One more vote for that area. Between the steel mills, oil refineries, and railroad yards, I can’t decide which is less apealing. The whole area has an eery greenish-yellowish misty fog ambience. Although, they did quit burning toxic waste to fuel the steel furnaces.
I would like to give Memphis, TN a dishonorable mention too. I’ve never seen so many boarded up, burned out buildings and piles of trash. Maybe there is a good area of Memphis, I sure didn’t find it.
I spent a year one night in Salem, Oregon (OK, I lived there for a year or so).
What a nasty place.
I have nothing specific to point to here. For me that entire town has the feeling of the first few minutes of a Pauly Shore movie: you haven’t quite figured out the plot yet, but you know it’s going to be terrible.
shudder
A close second would be Springfield, OR… I do not consider it a coincidence that Matt Groening chose the name “Springfield” for the Simpson’s hometown.
What, Cleveland doesn’t count? 
(102 miles from Erie)
I live in Prince George’s County, MD (Hyattsville) and while I’ll admit that there are parts of the county that are depressing and depressed there are also some very nice areas. I can’t really think of any one town or city that I thought was awful to live in, although as a teen I abhored living in downstate Delaware - Lower Delaware is nicknamed “Slower” Delaware. Now I’m looking for somewhere like that to be able to retire to! I’d love to be able to go to a small town in Michigan, but the cold and snow are very much factors against that. My current favorite is MD’s eastern shore, believe it or not.
I have to agree with a lot of the posters…many of these old cities are truly awful places to live. what i don’t understand are the rural towns that have degenerated into slums. take one such place…Gardner MA. Its a desolate old factory town that used to make high-end furniture. The place is filled with empty factories that are falling down…there are furniture “factory outlets”-but the factories are now in China. There are no good paying jobs anymore (unless you become a fireman or policeman), and the smart local kids all leave. yet, minutes away you have beautiful woods, with fishing, hiking, camping. if you have a boat, you have access to some of the best lakes and rivers around. Yet the locals don’t ski or hike or fish-they just hang around the local bars and drink themselves silly. What causes such apathy? After all, you can make of life what you want…the quality of life is probably much higher than it is in Beverly Hills (the air is a lot cleaner, for one thing). So why don’t these people lead better lives? Its the same story, alcoholism, child abuse, and an early, violent death. So sad!
I’d say North Dakota. It’s like South Dakota, except without all the thrills. At least in South Dakota, when you’re driving through the vast expanses of empty plains you’ll at least see a sign that says “Laura Ingles Wilder used to live here.”
Muncie, Indiana is the worst place I’v ever lived. God, it’s a shithole. I went to college at Ball State, and everytime I’d be driving back from a visit home there seemed to be a black cloud that hung over the city. Truly the worst.
And I once visited Greely, CO, which was a shithole because of a slaughterhouse there, and they would burn the blood on Thursdays which caused a smell that was horrible beyond belief.
I have been to Hell, and it is Buffalo, NY.
Gary, Indiana.
I’ll second East St. Louis, Illinois, Gary, Indiana, Baltimore, Maryland, Camden, Jersey City and Bayonne, New Jersey,
I’d like to add to the list:
Parkersburg, West Virginia
and
The International Drive area of Orlando…it’s got to be the tackiest place on earth…ever here of a sign code ordinance Orange County?
OP asked for ugliest and most depressing …
Haven’t been to enough ugly places yet to nominate one, however … I suspect it’s somewhere in Nevada …
Depressing? 
Now that’s one I can speak to with some authority … Yep, no doubt about it …
Salt Lake City, UT wins – hands down!
If you’re not an active member of the ruling theocracy, you have no rights, are not allowed to think and you are ostrasized for speaking out against “The Church”. (No need to name it – I believe everyone knows which “Church” rules Utah …)
Come to think of it, this Board (and it’s source – the Internet) are probably still illegal there – due to the free exchange of information, adults who are capable of thinking for themselves, etc…
I spent more than 40 years trying to get out of Utah … *Finally * made it out 2 1/2 years ago. 
(Hotel Cal has nothin’ on Utah …)
I had a stopover at the airport and as the plane was landing I could just tell what a depressing place it is. It looks it. Bland and depressing.
I’ll nominate some parts of Las Vegas. People only concentrate on the glimmer and glamour of the Strip, but there are some nasty areas of town.
Chalk up another vote for Baltimore, MD. Even the parts of the city that attempt to be nice are ghetto. The economy is in ruins. The entire joint is dirty, smelly, and disrepaired, and driving around it absolutely sucks. An inebriated chimp with a protractor and a crayon could design a better road system.
Adam
Hey tarragon918, wanna have a PG-dope at Franklins some night? I know there’s a Greenbelt doper here, and probably a few students at UMCP as well.
Well, I’ve lived in Flint, Detroit, Baltimore, and Waukegan, Illinois. I’ve visited Gary, Hammond, East St. Louis, Cleveland, Newark, Bayonne, and Eagletown, Indiana.
I gotta go with tie between Gary-Hammond and E. St. Louis. I didn’t see any redeeming places either location. Of course, the same goes for Eagletown, Indiana, but they only have a population of a few hundred, at best.
Flint is right up there, too. As is Detroit.
Cleveland had its semi-charming parts, and frankly, I loved Baltimore. Some parts were dangerous, some were fantastic!
I honestly like Buffalo (though it’s on its way down), and Rochester is tolerable.
However, Elmira, NY and Binghamton, NY are two of the uglist places I’ve ever been. You don’t know depression until you’re stuck in a bus station in either for a couple of hours. (As I recall, the Elmira station had a slightly less “urban blight” and more “deserted industrial area” feeling, but otherwise they are very similar.)
Chester, PA is a long standing slum in the middle of the otherwise mostly prosperous suburbs of Philadelphia. Even their own website ends a short history of the city with, “By the mid-1950’s Chester began its decline with many social and economic characteristics changing faster than the City could adjust. Employment declined as major industries moved out of the City, retail growth declined, the rest of Delaware County (which had once relied on Chester for employment opportunities) became more independent.”
But worst by far (as mentioned above) is Camden, NJ. It looks like one of those post-apocolyptic movies brought to life.
Yeah, I spent a month in Muncie one weekend, on a business trip.
On the second day my co-worker and I decided to embrace the pain, and started taking disposable-camera photos of each other smiling and waving in front of the abandoned gas stations, boarded-up stores, etc.
I’ve been to both Rochester and Flint, and man, that’s a tough call. I might have to go with Rochester. Vast swaths of Flint were simply dead and empty. Rochester takes the vast swaths of death and fills it with filth of call kinds.
Though, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Flint, so maybe the filth has managed to fill all the nooks and crannies there as well.
As for regional malaise, the plains of dull-to-decrepit that fills the stretch between Detroit and Flint must (please, tell me it must) be among the worst this country can show. My stepgrandparents live there, and after about two days, all I want to do is flee. I feel that way about most of the Midwest, actually, but it gets almost overpowering in that swath of pityless land along I-75.
Just so the West Coast doesn’t feel left out, another crap hole I’ve visited:
Modesto, CA - Maybe there’s some nice parts of Modesto, but I never saw them. Wouldn’t hurt the city to invest in a traffic engineer to time the traffic lights. Everytime we drove across town, it never failed, stopped by every light. Add in the famous Modesto nut cases, and you have a winning combination.
Ever since the days of Jimmy Carter (the “malaise” guy) politicians have bewailed the plight of these dying cities…yet nobody seems to know how to bring them back. Once ide was “enterprise zones” …as i understand it, an enetrprise zone would be an area where companies would be given substantial tax breaks to move in and set up plants. Why hasn’t this worked? In my own experience, Boston MA had a big blighted area (the South End). Starting in the late 1960’s the South end became poored and run down every year. its white working class population moved out, and black people from the south moved in. Large areas became slums. and many tenements were abandoned and torn down. Now, the South End is the hottest real estate market in Boston! Properties are being renovated., and the area is full of trendy restaurants, jazz clubs, art galleries, etc.
Of course, the fact is that we (in the USA) don’t manufacture anything anymore…so the idea of factories in an urban area is pretty unrealistic. And ghetto dwellers don’t have much place in the new “Information Economy” we now have…