What's the ugliest, most depressing place to live in your country?

In My Humble Opinion
1

While reading this thread I got to wondering what’s the worse place that you’ve been to in your own country?

I’m a young guy who hasn’t seen much of Canada, or for that matter much of Ontario, but I’d have to go with where I am right now. Windsor, Ontario. It’s not that bad in comparision to other places, but living by the University and not having a car, makes you feel like you’re living in a town of 500 people. No LCBO or Beer Store withing a 30 minute walk, no major grocery stores(It’s hard to get good meat/produce from the small-town grocery stores down the street. And I’m talking about chicken, onions and peppers), no decent restaurants, since everyone goes to the strip to eat at the chains. You drive past it when taking the bridge to Detroit. Then there’s the downtown, a row of 25 bars on one street, and they’re all the exact same, same music, same crowd, same crap.

Public transit is non-existant and all the new development is going on the suburbs, making the city even more inaccesible to students. We’ve got the highest cancer rates in Canada and the worst pollution as well.

When everyone here looks up to Detroit as the place to go, you know you’ve got a problem. And when I can’t wait to get back to Scarborough because it looks like a real city in comparision, you know you’ve got a problem.

2

The standard responses for the UK are Slough, Swindon or Milton Keynes. They’re artificial towns that were built to draw people out of London after World War II. Very grey and essentially soulless, but apparently not too bad to live in. At any rate I’ve not visited any of the three.

My hometown Hatfield is a bit of a dump. Highlights include skyscrapers (rare and unappealing in British towns), an appalling 60’s town centre and recent fame acquired through a local rail crash. There’s a gigantic shopping mall with crap shops because they opened it just after a smaller mall opened in neighboring Wewlyn Garden City. It also has an ASDA (Walmart equivalent) right in the centre of town, which is actually divided by a motorway. To make things worse, British Aerospace, the chief employer, shut down just after I was born. The control tower has been left to ruin, and the rest of the ground is being turned into a charming business park. I’ve also been harassed by teenagers walking beside fields in the middle of the day. An ex-polytechnic doesn’t seem to help the town, the students are wise to keep on campus.

The good? Large parts of Saving Private Ryan were filmed on the old Aerodrome (or is that good?). 60’s act The Zombies came from Hatfield, and how they managed to write such happy music remains a mystery to me. There’s also Hatfield House, one of Queen Elizabeth’s old residences, with gardens in which I’ve spent many a happy day.

Then there’s Cumbernauld in scotland. After designing it, I heard the architects had no trouble finding employment with satan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1668464.stm
<Shudders>

3

Some of the smaller ex-industrial towns in England are truly horrendous in some ways, anywhere from Burnley to Luton. But they aren’t inherently ugly, and without wanting to patronise them, they still seem to have some hope of revivial, and some kind of pride.

I find the soulless suburban sprawl worse, when it’s at the cheaper end of the housing market - I describe it as like being inside a computer simulation. Those are the architects that I see as ending up as Lucifer’s handmaids. Urban planning at its worst - acres of what can only be described as ‘accomodation’, and a main road leading to a supermarket, electrical warehouse and petrol station.

4

I 've gone ‘over’ Burnley a few times by train. I have to say it has nothing remotely pleasing to the eye viewable from the train, but then again the same can be said for most of the Journey. The North west of England has plenty of really dull depressing towns. Part of the reason I left.

5

You forgot the Comet Motel :smiley:

6

Based on what I’ve seen personally, southern Mississippi. Not that we need another dump on the South post, but really, it sucks. It’s so hot, and everything just looks so broken down and crappy. Also, it has the worst education system in the country, and the lowest literacy rate, and the highest per capita rate of teen pregnancy and welfare recipients. No offense to anyone who has to live there, but IMO Mississippi is truly the worst state in the country.

West Virginia, however, doesn’t deserve the barbs it gets. It’s a beautiful state.

7

I’ll forever hold Phoenix, AZ, as my least favorite spot in the USA. Your description above pretty well describes it, except it is also 100+ degrees May to September and the tap water tastes like lukewarm sandy clam juice. Whenever I tried to explain to residents why Seattle is better they complain about horrible parking and “not wanting to become the next L.A.”

I imagine there are worse cities in America ( I imagine PHX is probably safer, with a better economy, then say East St. Louis or Gary, Indiana). I’ve just never spent any time in them.

8

Having not been there personally, I offer the opinion shared by many, that as for the state of Alaska, Kotzebue was the least desirable location. The skies look beautiful, though, and of course, there would be the joy of the auroras. However, it’s remote, cold and full of frozen dog doody.

Personally, I found that Castlegar, BC remains the least favourite place I’ve ever lived. All the charm and warmth of a small town…straight out of a Stephen King short story. Hot in summer, cold in winter. Overcast, deary and dull in winter, too. With the smell of a pulp mill in the air.

9

Cite?

10

Combine these two and you have Prince George, BC. We have all the cold impersonality of a big city, with the convenience of a small town. Everything closes at 5:00, and even when everything is open, there is nothing to do. Top three things that my friends and I do when bored.

[ul]
Go for coffee
Go to Walmart
Uhhh…
Go for coffee and play cards.
[/ul]

Add to this that winter run from October to March, and spring usually rolls in around June, leaving us with two moths of nice weather, melting piles of snow, leftover gravel, Dust clouds from street cleaning, bare trees and brown lawns. Nothing gets green until June. And Fall moves in in September, and the leaves are gone again by the end of the month. We also have not one, but three big pulp mills, plus a refinery. Thats all you really smell, day in and day out. Except for spring thaw. That’s when the winters supply of dog crap unfreezes and begin to go south in a big way. Our downtown core has vacancies of up to 50%, and the places which are open are either pawn shops or insta loans. Of the new stores that open, 80% are cold beer and wine stores, thanks to government deregulation a couple of years back allowing them to sell spirits as well. The biggest thing to happen recently in the opening of the new casino, which isn’t really new, it just moved out of the downtown area, leaving another gaping hole, which is planned to become … wait for it … a cold beer and wine store! O, and our unemployment is at about 14.5% right now. Which explains the popularity of the liquor stores, gambling,a nd loans shops.

We do have a very nice University, brand spanking new with lovely architecture. Anytime anybody visits, that’s where they get taken to be shown Prince George’s sights. That’s all we ever really want to show anybody.

and to top it off, we are the biggest city in the north of BC. For about 600 km south and east. West and North? Don’t bother. North, you will have to drive to Fairbanks or Anchoriage. West? Welcome to Japan. And we’re already located 700 km east of the west coast.

And I’m stuck here for who knows how long. I’m not sure who first said it, but the best thing to do here is leave.

11

I should add though, that once you get outside of town, you will find some of the best camping, fishing, and hunting in the world. As well as the nicest scenery. To the East we have the Rocky Mountains, and to the West we have the Coast Mountains. In between we have nothing but forest, lakes and rivers. I can go fish my favorite spots, and not see anybody for days, and that’s only driving an hour or two outside of town. Standard operating procedure when fishing is to pack up and move on when someone else shows up at your spot because"it’s just getting too crowded".

So, in conclusion, city bad, everywhere else, good.

12

The 1992 National Adult Literary Survey found that Mississippi has the lowest literacy rate of every state in the union, with 30% of adults being functionally illiterate. In 1998, according to the CDC, Mississippi was not leading the country in teen pregnancies, but it was in the top three, which certainly won’t be winning it any awards. (The other two were Texas and Nevada.) I’m not sure who you’d turn to in order to find information on the quality of the schools, but it’s not looking good for Mississippi, sociologically. I’ve nothing against the state - I’ve lived there myself, by choice, and would be glad to live down in the Biloxi area again, lovely Gulf views and close to New Orleans - but there’s no reason to get defensive about easily-proven quanitifiable things. Mississippi has a lot of room for improvement, and noting that is NOT slamming the state’s residents in general.

13

Now, racinchikki, I did remember that you had lived in Miss. at one time. And my one-word request was not meant to be defensive, although that may be hard to see without a complete sentence (for context).

I just like for people to be truthful. That’s all. :wink: And, IMHO, the saddest, most depressing part of Miss. is the Delta … which has got to be one of the most hopeless places on Earth. The Delta also extends into parts of Louisiana and Arkansas. FWIW.

14

I once had a promising job interview in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Upon arriving in the town, I didn’t even stop the car, I turned straight back home and phoned them to offer my apologies. There was no way that I was going to work in such a godforsaken shithole. Slag heaps on the horizon, smell of burning rubber, that kind of thing.

Similar experience in Blackburn, Lancs. God Almighty, what a dump. I would also not recommend Wakefield or Widnes as places to visit unless you enjoy grim urban dystopia.

15

I’ll go along with that one. Wakefield Kirkgate station is fascinating - a crumbling vandalised shell, perched on a crumbling viaduct above a vandalised abscence-of-a-town.

16

Now come on, that’s not fair - there’s plenty of towns you can pass through by train and get an unfair impression of…such as Stockport…and Rugby…and Watford…and Chelmsford…

17

Dax, France.

18

Here in Victoria, Australia, I would have to nominate parts of the Latrobe Valley

It is home to brown-coal mining and power-generation, and boasts great, hulking goddamned ugly powerstations every few kilometres in between paddocks of cows and great vistas of snowtopped mountains in the distance. Physically it is (or was, rather) a beautiful part of this state.

But because of employment cutbacks over the years (due to the increasing technocratizion of mining and generation) it now has one of the highest unemployment, dependence on welfare benefits, domestic violence, mental illness and general family dysfunctionality rates of the entire country.

Nice place to drive through…on the way to somewhere else. :frowning:

19

Ahhh. Moe. Yes. I spent a week in Moe on day.

20

Here in Ireland, there was actually a contest for this designation a couple years ago. I think some place in Co. Tipperary “won” (if that’s the word).

Personally, I’d say Longford Town. It’s just dreadful.