I haven’t been to Rochester per se in awhile either but in terms of percentage of boarded-up broken down Victorians it can’t compare to Syracuse.
But I’d like to nominate the Tampa Bay area. Probably the smallest city that still has a big city grimy feel to it. Sex and business and class envy and corruption all in one bright Florida package.
I’m pretty sure the city that the OP is looking for isn’t to be found in the United States.
It’s gone downhill since then.
The view fron Newark airport reminded us rather forcefully of Tolkien’s description of Mordor.
I’m willing to believe it all isn’t like that - but I’m not willing to investigate the matter personally.
Oddly, I’ve lived my whole life in Toronto and never been to Oshawa.
Maybe not so oddly.
You got that right. I was in the city of Yuzhno-Sakalin a few years ago. We weren’t allowed out after dark because it was too dangerous. The town has a population of around 100,000 and there were around 75 murders a year. There were a few (I think 4 or 5) modern apartment blocks reserved for folks who could pay with dollars. The other 99,000 of the population had to live in giant Stalinesque apartment buildings with paper thin walls - the temperature in Winter gets down to around -20°. There’s basically no industry except for oil. It’s a nightmare.
Is it as close to the middle of nowhere as it looks?
I’ve been to far more remote places than that in my time 
After reading this thread, suddenly I’m dreading my flight in to Newark Airport this afternoon, or I would be except for the fact that a hot chick will be meeting me there.
What? No votes for Camden, NJ?
In the universe? What about Mos Eisley?
As for real cities, Solvang, CA really creeps me out for some reason. It makes me very uneasy to be there.
I have friends that live in Houston and they love it there, but I am going to have to cast my vote for Houston just the same. Take all the dirt, crime, poverty and expense of living in Chicago or New York and put it in 110 degree heat. Then add so much humidity that raindrops appear out of the air when it isn’t even raining. It cost more to see a movie in Houston in 2003 than it does to see a movie in Times Sqare in 2009 and it was so hot parts inside of my car melted. One of my friends that lives there pays more for her 1 bedroom apartment than my boyfriend and I pay for our 2 bedroom apartment in Manhattan. I will never go back ever again.
I will admit that city in Russia looks like it would probably be worse than Houston, but as I’ve never been there I stand by my answer.
I’m pretty surprised Detroit isn’t in the running.
L.A. has been popularly described as a “hopeless fucking hole”, and I agree. I haven’t been too many places, though.
I’ll stick up for Newark Airport. It’s not a palace or anything, but I’ve been to plenty way shittier airports. It’s at least pretty clean. I can’t speak to the rest of the city, but I admit it don’t look good. And from what I hear about Camden and Trenton it seems like NJ could win a volume award at least.
I’ve been through Gary, IN a number of times. It’s certainly the smelliest city in my experience (including a record-heat-wave southern France with a strike of municipal workers!). Bleurgh.
Athol, Md.
Can you imagine having to tell people where you live? Everyone would think you have a lisp.
Laredo, TX.
Poverty, disease, filth, and, most of all, crime figure prominently in my memories of the years I lived there. The place literally had a stench to it from the Rio Grande. All this was situated in the middle of a scorching hot semi-arid region that was totally lacking in the “barren beauty” so often associated with deserts. Unbelievably, the place seems to have actually gotten worse since I moved away in 1991.
I’ve been to Gary, Naples and Calcutta and I’d go back before I set one more foot in Shenzhen.
I was going to say Camden. Definitely a city that has seen better days… and those weren’t too good either.
I have a bunch of family in Houston and used to travel there on a regular basis, so I have to agree that, yeah, it is something of a shithole.
My current home of Jacksonville, FL is hot, humid, industrial, filled with urban blight and has more rednecks per square acre than anywhere I’ve ever lived…well, except for the metro Charleston, SC area.
Once you leave the pretty, touristy part of Charleston on the penninsula you hit a reef of grimy, redneck-y, trailer trash squalor that is like a Jeff Foxworty routine with added piles of fetid garbage and stagnant swamps.