The BF and I were just talking about various large cities and how it seems like the south side of many major cities (Seattle, SF, Boston) is considered the “worse” neighborhood.
So the question is twofold:
Are there major American cities where the north end is worse?
Why the south side?
The Master speaks:
Charlotte has the bad part of town in the north.
One theory is it is related to the way winds blow. Rich people want to be upwind of factories and their potentially bad smells. If factories are in the city center, then winds mostly from the north mean rich people live north of the city center.
“Bad” neighborhoods generally are located at lower elevations (see Katrina and New Orleans). Elevation isn’t necessarily correlated with north or south, but in some places it could be (I’m thinking of Atlanta).
In Miami, the bad places are north of dowtown (Liberty City, Hialeah), not south, dispelling the idea that always elevation correlates with poverty. Here in Richmond, the southside is considered nicer than the northside…although the major distinction seems to be eastside versus westside (the latter is nicer).
Even when I lived in Atlanta, the N-S/good-bad thing wasn’t perfect. There are places in Northwest Atlanta that are downright scary, and there are some places in Northeast Atlanta (Midtown) where I wouldn’t feel safe walking after dark, while I might feel differently in a place on the southside. But there’s perception and then there’s reality.
Frm the 1950s, North Las Vegas was the poor stepchild of Las Vegas. The whole of NLV wasn’t the “bad part” of the county, but the vast majority of the “bad part” of the county was within NLV.
As the entire county exploded in the 90s, a bunch of ordinary middle class housing got built north of North Las Vegas in unincorporated county territory.
I’ve since moved away, so I don’t know whether a bunch of this has been annexed by LV or NLV or some new town has been created.
In St. Louis, the north side of the City is definitely the “bad part”, at least from the 1960s to the present. It’s the place to go to buy crack or get shot at.
Far worse than the north side of the City though is East Saint Louis, across the river in Illinois. And that does follow the prevailing wind theory.
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south.
I don’t believe Cecil covers this configuration, but who knows. 
North Philadelphia is a lot worse than South Philly.
The Irish are the ns of Europe, lads. An’ Dubliners are the ns of Ireland. The culchies have fuckin’ everything. An’ the northside Dubliners are the n*****s o’ Dublin. — Say it loud. I’m black an’ I’m proud.
–Roddy Doyle
Rochester doesn’t have sides, but quadrants, split by a river down the middle and railroad tracks east-west back when they were at grade level and the railroads meant something. It would up having two ghettos, one in the northeast and one in the southwest. The one in the northeast was older, though, the literal “wrong side of the tracks” where the majority of the factories and immigrant workers were.
Is this a quote from the play because they don’t use n***** in the film?
The bad section of Schenectady is in the center of the city – just slightly east of downtown.
Cecil correctly noted that the East Side of Cleveland is the poorer of the two. The key landmark is the Cuyahoga River, which runs roughly north and south through the city. Locals joke about “having your papers [or passport] in order” when you cross the Cuyahoga, as people tend not to stray from “their side” of the river. A friend in Hartford, Conn. tells me it’s the same there.
The north side of Milwaukee is definitely worse than the south side.
But we have to also consider the directions of east, west, and central (hell yes “central” is a direction. Didn’t ya know that? 
)
For instance, I would much rather live on the northeast side of Milwaukee than the northwest or north central side. But I’d rather live here on the far southwest side (west of State Fair Park) than the southeast side or south central side.
A few that come to mind
But … until the 1950s and 1960s, the East Side was originally the wealthier of the two sides; the East Side of Cleveland was once middle-class and upper-middle class, while the West Side was working-class to lower-middle class. At one time, Bratenahl (a small, extremely wealthy city on Lake Erie completely surrounded by rough ghetto-like neighborhoods) wasn’t really that out-of-place.
Today, the eastern suburbs of Cleveland are generally wealthier than the western suburbs; the eastern 'burbs are considered far more “old money”. Some of the suburbs in the Chagrin Valley are the wealthiest in the country. That’s not to say there’s blue-collar eastern 'burbs (Euclid, Bedford Heights, Lake County’s W-towns) and well-off western 'burbs (Westlake, Bay Village, Rocky River), but twhen Cleveland magazine publishes lists of housing prices in the 'burbs every year, the eastern 'burbs usually occupy the top 16 ot 17 out of 20.
Basically, in Cleveland the bad side and good side of town “flipped”. Thing is, it was because the formerly good side got much, much worse than the bad side, while the bad side didn’t take as bad of a beating during the post-1950s decline of the city.
New York City?
Yeah, the “passport to visit another part of town” phenomenon in the United States is at its most extreme in Cleveland. I lived in the eastern 'burbs and dated a West Sider for a couple of years, and if we got married, she made it clear that I would be the one making a permanent river crossing. I would have been the West Side Jewish community. (Rule of thumb: if you want to find what’s generally the “good side” of town, locate the synagogues. There are local chains in Cleveland that are side-loyal, which refuse to open locations on the other side of the river out of a sense of loyalty to their side; the most famous is Honey Hut ice cream.
In Austin, on the other hand, the river-as-international-boundary phenomenon has another twist. Austinites that live south of the Colorado River believe South Austin is the real Austin, and that they’re the only real Austinites. In Cleveland, it’s a rivalry, but in Austin, South Austinites view North Austin as not even being in Austin, even though it’s the location of downtown, UT, the state capitol. and so on. South Austin has a generally “funker” feel than more affluent North Austin, and most of the city’s hipster food trailers (expensive cupcakes, sushi and so on sold out of Airstreams, as opposed to taco trucks) are located there.
Refer to the Cleveland side flipping phenomenon. Originally Harlem and the north side of Manhattan was the good part of the island, and Bronx was considered one of the nicest boroughs. Manhattan’s most notorious neighborhoods were once mostly south of Central Park. Suburban Westchester County is still considered more desirable than Long Island.
North Richmond, CA is the “worst” part of town. The rest of Richmond is just generally bad. Nothing to do with race, though.
Thanks guys. This is all really interesting. Any more “why” theories?
I think the ghetto in Kansas city is on the east side. A couple hundred miles east is St. Louis, and it has its ghetto on the east side too.
No idea what that is about.