SEATTLE - As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, rudeness is a lack of respect for other people and their feelings. Rudeness can be interpreted in many different ways, like not opening the door for strangers, not letting someone switch lanes on the road or listening to music without headphones while in public.
In this context, language learning platform Preply released its 2024 study on the rudest cities of America based on behaviors of people in the largest cities across the country. The language learning experts conducted the study by surveying residents about social behaviors they noticed in their city and calculated a city rudeness score based on the answers.
By asking questions from how often residents witness others committing rude acts, how they perceive native residents versus transplants, among others, Preply's ranking awarded the city of Miami the number one spot as the rudest city in America.
The lack of awareness in public, loudness in shared places and rudeness to service staff members are some of the behaviors that gave Miami the top spot in this year's study.
In a rudeness scale from 0-10, Miami collected a score of 9.88 despite not even figuring among the top-30 rudest cities in 2022, when Preply last conducted its survey.
Tampa is another Florida city that made it into the top-10 this year. Tampa scored an 8.88 in the rudeness scale.
Jacksonville is the only other Florida city that made it among the rudest in the nation, ranking at 12th for the second consecutive time. Although Jacksonville did not move places, Preply's survey found that the city got ruder in the two years since its last study, scoring a 8.05 in 2024, almost a three-point increase compared to 2022.
Despite the official rankings, residents shared where they think their neighbors land on the rudeness scale. Locals in Miami, FL, Oakland, CA, and Tucson, AZ, agreed that people in their city are ruder than those in any other city.
The study also found that the older an American is, the more likely they are to think transplant residents are ruder than natives in their respective cities.
Rudeness can be a factor to drive people away from their respective cities. According to the survey, nearly one in four Americans have considered moving elsewhere else due to people's rude and inconsiderate behaviors.
Florida's increase in rude behavior
Despite Jacksonville being the only Florida city to make the list in 2022, Florida had three cities among the rudest places in the U.S. in 2024 according to Preply's survey.
In fact, Florida was one of only two states across the United States to have three cities among the top-15 rudest in the country, with California being the other one.
This could be attributed to the fast growth seen across the state. In 2023, the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research showed the state's estimated population in April of that year was 22,634,867, an increase of nearly 359,000 people, or 1.61 percent, from a year earlier.
Although most of the growth has been attributed to migration, nearly 200,000 people from New York, New Jersey or California moved to Florida in 2022.
Having that in mind, it would explain why New York City, which ranked as the third rudest city in America in 2022, suffered a decrease in rudeness, ranking at number 21 in 2024.
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