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Worst City?

C

Cooool

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What's the worst developed city you've ever visited? A city that would be unbearable to live?

Some contenders for the worst cities (from what I've heard) would be Phoenix, Detroit, Houston, Miami and Los Angeles.
 
Your question is asking which city that we've visited is the worst developed, but then your contenders are only cities you've heard about.

Is it just me, or is that not very fair?
 
I had heard stories about Phoenix being badly planned, but that wasn't enough to prepare me for the experience of seeing it for myself. It was shocking.
 
Detroit is at the top of my list for sure. Nothing can even contend with it's epic fail-ness.

Other cities I'd add in would include:

Winnipeg. I don't know why, but it just seems so boring. It wouldn't be bad, but I think it would just be boring. This is after being there for only about 4 days in my entire life, but it's the idea I get from it.

I'd definitely agree with Miami and Pheonix. I guess that they're both nice and warm, but they just seems like they've got a terrible demographic of people. Combine that with total car culture and they become a place that I'd only want to go for a vacation. And just barely.

Houston and LA are kind of iffy for me. Houston's got a fair bit of culture, and LA has some nice parts. But they've both got their downsides too. If LA didn't have the density of scale that 14 million people gives, transportation would've been a bullet between the eyes.

Interesting, I can't actually think of any "bad" cities outside the US (and Winnipeg, but I think my opinion is a bit coloured on that.)

Could this thread also include awesome cities? If not I'll be making another thread on that.

@BobBob: I lol'd :D
 
Out of the Major cities I have visited, Detroit without a question. Which is a shame, because in the 1940's, it probably was one of the best places to be in NA. Detroit must act as a warning to the rest of the world, invest in and diversify in cities, not sprawl!
 
I'm paging Hipster Duck...

But Phoenix, as bad as it may be, was a somewhat pleasant surprise - but maybe because I was expecting the worst. Tempe is a very progressive university city, Phoenix does have a quiet independant art scene and good restaruants, and the area does have some architectural marvels (Taliesin West, the Grady Gammage Auditorium, and the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, amongst them) and two good museums.

The worst large city I have been to is Las Vegas. It's Phoenix without the culture and is less sustainable.

I also liked Winnipeg. Don't rip on Winnipeg.

The worst Canadian city I've been to is Cornwall.
 
I'd gladly second Las Vegas. It had the potential to be so much more, but it's so badly laid out and such a pain in the ass to walk around in that I don't have any desire to go back. Cheap, tacky, hideous buildings everywhere, no culture to speak of, and nothing else to really redeem it

Mind you I've never been to Detroit, tho.
 
Phoenix, Las Vegas and Houston would just about kill me. Not only are they unbearably hot, but apparently they all have some of the worst sprawl in North America (particularly Houston).

I've heard Los Angeles looks like a third world country. Mind you, from what I've heard, the city is basically segregated by income disparity. The traffic sounds brutal.

But what happened to Detroit that made it so bad? Same with Buffalo, New York?
 
I will name the "awful cities" according to the cities I've visited across NA

Good
Fredericton; Ottawa; Halifax; NYC; Montreal; Quebec City; Charlottetown

OK
Sauga (a burb to live in); Hamilton (not bad as expected, though industrial sites is a tumour to the city image); Toronto; Niagara Falls, ON (Canada's Vegas, with falls); Windsor; Kingston; Ithaca; Moncton

Awful
Philly (I thought it was a great city to visit until I did back in 2001 and it was ghetto); Scranton; Binghampton; Syracuse; Albany; Buffalo; Washington DC (north-east areas need to revitalize; I don't like the governmental buildings in US, they look quite hideous on a cloudy day); Niagara Falls, NY; Barrie (quite bland compared to rest of Ontario cities)
 
Cooool said:
Phoenix, Las Vegas and Houston would just about kill me. Not only are they unbearably hot, but apparently they all have some of the worst sprawl in North America (particularly Houston).

I've heard Los Angeles looks like a third world country. Mind you, from what I've heard, the city is basically segregated by income disparity. The traffic sounds brutal.

But what happened to Detroit that made it so bad? Same with Buffalo, New York?
Click to expand...

Detroit and Buffalo, like other Rust Belt cities were prosperous as automotive and other heavy industries grew in demand until when high costs of labor, scarce and expensive resources (oil, steel) and the unsustainable expansion has caused many industries to abandon their own factories in favor for outsourcing into other countries. Buffalo had a large company called Larkin industries until it became defunct, as well as other heavy industries moved their operation out of Buffalo.

As for your view toward LA, things are changing. Compton has now revitalized and is safer than the precedent decade (the worst of California including LA riot); high speed rail is proposed across Cali and its state government is heading in right direction with the environmental issues.

You are right that Texan cities, Vegas and PHX has worst sprawls, but I see no other cities than PHX and Vegas as most backward cities in the world. PHX, in particular is facing severe foreclosure, money-losing sports teams with pocketful of bandwagon riders and severe dependability on cars.
 
It's sad how Winnipeg keeps coming up even though it was what first jumped to mind as I read the thread topic.

Many of the rust-belt cities were once great, not so anymore. Buffalo is pretty grim and when I was last in Detroit they were towards the end of trying to revitalize the downtown area (late 80's/early 90's) but there were only a few small areas that seemed to have any life to them.
 
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