even miss travel and I have been a travelholic.
Scottsdale is nice but quirky with too much attitude and fake people. I’m living there now (and also lived there for 10 years a while ago). We seem to be skipping the 90s this year and will have 6+ days of 100s starting tomorrow.
Of course part of living here is people watching and the bars/restaurants which you can’t do right now.
I think the medical facilities are lower standard than many east coast cities and so is the IQ (not as bad as the SE but schools here aren’t exactly high end).
@Ryan
Miami Lakes is not a Hialeah.
Yea they are neighbors (and separate cities) but Hialeah is zoned by the almighty dollar stuffed into the pockets of “The Boys Downtown” and you can see the results. Miami Lakes is a “planned community”, boatloads of parks, trees and open areas and a golf course.
Apples to rotten bananas.
Austin, Vegas, Scottsdale & Chandler yes, but Tucson no? Sounds like writers did not do their homework.
Austin is great, but not much demand for live music right now. And we don’t want to think about summer humidity.
Tucson has become a foodie destination as of late, including a UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation — the first in USA, with 3 new hotels in its suddenly vibrant downtown.
http://www.visittucson.org/become-a-tucson-foodie
And one can probably find something decent to eat with over 550 restaurants providing take-out…
https://tucson.com/news/local/more-than-550-tucson-area-restaurants-open-for-pickup-delivery/html_19845230-69fd-11ea-a984-7b9df564ca6c.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
Tucson & Southern Arizona has perfect weather in March & April, but is starting to get warm. Scottsdale & Phoenix, however, with lower altitude, high percentage of concrete, and numerous canals providing unwanted humidity, is absolutely unbearable in the summer.
@alcw62
Biking around DC without cars or tourists sounds like a lot of fun. Enjoy!
What a silly list. First of all it mixes big cities and suburbs which have very different attributes. No consideration of weather, walkability, etc.
If you are in a city right now you want walkability (because nobody wants to ride transit), low density (because you don’t want to be on crowded streets like NYC), good grocery stores (one of the few places you can shop), parks or beaches, and great medical care. SF fits all these requirement and Denver does too. I’d add Chicago, Boston and DC too as most neighborhoods have everything within walking distance. Newark and Tucson most certainly do not.
Scottsdale is more of a suburb and many suburbs are great places to be right now as they hit all these criteria. Personally I’d rather be on Maui or Kauai though they need to open the beaches.
I agree with Scott. I’m very happy to be in Tucson right now – lots of food options, lots of beautiful places to walk and easy to maintain distance from people. Also plenty of hospital beds, which IMO should have been criterion no. 1.
San Jose? what a crock of b.s.
San Jose’s downtown was a ghost town six weeks ago. Only thing that changed since then was some disgusting racist dude vandalized a bunch of closed businesses:
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vietnamese-owned-businesses-in-San-Jose-vandalized-15222590.php
Then again the idea of 10 best and 10 worst places to quarantine is complete garbage anyhow
I have lived alot of different places in my life, am currently in Tucson, AZ. I am glad I am in Tucson right now for this lockdown, versus anywhere else I have lived, which would include Scottsdale, where I have lived in the past. Whoever came up with list doesnt really know what they are talking about, which this being the internet, I guess shouldn’t be too much of a suprise
I commute between San Jose – on the good list – and Cleveland – on the bad list.
Most of my sheltering has been in a suburb of Cleveland. Much better than the sheltering in San Jose. Grocery stores seem quite normal and have an abundance of what you might need in Cleveland. Life seems somewhat normal other than the obvious closures.
As opposed to my San Jose grocery store with a police officer at the door mandating masks in a county that has not mandated masks. Grocery store shelves are sparse. Produce is hit or miss. The lines to get in Whole Foods and Costco can last a day. Came back to San Jose after sheltering in Cleveland since March 16. A week of the weirdness in San Jose is enough. Catching the first flight back to Cleveland.