Worst City You've Ever Been To?

On another note, I know it is sometimes easy to crap on cities you don't like, but I never understood why people say flawed, but great cities like Baltimore when these places are paradise compared to how many listless, irrelevant cities exist in the world. Try living in a place like Driggs, Idaho and then tell me if Baltimore is a terrible place.
Driggs is at least close to Targhee, has some fine fly fishing close by, and a drive in theater that doubles as a concert venue. I wouldn't compare a city with three area codes to a small town on the western side of the Teton Mountains. They have very different reasons to enjoy them. At least Driggs isn't Jackson.
 
Driggs is at least close to Targhee, has some fine fly fishing close by, and a drive in theater that doubles as a concert venue. I wouldn't compare a city with three area codes to a small town on the western side of the Teton Mountains. They have very different reasons to enjoy them. At least Driggs isn't Jackson.

Ok, bad example. Let's just go with Rosamond and Baltimore then :p

I forgot it's also close to Jackson Hole.
 
I know it's a controversial answer, but it's honestly Rome. I traveled through Europe for 3 months and that was the only place I truly hated. Just a bag full of bad experiences.

Aw man that sucks. I was in Rome last year and had the total opposite experience, apart from the drivers there who are fucking dangerous.
 
Getafe, within the Madrid metropolitan area in Spain. There's never anything to do, the only reason I ever set foot there is the best university in Spain for my degree happens to be there. GF lives there for the same reason, and it's the most boring place ever. There are two distinct parts:
1-The Ghetto (Her flat is there) which is comprised of old, small, dirty and crumbling apartment blocks with no elevator. Plenty of minorities and inmigrants live here and in that sense it's awesome, but it's flea market ambiance 24/7 with nothing to do other than sleep and eat and have sex. The locals seem to take that to heart, I'm sure the birth rate is twice the national average.
2-The USA-Like suburbs. The most sterile and urbanistically planned neighbourhoods ever. Factor in a nice, recently built park and lots of fountains and roundabouts.
3-The center, just some sterile streets with shops. Boring as it gets.
The two places are closely intertwined, going from point A to point B you pass through patches of the two types of neighbourhood.
If you want to have fun, you go to Madrid. Problem is, the trains stop running at 12. Good luck!

PS: another jewel of the Crown is Majadahonda, home of footbal stars and rich asshole macho kids in the most sterile neighbourhoods ever. Nobody goes there except for the yearly local "festival". Expect a huge mass of people on an open field dancing to loud reggaeton, binge drinking and taking cocaine. Don't talk to male partygoers, you might hurt their masculinity and get puched in the face. (I have a beautiful scar thanks to that)
Any other weekend, find the same people in Teatro Barceló (formerly Pachá) for a delicious night of cocaine, acid, testosterone, fights and sexual harassment.

Edit: holy shit Brussels. The only interest for visiting is if you are a diplomat. Avoid otherwise.
 
I know it's a controversial answer, but it's honestly Rome. I traveled through Europe for 3 months and that was the only place I truly hated. Just a bag full of bad experiences.

Came in here to share this controversial opinion. My wife and me visited Rome last year and besides the place like the colosseum and stuff like that it was a dirty city. I never visited a town in europe which needs more work and help for the citizens. Horrible.
 
Bolton in the UK is absolutely horrible.

Of the more 'major' cities I've been to - Marrakech is probably the one I enjoyed least. The fascination that people have with it surprised me. I suppose it's somewhat exotic and 'cheap' (although really not that cheap).

While there are areas to enjoy it lacked any of the charm that a city like that should have and seems to have been consumed by cheap gimmicks for tourists.
 
Did you know that Charleroi, Belgium, has been named the ugliest city in the world ?

To be frank if I had to choose between Charleroi and other places I've been recently (like in Bosnia) I'd choose Charleroi, no question here. It's just that the place is... not pretty, and quite depressing, like post-industrial and very grey.
 
Baltimore ain't great, but it at least has some redeeming qualities

I'd probably go with Hartford, CT. It's just a generally shitty place with nothing particularly good to even start to balance things out. Ugly, boring, bad traffic, high crime, and it's close enough to both Boston and NYC that a lot of the major employers are leaving for those cities
 
Probably Preston in the uk. The city center is humdrum, saved slightly culturally by it being a student city. Managed to have the worst curry I've ever had there which is weird for a city with a sizable Asian minority.


And I did some work in some of the estates surrounding it and they were utterly grim. I've grown up on a council estate and I've never saw such poorly mannered people and the houses and streets being in such a state. Grim all around.


Hey, at least they've got butter pies.

If we're chucking in big towns then its Walsall hands down,in fact the whole of West midlands County has very little going for it.

Further afield dortmund was pretty drab but I went there to drink beer, go to the German football museum and watch BVB so I didn't mind so much!
 
Hanoi, Vietnam

Didn't care much for Hong Kong, either. Probably up there on my list of awful places I've been to.

Detroit, most definitely. Even just driving through to get to DTW airport, there's always fucking grey clouds and a dark, depressing tone to the place.
 
Yay bitching about stuff.

OK.

off the top of my head:

Athens - beyond the ancient stuff it's a congested, polluted shitehole

New Orleans - I had fun here a but I have never seen segregation like it. One minute it's all white people, literally turn one corner and it's all black people and not a white face to be seen. I made some friends in both areas but the whole thing was weird and made me feel a bit uneasy.

Blackpool - worth a visit from any non-UK person in the northwest of England as a purely educational safari-type experience where you get to see the scum of the nation in their natural habitat. Grim.
 
It'd probably be some shit place in the north of England, maybe Blackpool - but that isn't a city so I'm cheating.

In terms of "proper" cities, I thought LA was a shithole, but this was in like 2002 or something and apparently it's a lot nicer now. I also went to the typical crappy places like Hollywood and Santa Monica so I'm not getting the best impression.
 
I fucking hate Milan, compared to literally anything else in italy.
You get in and the dust, the smog, seeps into you. The air sucks. The water sucks.
 
oooh how could I forget Delhi. Dead bodies, litter and literal shit everywhere. Smelled like the camel enclosure at the zoo. Scammers everywhere.
 
Newcastle is okay. I lived and worked there for a bit. Visited 6 months ago and there were a slew of cafes and a trendy WWII themed sushi bar - it had come a long way. I was going through the list of Australian cities and thought Newcastle warranted mention. You can't escape the feel of the coal industry though, no matter where you go.

It has changed quite a bit. It still has some issues like the serious lack of public transport which has only gotten worse with the removal of the rail system. Overall though it has gotten much better. Most of the improvement I find stems back to the introduction of the curfew. It has made the town a lot more liveable and a lot of the cafes and shops have basically opened since then.

Right now I'm living in Scone so I'm all to aware of the coal industry influence. Thankfully that is slowly starting to diminish but the dirty foot print of the coal industry will linger for decades if not longer in the hunter valley.

most australians on gaf seem to hate the gold coast. i live there and love it

I used to live in Toowoomba and would visit the Gold Coast frequently (admittedly mostly for the theme parks). It always felt like somewhere you would visit and not live. I think the problem is that the tourist areas give it a bad rep, it's probably totally different depending where you live. Crime is fairly high as far as I know and in a lot of places it feels quite dirty and the locals aren't what you would call inviting.
 
Probably Cairo, Egypt, Xi'an, China, and Athens, Greece.

The wife and I were spat on in Cairo, and spat at in Xi'an.

And someone in Athens pushed my wife over while she had a ~20kg pack on just because it saved him 2 seconds of walking around us.

Been to plenty of places that are dirty or otherwise run down, but it's the people that have made a city bad for me.
 
I haven't been to many cities in Europe but did in North America.

Tampa and Naples Florida are the worst.

I hate cities that are are not pedestrian friendly. You absolutely need a car in these shit holes and that sucks
 
Also, regarding Blackpool, despite the fact it's shit, it is quite fun and everyone there knows it's a shithole, so you can end up having a pretty fun night there if you go in with your eyes wide open.

It's also a gay capital of the UK, and has a very active LGBT clubbing scene.
 
I lived near a city with an undetonated nuclear bomb that fell out of a plane.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

WHAT?!!
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Actually, thinking about it, I am going to say Naples.

It's the only place in the world I've had anything stolen from me, and the streets we literally full of rubbish.

Now that I think about it, yeah this. Of the dozens and dozens of cities I visited during a three-month trip of Europe, Naples was a dive and probably the crappiest.

Dirty, ugly, chaotic, and we almost got pickpocketed by a group of men who spotted camera my mate had stupidly clipped onto his belt. We caught him in the act and his crew scampered, but it was the icing on a rubbish cake. (Food was brilliant though).

Rome wasn't much better. Dirty, grey, full of beggars and homeless and migrants trying to flog off cheap crap and SO TOURISTY. I think I was expecting more but it managed to be disappointing despite all the amazing sights. (Food was glorious though).
 
In the U.S., Memphis is the place i dread going the most. Ashtubula Ohio sucked also. Although I was only there once.

Globally, every non tourist Mexican city. Reynosa was bad and now is worse. I have been to some pretty dodgy places in Greece, also. Almost got robbed in Istanbul, but I had a ton of colleagues with me, the guy didn't realize I was with them I am guessing
 
San Fransisco, CA. My wife and I went there for our honeymoon because out of the 5 cities we narrowed it down to that was the cheapest flight/hotel combo.

Trash everywhere. Everything smelled terrible. Everything was super expensive. The people were rude. Nobody knew how to drive. Horns being honked everywhere all the time. Homeless people begging for money and if you turned them down theyd yell at you. Actual shit in the streets. And the cops were just assholes.

In every city I have ever been, I have always found a police officer on my first day, strike up a conversation, and eventually ask them about places to go and places to avoid. Cops know exactly what seedy restaurants are not up to code, what places are safe, and where relatively average people want to go. The cop I talked to in SF was an asshole. He just said look on yelp like everyone else and walked a few paces away to stand leaning against a building and check his phone.

Couple hours later I saw a cop at an instersection waiting for a like, this guy runs a red light, almost nailed a crossing pedestrian, and the cop immediately pulls him over. The guy - who is black - gets out of his car and starts screaming racism. The cop calls for backup, a sergeant shows up, and the guy is still yelling about being racially profiled. The sergeant lets him go. No ticket. No arrest. Not even a stern talking to. The guy shrugged and told him to leave. So not only are SF cops assholes but they dont even have spines.

The food, like I said before, was expensive as hell. A meal for two? Expect to pay $25+ at some hole in the wall. At a nice sit down place? $50+. And its not like the quality was so good it balanced out. It was average food at best. Our hotel didnt have a microwave (which sucked) but even if it did we would have brought home leftovers once the entire trip to eat the next morning.

People were rude. Hold the door open for someone? No thank you. Somebody drops something and you pick it up for them? They snatch it away with a dirty glare like I was trying to steal it. Most of the waiters/waitresses we had were slowpokes who spent more time talking to coworkers than doing their job. One time my wife and I were at a place nearsaw the baseball stadium and ordered water with our meal. Waitress rolled her eyes. Later on, we see our orders placed on the back bar ready to be sent out, and I timed a full 7 minutes before the waitress brought us our plates. She was busy flirting with the bartender. When we asked for more water she did a big sigh. We didnt give her a tip at all and when we were walking out I saw her pick up the receipt and she just about went ballistic.

Too many people, almost everyone was rude, too much trash, the public transportation was lacking, ZERO public bathrooms (seriously - walked around for 4+ hours one day just looking for a bathroom. No restaurants, grocery stores, fast food places, shopping stores, anywhere had a bathroom), and the list goes on. I did not like San Francisco much at all.

Highlights were the Zoo (good), Alcatraz (good), and a baseball game right there on the water. Damn fine stadium and the Giants made it an entertaining game while I was there.

Overall, easily the worst city I have been to. My wife grew up in a town of 320 people. I will take that 100/100 times over going to San Francisco again.
 
Also, regarding Blackpool, despite the fact it's shit, it is quite fun and everyone there knows it's a shithole, so you can end up having a pretty fun night there if you go in with your eyes wide open.

It's also a gay capital of the UK, and has a very active LGBT clubbing scene.

Aye, you can definitely have fun there just as long as you know what you are getting yourself into. You wouldn't want to linger there though.
 
Domestic - Blackpool - what a shit hole full of scum.

International - Hmmmm, I really didn't like East Berlin. Orlando was a dump.


Barcelona is easily the worst experience I've ever had while travelling.

This is absolutely bullshit in every way, it's a beautiful city.
 
looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

WHAT?!!
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I assume he's talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Bluff,_South_Carolina

On another note, I know it is sometimes easy to crap on cities you don't like, but I never understood why people say flawed, but great cities like Baltimore when these places are paradise compared to how many listless, irrelevant cities exist in the world. Try living in a place like Driggs, Idaho and then tell me if Baltimore is a terrible place.

That's why I don't have an answer for "worst city". I feel like either the places I've been haven't really been large enough to call cities, or that the cities themselves are far too disparate to hate on. I'd dislike New York a lot too if I never left the tourist zones.
 
People describing the likes of Paris, Rome and Naples as "the worst city they've ever been to" need to STFU.

Architecturally amazing, world-class food, almost unmatched history and so much to see and do but they are "the worst" because there are some beggars, petty theft and tourists?
ok.

I spent a week in San Francisco last year, the poverty is insane, the hoards of mentally ill people on the streets abandoned by society, most of the place stinks either of piss or weed.
Does that make it "the worst"? No, as it has lots of cool stuff apart from that.
 
Driving through a bad part of Detroit made me feel awful for the people who have to live there. All doors and windows barred and everything in poor condition. I wouldn't call it the "worst" city because I know there are good people and good areas, but man it was just depressing. Literally a third world standard of living in America.
 
For me, it would probably be a tie between:

Mobile, AL

or

Metropolis, IL

Mobile at least has some nearby beaches that are pretty decent, so I guess Metropolis would win this one. It was a shithole right on the border near the city in Kentucky where I was born and the only noteworthy things there were the Superman Museum / Statue and the riverboat casino. I don't even know if the riverboat casino is still around, honestly.

Lol at metropolis. Were you born in Paducah?

I vote for Baltimore. Went there to interview for residency, i was blown away by how dirty and dilapidated some parts of the city were on the train ride from the airport to the hotel. The harbor was nice, but I vowed to never move my family to that place.
 
People describing the likes of Paris, Rome and Naples as "the worst city they've ever been to" need to STFU.

Architecturally amazing, world-class food, almost unmatched history and so much to see and do but they are "the worst" because there are some beggars, petty theft and tourists?
ok.

I spent a week in San Francisco last year, the poverty is insane, the hoards of mentally ill people on the streets abandoned by society, most of the place stinks either of piss or weed.
Does that make it "the worst"? No, as it has lots of cool stuff apart from that.

I wouldn't say Rome was the worst city I've ever been too. The old city is staggeringly beautiful and fantastic. But outside of that it's a bit sketchy.
 
Architecturally amazing, world-class food, almost unmatched history and so much to see and do but they are "the worst" because there are some beggars, petty theft and tourists?
ok.

Well, yeah.

While I agree that they are architecturally amazing, there is no excuse for the amount of rubbish and theft in any city really.
 
Did you know that Charleroi, Belgium, has been named the ugliest city in the world ?

To be frank if I had to choose between Charleroi and other places I've been recently (like in Bosnia) I'd choose Charleroi, no question here. It's just that the place is... not pretty, and quite depressing, like post-industrial and very grey.

Why would you even visit Charleroi? The only reason I can come up with is the airport but that's located out of the city centre. But yeah it's a pretty depressing place, a lot of abandoned projects and post-industrial projects, a bit like Thionville across the border.
 
I fucking hate Milan, compared to literally anything else in italy.
You get in and the dust, the smog, seeps into you. The air sucks. The water sucks.

It's kinda ironic. I always considered Milan the best city in Italy and probably the only city where I would willingly move in Italy (if it wasn't so expensive), compared to the rest of Italy. It has a fantastic public transportation system unlike the rest of Italy (where it's nearly impossible to live without a car for people who don't drive like me). So many things to do (events/concerts/stores), so many places to eat (both foreign cheap fast food chains, ethnic restaurants and at the same time also good italian restaurants), lots of choices and a modern city (wi-fi everywhere) and the only one on-par to other other European cities I've lived. For many of of my friends of other less-developed areas of Italy, living in Milan would be a dream coming true (and so many of my friends moved there when given the chance and never looked back). Just the public transportation and the international outlook makes it one of the best in Italy. Not certainly on-par to to other cities like Sydney (which is infinitely better in my opinion), but still pretty good.

I try to go there every time I can (weekends) since I love it so much.
 
I don't like big cities at all.
Sydney, London, Paris, LA. All awful. But to pick one, Birmingham - ugh - it's the worst.
 
Well, yeah.

While I agree that they are architecturally amazing, there is no excuse for the amount of rubbish and theft in any city really.

I was there a few months ago. Don't remember seeing any litter and didn't feel like I might get jacked, no more than what you would living in any larger city.
 
Detroit - had to go there for business several times - when the locals say it's okay to run red lights and stop signs in certain areas and the cops (if present) dont care, it's not a good place.
 
Christchurch New Zealand. Mostly because anything ugly in New Zealand really stands out compared to the rest of its beauty.
 
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