What is the worst city in the US? Where uglyness, crime, unemployment, and poverty make it a place you wouldn’t want to be. Plus other factors (tax base being on welfare, poor infrastructure, vacant industries), that make a comeback pretty unlikely.
Gary, Indiana has my vote. The downtown area is so empty that trees are growing out of the roofs and even renovation projects (hotel, convention center) stand empty. The residential areas may have only one house to a block because of the vacant lots. Besides being perhaps the ugliest place I’ve seen, statistically, it’s at the wrong end of crime, income, and unemployment numbers.
Some other candidates among the places I’ve seen:
East St Louis, Illinois
Camden, New Jersey
Flint, Michigan
Butte, Montana
Highland Park, Michigan
Greenville, TX. Highest per-capita murder rate in Texas more often than not. Right on the crossroads of several drug-trafficking routes, 50 miles outside of Dallas. Very segregated, very depressed economy, most people who work do so through temp agencies for a few cents over minimum.
I vote Newark, NJ, even though I’ve only been in the airport… it’s that bad. Bithlo, FL is pretty bad too although I don’t know if you’d count 11 junkyards, a general store, and a McDonald’s as a “city”.
While Alabamans are indeed fine people, the state itself sucks IMHO. There is nothing pretty about it physically and summer in Huntsville will make you wish you were dead.
East St. Louis is pretty bad, too. When I was a teenager my church’s youth group went to St. Louis, MO to some kinda conference and our bus broke down in ESL. That was a scary 4 or so hours before we got a new bus shudder
I used to think my own hometown (El Paso, TX) was the armpit of America, with the armpit of Mexico (Cd. Juarez) squeezed up against it…like some bizarre wrestling move. However East St. Louis makes me glad to be here. At least the murder rate is relatively low - on this side of the border at least. But El Paso is probably the ugliest city in the United States.
I’ve never been to B-more, I guess I am lucky. A friend of mine had to go there for business and the guard at the hotel door wouldn’t let him leave the hotel on foot.
I had to go to downtown Newark, NJ once for business. They have an elevated covered sidewalk there (I presume so you won’t have to “mix” with the people on the street). When we got to the office, the lady we had to meet with said some people in the office might appear a bit upset today, they found a body in the trunk of a car in the parking garage, AGAIN.
Naturally, people who visit a city once or twice a year (or perhaps never) will have a different view than those who actually live there. Perhaps one helpful criterion could be that the person nominating the city must have lived (or still be living) in the city. This is because as a rule people tend to see their hometowns as they are, perhaps even leaning toward being proud of their city. So their complaining against it might carry a bit more weight than an observation from a business traveler or tourist.
