I spent a number of days in Buffalo during the last year and certainly would not call it a terrible place. City Hall is too big and there are absolutely some unpleasant neighborhoods, but people are friendly, there are some interesting places to visit and things to do, and any place that has Anderson’s, Ted’s, Duff’s, and the Anchor Bar can’t be all bad!
I always think the name Milton Keynes sounds like an economist: Milton Friedman + John Maynard Keynes. Must be terribly depressing to live there.
I’ve lived in Buffalo for around 4 months before. While I wouldn’t want to repeat the experience, it certainly isn’t anywhere near the worst city/towns in America.
I’ll second Wasilla. OTOH, Palmer (a proper town!) is lovely 
Those who live in towns with pulp mills will sniff the air and tell you that all they smell is money.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Caracas, Venezuela
Greeley, Colorado
I know San Juan has a bad rep but am dissapointed such a beautiful and progressive country such as Costa Rica hosts world ranking slums.
Not that much of a world traveler, so I’ll nominate 2 USA cities:
Spring Grove PA---- right in the the middle of this town is the Glatfelter coal fired power plant. With a name like that you’d think it was run by a Batman villain. You drive through the town and you can’t wait to get out because of the stench, and what you might be breathing in your lungs. I can’t imagine what it is like to live there. Let’s put it this way: that’s WITHOUT the carcinogen spewing behemoth that takes up much of this burgh of horror.
Dunn, NC—17 years ago I was driving my mother up from Florida when the car totally broke down and we got stuck on this I-95 exit shit hole. The slick tongued redneck car dealer of course spotted two Yankee carpetbaggers and sandbagged us on the repairs. I couldn’t get a rental car anywhere to save my life. We were stuck at a Super 8 Motel with a swimming pool that must have been heated to 150 degrees. The only source of food or entertainment was a diner where the waitress was nasty to us because she must have ID’d our Northern accents. And to walk any further would have been to walk into the ghetto side of town where I’m sure all the blacks were segregated to.
Finally we knew we were trapped and gave in and paid $13,000 plus the trade in for a Ford Taurus that at the time was probably worth 9. Dunn, NC was such a shithole my mother actually paid $13,000 so we could get out of it.
Fallujah, Iraq is reportedly now a pile of uninhabited rubble.
You could have called a cab to take you to the train station in Fayetteville.
Where is this “San Juan, Costa Rica” that two different people have mentioned? Maybe you need to go back and take a fresh look at it, you seem to have missed some of its more significant characteristics, like, its name…
:smack:
Juan was Saint Jose’s middle name. That’s it.
It’s also the headquarters of Red Bull Racing’s F1 headquarters.
Ron White did a bit on the horrible smell of paper mills. He said wood doesn’t stink, water doesn’t stink - why does paper stink?
For dreary depression, Endicott, NY. From what I could tell, it’s a military industrial complex bust town, filled with laid-off and disabled workers desparately seeking personal and property recompense for toxic-waste maladies inflicted by the companies there. It made Detroit look cheerful and optimistic.
I’m sure I’ve led a sheltered life but the dingiest place wife and I have ever seen, bar none is Dolan Springs Arizona. Just awful.
San Jose, Costa Rica isn’t that bad. I have stayed there twice including two years ago. It isn’t generally beautiful like the rest of Costa Rica is but it has some charms. I walked around by myself for many hours and did not feel unsafe at all and I don’t even speak much Spanish these days. The airport is fairly modern and it has very nice hotels even in the city center. There are plenty of Americans that live in enclaves as well.
I wouldn’t recommend staying there very long during a visit to Costa Rica but that is just because San Jose is a dense, urban environment in a country whose real specialty is eco-tourism but almost all Latin American countries from Mexico southward, have much, much worse cities than San Jose. No part of Costa Rica even ranks on the regional shithole scale let alone the worldwide one. It is the oasis of Central America. If you want shitholes, nearby Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador will be happy to provide you with thrilling experiences in a real one.
Probably the other chemicals used in paper production. 
Al Dabbah, Sudan is the worst place I have been to, followed closely by Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.
I don’t understand how anyone can think a place in the developed world could qualify.
If I were forced to resettle outside my own country, I would almost certainly choose one of the places I’ve seen in the third world, over anyplace I know about in a developing country. Even though I could probably find a way to live almost as cheaply in a developed country.
But it is true that nearly all of the (relatively few) places beset by the most horrific circumstances happen to be in the third world, because they are not insulated against horrific events by protective wealth.
I’ve never seen Goma, but I imagine it probably once looked a great deal like nearby Bukavu, which, when I visited, was a beautiful city inhabited by very peasant people. Before external events closed in on them, over which the townspeople had no control.
Never been to Goma. But was the last largest city to have lava flow through the center. That qualifies.
Naturally, but then saying “boy, them chemicals used in paper production sure do stink!” wouldn’t make a very good stand up routine.