Recollections of living in Prince Georges County, Maryland from my college days as a University of MD, College Park student in the late 70’s, set it in stone for me as the gold standard of depressing suburban wastelands. What’s your pick?
Rochester, New York. It’s dirty, dangerous, cold, and boring. The city tries to make up for it by using the few fun things to do in the area as selling points. The only problem is, that the interesting places are usually at least an hour from the city. Don’t enter Rochester, unless you’re just passing through. Try to avoid this city at all costs.
Downtown Columbus, Ohio was the worst place I’ve ever lived. The sidewalks roll up after 5 pm. There is no grocery store nearby. The downtown vacany rate is probably 50% or so.
East Palo Alto, CA had the ignoble distinction of making the people in DC really happy a few years ago when EPA was declared the Homicide Capital of the United States. It’s also depressing, unmaintained parks, the shops are few and expensive, and dull (other than the sound of gunfire. In spite of all this Fresno is far worse in California. Fresno is horrible and there’s no escape.
Threads in this fashion seem to come up, and the majority seems to say Detroit. Having never been there, I can’t say.
Well, I never lived there, but the ugliest, most depressing place I’ve ever driven through was Aberdeen, Washington. In fact, the entire southwest corner of Washington was just awful. Grindingly poor, bad weather, and they’ve cut down all the trees. Ugh. Depressed me so much I almost turned back towards Seattle (and we were on our way to Carmel, California to attend my cousin’s wedding).
I’ve been to Detroit, and I’d say it’s on the same level as the District of Columbia and Baltimore. So much of each is dirty, in disrepair and dangerous. Sad.
For rural areas, parts of West Virginia are pretty bad, too, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland is as well.
I think its safe to say that no city has a monopoly on urban decay and filth. Says a lot about this country (and plently of others) that for every Fresno, CA and Flint, MI there is a Beverly Hills and Pebble Beach.
Perhaps more accurately, there are many more of the shitholes than there are the swanky neighborhoods, because that is the nature of class exploitation.
But I digress
I live in the city next door to astro’s benchmark shithole, and I don’t think its that bad. And this is coming from a guy who grew up in Chicago, and loves big cities. I’ll allow how the area has gotten better in just the few years I’ve been here, so it may well have been unbearable back then.
I got to to go with Flint, MI. I’ve driven through that area and it is the end of the world. I had to do a report on in for my modern history class and it never saw the uplift that many other places did in the 1990s. Although my father says Detroit in the winter is equally awful.
I live in DC and for the life of me I can’t understand how it gets lumped in with the other cities in these threads. The past twenty years have been very kind to the district and even in the worse areas there are signs of improvement. For example, the H street corridor used to be a hell hole from what I understand. It is now five years away from being trendy. People are buying homes across the river in Anacostia now and fixing them up. As a kid if you took Constitution and drove north on 14th street there were hookers on every block, I would challenge anyone to find one there today.
I know I sound like a broken record as I have defended DC in the past, but I used to live in Worcester, MA and though I wouldn’t place it among the worst cities, and I loved living there, I can see how someone would put it on this type of list. I am curious as to what part of the District people are in that form the basis of their interpretation, and if they have been here in the past decade or if they are working on impressions formed long ago.
I spent part of an evening in Gary, Indiana once and if there’s a worse place to live in the United States, I don’t want to know about it. Gary is the cadillac of shitholes.
Having been through/visited Detroit, Flint, Gary, and Joliet, (and seeing some deplorable shit in all of them), my vote goes to East St. Louis, IL. Why? All of the other cities had SOME small glimmer of hope that the others did not.
I’ve heard bad things about East St. Louis, so much so that it gets made fun of on The Simpsons (where the characters live in Springfield, which is supposed to be just as bad).
Wow, my first SDMB simul-post!
The correct answer, in only the second post!
Rochester is a horrid dump. I’ve never lived there but I’ve visited every big city in the USA, and Rochester sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks.
Last year there was a famous screwup involving the cities of Rochester and Toronto, which are more or less across from each other on Lake Ontario. Milliojns of dollars had been invested in a fast ferry connection between the two cities. The enterprise went belly up in months, because while the city of Rochester put millions into supporting the service with a shiny new terminal and such, the city of Toronto couldn’t be bothered. Funny thing is, many people predicted that would happen. It’s really very simple; Lots of people want to LEAVE Rochester, but nobody wants to go there.
Rochester’s weather is famously terrible, almost as bad as Syracuse. It’s hideously boring, the economy’s in awful shape, and it’s crime-ridden. Stay away.
Detroit & Flint win it for me.
And I live between the two.
YAY!
The second-to-last time my husband and I were in DC together, which was right on about 10 years ago, I saw men openly dealing drugs in Lafayette Park across from the White House and we were very aggressively pursued by beggars on several occasions, both in the District and in Old Town Alexandria. In the District (can’t remember exactly where now) we had a man curse at and try to hit my husband because he wouldn’t give the guy any money. The last time we went was on an organized tour to see a football game at RFK Stadium. The tour operators used to shuttle people to Georgetown for dinner the night before the game, but they told us they stopped doing that after several incidents of people being robbed there. They took us to Alexandria instead, where we were again pursued by beggars, though not as aggressively.
I’ve been back by myself for other reasons twice since then, and while I agree that it has improved, particularly in the cleanliness department, on the last occasion I was there, people visiting the area around the Smithsonian were being warned to beware of scam artists trying to con them out of money.
I used to view the District as a fun and exciting place to go on vacation (as long as you don’t try to drive in the District itself); I don’t any more.
Hammond, Indiana. You can add stinky to the list of attributes.
Actually, that whole Gary-Hammond-East Chicago corridor is really, really ugly and depressing. And stinky.
I’ve been a lot of the nation’s supposedly nasty places, like South Philly (or West Philly, or North Philly), Trenton, Detroit, etc… But I think this stretch in Indiana takes the prize.
Excuse me, can I ask how long you spent in Rochester, and at what time?
And if you’re offering NYC as an alternative I have to disagree, strongly. Certainly Rochester isn’t a bustling metropolis, but compare it to Utica, or Buffalo, or God help us all, Niagara Falls (the US city, that is) and it’s absolutely loverly. Of course, trying to get you to come in spring to visit one of my favorite parts of the city for simply walking and enjoying being outdoors wouldn’t be easy - I’m talking about the Mount Hope Cemetery, and for some people the idea of enjoying a visit to a Victorian era public cemetary is anathema. 
Seriousy, for a city of 500,000, a thriving arts community with several repitoire companies, and the George Eastman House.
Of course, even the Hell Hole that is NYC can’t compare to Jersey Shi-… City. (For anyone from Bergen County who feels I’m maligning thier home, I lived in the Heights for a year in 1997, and before that had a Grandmother who’d lived in Bayonne, then ended her days at Jersey City’s Jewish Home. I’ve lived there, and seen the city for years.)
Rick Jay, you’re aware that the Ferry is about to be purchased by the city and put back into operation, and that the main reason CATS had to suspend operations was that they were doing things on a shoestring? And if you’re offering Syracuse as an improvement… :rolleyes: