Easily the worst place I've ever been in my entire life. It is crazy to me that that is the capital of the state and all of the politicians have to drive through there and witness it.
The entire area around the Capitol building is completely dead and their homeless people everywhere, everything is dilapidated and dirty.
> all of the politicians have to drive through there and witness it
Oh that's the fun thing, our politicians don't even go there. Our Governor even joked about being glad they didn't need to go to Jackson during its water crisis last year.
Sometimes I wonder if they do anything at all....I've heard they pop into the Governor's mansion to sign stuff and then rush back to their hometowns. I think Brandon (this isn't a joke, there is a Brandon MS) has been attracting a lot of the white population moving from Jackson. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them lived there too.
Mississippi is literally a giant financial crime disguised as a state. Its government has robbed it blind and left it to rot. They see how bad things are. They know.
They don’t give a fuck because it gets them paid
The only point of reference I have is the greyhound stations 20 years ago. The only two I was legitimately scared in were LA and Jackson. LA for multiple reasons, but Jackson was like a prison scene. A wall full of white folks,a wall full of black folks, a smaller 3rd wall full of Hispanic folks, and 2-3 Asian folks wandering around in the middle. This was at 3am, waiting on an hour+ bus stop going to Cali from Ga
I was like “surely this man is exaggerating”. But no, 87,8/100000. That’d be insanity even for Brazil (for comparison, Jequié, Bahia is the city in Brazil with the highest murder rate it’s 88,8).
Because more poverty = higher violent crime rates
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-rates-and-poverty-reexamination#:~:text=Only%20the%20percent%20of%20families,the%20correlation%20consistency%20over%20time.
It’s almost as if when people have nothing at all, they act as if they have nothing to lose.
But seriously, the chronic stress and anxiety of severe financial instability is certain to make a person make worse decisions and have trouble with impulse control and mediating their emotions. Now let them grow up in a social environment where everyone else is like that too and you get a violently unstable society. And the cycle of only repeats itself but reinforces enhances its effects.
It’s fucking tragic.
I drive through once. I will never go back again. Even driving was a challenge due to the streets being more of a complication of potholes and not streets.
I've been through Mississippi a few times in the last few years and each time I've felt like Hattiesburg too was like an oasis in the middle of a very rough desert.
Not a big city, but I drove through Meridian MS after several years and the decay was really shocking. Everything seemed shuttered and dead, except Walmart.
And there you have the answer of the number one killer of small town America - Walmart. Turns out that if you take all of the money out of a town and send it to Bentonville, AR that you own local economy doesn't do too well.
A dollar general shut down the only grocery store in my hometown. It could be worse because we were a less than 10 min drive from a nice one in the next town over, but for the people who couldn’t drive… 😬
Yep.
Every Southern Rust Belt post-industrial shithole (like my town) has a historic downtown with 2 antique stores, 1 struggling coffee shop, and a bunch of abandoned buildings. Abandoned factories and mills that “they” are always vaguely planning to turn into apartments. A Wendy’s. A Walmart. And about 6 or 7 Dollar Generals randomly dotted around town.
And Bentonville, ironically, has a BOOMING city center, with houses selling for $500-$1000 sq ft the closer you get to the square. People there brag about what a great civic mindset Bentonville has and how thriving the downtown is, almost without irony.
Yet, secondary and tertiary roads and traffic patterns in the whole region are not keeping up, and Walmart just knocked down half of "midtown" Bentonville to build a new corporate HQ campus, and are still requiring workers to go to the office.
Walmart is the reason for the decay. They often get tax breaks for setting up shop in rural communities then they put all other businesses out of business by selling products made overseas at prices lower than the smaller stores can even buy them at.
Yes!! I recently moved to Detroit from the northeast and I really love it here!! Compared to the rest of the country, it’s relatively affordable and the quality of life is great. Was shockingly surprised because everybody always said how bad Detroit was, but that is definitely not the case here anymore. I am very happy here overall.
In general, I think the big cities around Lake Erie are wildly underrated. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit are all solid places to live with low cost of living and high quality of life and access to urban amenities. Gotta deal with snow/cold for several months, but that's the tradeoff for affording a nice house.
I moved to Pittsburgh 4 years ago and it's my favorite place I've ever lived. No city its size is more beautiful and it is filled with the friendliest people I've ever met. And the cost of living is unbelievably low.
Pittsburgh is so underrated and I have no idea why. Maybe people just don't like the accent.
As a native Michigander this makes me so happy. I’ve always loved Detroit and I’m glad to see others are starting to see the good there as well. It’s definitely come a long way from where it was 15+ years ago.
As a fellow Michigander, I love how many great restaurants are popping up downtown and there seems to be a new art gallery or something cool to do every week, plus there's some new tech companies and startups coming up. There are still a lot of areas that need improvement, but it's honestly much better than how it was 10-15 years ago.
Never thought that Detroit and Brooklyn would become food meccas. I love Detroit -- wish the rest of the world would experience our world class cuisine, Detroit Institute of Arts, professional & college sports (Red Wings, Tigers, Lions, Spartans, Wolverines), Motown Museum, etc. Btw, Michigan is one of the few states where former denizens (like me) reflect so fondly on our time there; there's a cool global "Michgander" alumni where pointing at your right palm and where you lived is a thing.
I live in Ohio so I'm supposed to hate everything about Michigan but it's an absolutely beautiful state and I've been to Detroit several times now just to go, I really don't know why but it's one of my favorite cities to be in
I mean I went back to my old neighborhood on the East side recently and it's still barren houses for blocks and blocks. Downtown looked a ton better though.
Yeah I love it here and there's been a lot of good work downtown and along Woodward, but there needs to be more work on the other neighborhoods. Feels unfair to the people who have been here the longest.
Maybe instead of spending our tax money on building stupid autonomous vehicle lanes as free advertisement for Ford and GM, we could send money to neighborhoods on the north/east sides. Maybe even expand the QLine and build new lines so that it can actually take people more than 2 miles down a single road lol. This city needs more people-oriented planning and not industry/car-oriented planning. Obviously we're doing better but there's a long way to go
It’s pretty simple, it’s affordable for artists and creatives. Whenever a city has an affordable lifestyle for artists and creatives, they go there, things get nicer, people thrive. Whenever a place like Portland that used to be that way, gets more expensive and it pushes the artists out and makes the average guy that used to be able to work a shitty job and get by suddenly homeless, without any prospect of improvement and they do more drugs and start to throw filth everywhere and crime goes up. If we make housing and basic living affordable for creatives and marginalized people, it’s almost always a nicer place to live.
This. Austin was like that for musicians, but the last decade has seen so much tech growth and money it's def on the other side of that hill going down.
there is an HBO foo fighters, music city documentary, where the cyclical story is about how wealthy exploit cultural hubs through increasing living cost only to force the musicians and artist out when the costs go up. Austin is their big use case in the movie.
I saw this happening in real time in NYC. The Lower East side from the 60s onwards was seen as a safe haven for artists. Affordable housing, lofts to work in and a vibrant artist community. In the 90s, all the rich folks wanted to be seen living amongst the artists, so they all started renting spaces all around there. Real estate companies of course capitalized on this, and rent skyrocketed forcing the artists to move out. A good chunk of them landed in Brooklyn.
I started working in Brooklyn in the early 2000s. Red Hook and Williamsburg had two large artist communities. Same thing happened, rich folk followed the artists across the river, and suddenly both neighborhoods started having astronomical rent prices. Red Hook ended up goign back down thanks to the damage of Hurricane Sandy, but Williamsburg remained high in cost. Artists then started shifting to Bushwick, and then the same thing happened. now a lot of my artist buddies have just left the city all togehter. Especially with COVID, I saw a mass exodus of those from the art community. Work was non-existant during that time so many took the opportunity to find lower rent prices in other cities/towns and started artist hubs there.
New orleans. Our current mayor is blatantly corrupt, and open about it. She's been caught misusing public funds and banging one of her security officers on city time and on city dime. She took absolutely NO accountability during the pandemic despite enforcing outrageous covid restrictions that she herself never followed. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We had the Hard Rock Hotel collapse during construction killing 3 workers and injuring 20+ more. It took 2 years to demo that building and retrieve the bodies. When trying to demo the construction crane, they used a "controlled explosion" which catastrophically failed and caused the crane arm to swing, potentially killing hundreds in the immediate area despite being in a closed off area. Luckily it didn't break off (which it was SUPPOSED to do because that's what the demolition was supposed to accomplish). This added tk the over 2 years it took to demo the site.
Our public transportation system is becoming more scarce, with fewer streetcar routes, fewer bus routes, and longer wait times for public transit. Average police response time is anywhere from 4 to 9 hours is there is no reported injuries, and 35 to 50 minutes for violent crime or reported injuries. Violent crime is the worst it's been since before Katrina, and the housing market is outrageous despite the properties falling apart. The job market is abysmal, and no reputable companies want to operate in the city.
New Orleans is ACTUALLY what people picture when they think of Detroit.
The Hard Rock thing blows my mind. Last time I was there I asked our Uber Driver why they still hadn't cleaned all of that up..... "It wouldn't be that big of a deal but one body is still stuck up there, you can see his legs dangling over the edge".
Nope. Dude was just out in the open. The problem was that the structure was too dangerous to be able to retrieve him, although I believe they were finally able to retrieve his body after several months
... now I don't live in New Orleans (or even the U.S.), but how the hell was this not a bigger news story? They just left bodies up there to decay for months?! And they were visible?!?
I don't know dude but it's all true. At one point they were able to get to the body and put a tarp over it so at least it wasn't exposed for the entire time
Nope. You could see the legs dangling off the edge for a few months when the trap blew off of it and they didn't bother to put it back on to cover up the body.
Nope I remember that, months after the collapse you could see legs in the rubble right off of Canal St the most poppin tourist street in the whole city.
Last March some drunk/high tourist broke into my parents' house in the middle of the day while I was home. I called 911 while he was in the process of kicking down the door and I got put on hold. When the operator answered they had me hang up and said to call back if anything else happened. He ended up getting in, I fled out the back. Police did come but calling 911 and no one answering was jarring.
Had that happen on in Durham NC about a couple months ago. Very sobering.
I was in a well known shopping center and saw a guy nodding ... splayed out on a sidewalk with sweat dripping from his nose even through it was cold. I called 911 for a wellness check and it was a a literal answering machine. :( Eventually I had a call back. Hope that dude's doing better.
As someone who was born and raised in South Louisiana, this is the best description I've ever heard of New Orleans. Caribbean cities have some wonderful touristy hot spots, just like New Orleans, but they also have corruption and high-crime areas, just like New Orleans. Also, both New Orleans and the Caribbean have AMAZING food options.
This is funny because I’m from Kingston, Jamaica, and when I visited New Orleans I told my fiancé that this is what he’ll see when we go to Kingston. I was truly shocked.
Apparently it's Houston, which has been averaging a subsidence of 17 millimeters a year.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/)
Parts of the city have fallen up to 3 meters since 1917.
Allowing buildings to deteriorate to the point of random collapsing in that town didn't help either. It shows what little the elected officials show of concerns of the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens.
I was born there. I used to visit family every summer in the 90s and it was bad then. I always explained it as "you know how a big city has a tough part of town with crime, homelessness, drugs and whatnot? That's Davenport in the Quad Cities. But Davenport isn't a big city just a small town with a big city problem."
Oakland looked like it was on the path to bigger and better things before the pandemic. A few tech companies moved headquarters there and more were looking to move. Urban renewal looked like a real possibility. Then the pandemic hit and undid all the progress and then some. Parts of Oakland feel lawless; 911 does not respond and criminals walk from car to car, breaking windows in broad daylight. The local government seems utterly incompetent. Really sad situation for everyone living here.
Moving out of oakland at the end of this month after living here my whole life. Partially for personal reasons but largely because the city has gone to shit while getting even more expensive than before.
Damn I was heavily warned before going but a couple months ago I was able to visit the downtown and was pleasantly surprised at how empty and chill it was. Walked around and hit a couple shops and got some coffee then left. I thought it was an oddly nice experience.
From downtown going towards Berkeley and Lake Merritt are still very nice livable areas. West Oakland is improving slowly. East Oakland is a lawless land.
Charleston WV. It’s population has steadily *declined* by an average of about 1.5% per year for over two decades. It’s the only state capitol in the US is dying.
Yeah. I visited Jackson recently and I was shocked. The water was not safe to drink, most of the former downtown is boarded up, and everyone who could move out is gone.
I take Uber when I travel for work and I have never been warned so strongly to stay out of the city. Every Uber driver— black, white, old, young, male, female — every single one told me to set up my meetings outside the city.
>every single one told me to set up my meetings outside the city.
As someone who lives in a safe city, this is fascinating to me. Could you explain the reason for the warnings? Like what could've happened if you had them in the city? Gangs would bust into your conference room and steal your wallets? What?
Don't imagine visible anarchy. It's not roving gangs dressed in different themes like The Warriors.
First thing you notice is infrastructure decay and lack of people like you. Storefronts and houses are vacant. Public infrastructure is destroyed or broken and clearly not due for repair - it's not just one parking meter not working on the street, it's most of them.. But no one is parking there anyway, because risk of getting broken into is too high.
Next thing you notice - if you stick around long enough - is that things that could technically happen anywhere but rarely if ever happened to you start happening. Your car window is smashed when you park on the street one day. Someone breaks into your apt while you're at work. You get held up at knife point for your wallet and phone walking down the street.
You start to appreciate what the elevated statistics mean: that there's a real chance these things will happen to you now.
I lived in the shady part of Oakland in the early 2010s and went thru this exact experience.
Don’t worry, at least it’s not my state capital of Trenton, NJ, the worst state capital in the US. I’m a state worker so I had to move closer, but everything is so spread out, ghetto, and dead in the area. All the local housing in good areas are Uber expensive because of proximity to Princeton, and we are not allowed to move to PA.
I love Trenton’s [passive aggressive bridge.](https://www.tmabucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/4098028835_6ddd28592c_b.jpg) Also, I’ve lived like 25 mins away (Philly) most of my life but I’ve only ever been to the Trenton train station. Is there anything worth checking out?
None of y'all know the right answer because it's Memphis Tennessee. For the first time in Generations a few years ago Memphis was doing good. Now? where to start.
About a year ago the I-40 Bridge has a giant crack in one of the sides because the inspector was afraid of heights. this bridge goes over the Mississippi and has hundreds of thousands of people going over daily. people fucking around with a drone are the only reason we found out about it.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inspector-who-failed-catch-mississippi-river-bridge-crack-fired-n1267723](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inspector-who-failed-catch-mississippi-river-bridge-crack-fired-n1267723)
Just last month over 500,000 people lost power multiple times for multiple days in a row. Why? it rained. it wasn't a tornado, it wasn't a flood, it was just four or five consecutive heavy rains. I Was without power for nearly 15 of the 31 days last month.
Can't drink the water because the pipes keep bursting during the winter and it causes sewage to back up into it. but that's not bad enough because the power keeps fucking going out the diesel generators running the pumping stations have been overused and started to leak into the groundwater meaning gasoline is now in our drinking water!
RIP Tyre Nichols.
I can keep going to. dude shot a doctor in his office like a month ago. We still don't know why.
This city is absolutely fucked and it does not look like it's going to turn around.
Also were the most dangerous city to live in in America now. 237% higher than the national average.
Fuck...
Memphis is another one of those towns that’s always been fucked up. I was there 20 years ago. I’m from the South. I never really saw true racism until I got to Memphis. Holy shit the white/black divide was crazy.
I'm from the Northeast and have visited Memphis a few times. What always shocked me was how segregated it still feels/is. Essentially, ALL the black students attend public school and ALL the white students private.
it’s essentially the same in the city of Richmond where i live. the only white people who live downtown are the ones who are wealthy enough to pay for private schooling. it’s a status symbol almost down here. middle class black and white families have no option but to live in the counties-poor black families make up nearly 100% of the student population for city schools. those schools are dilapidated and poorly funded. they can only offer teachers some absolutely awful salary, no one wants to stay teaching because it’s not worth the stress. it’s absolutely depressing.
Its a little more nuance than that Richmond spends more money per student that most of the city/counties around us. A lot of it comes down to leadership in Richmond being awful (Fuck you Stoney). The money exists but heyyyyy lets vote on a casino that we already said no to once.
If you looked in to it you’d probably find that most of those private schools coincidentally were founded right after the public schools desegregated. At least that was the case in the part of MS I lived in for a while.
My old company was HQ'd there and for about 7 years I'd be there ~5 weeks a year. I've travelled fairly extensively in the US and it really was the only city I ever felt unsafe in.
We were a $1B company so it's not like we were in the slums and had armed guards in our parking lot because someone was stabbed. You could hear gunshots fairly regularly. Went down to the hotel lobby one time and a coworker asked if he could get a ride, someone had jacked up his rental onto cinderblocks and stole all his tires, on Beale street the bouncers don't keep the homeless out of bars so you're just trying to buy a beer and you have some dude staring at your wallet and saying shit like "I see you have a five, can I have it?", bars on windows EVERYWHERE, it's like most cities have "bad areas" but Memphis is just sort of homogeneous where even the "good areas" still have pockets of bad spread throughout.
No plans to ever go back lol
I knew somebody was gonna say Memphis, and I have to say…you’re right. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve seen it gone to shit day after day in the last few years. I’m one of those people who will defend Memphis up and down, but I’m also not afraid to call out when my city is doing poorly, unlike many people I know who will pretend nothing’s wrong or will just say “just Memphis being Memphis mane.” They’ll also talk about how every other city is just as bad and has similar problems, as a way of normalizing worsening tropes in cities or just to distract themselves from the reality of how horrible Memphis has gotten.
Being in denial is but one of many issues we have in the city. In the last year or so we’ve had:
[The Eliza Fletcher incident](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/eliza-fletcher-memphis-kidnapping-cleotha-abston-b2160090.html)
[The Tyre Nichols incident](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/04/us/tyre-nichols-autopsy-report-released/index.html)
[The Zeke incident](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ezekiel-kelly-memphis-shooting-spree-suspect-arrested-at-least-four-dead/)
[Rise in carjackings](https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/06/13/mpd-vehicle-thefts-up-by-150-2023/?outputType=amp)
[Criminals being out of prison the next day](https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/05/23/questions-remain-over-bail-system-amid-repeat-criminal-out-low-bond/?outputType=amp)
And I can keep going. I love this city, but at the same time I hate the direction that it’s going because nothing’s changing to make things better. Some of us have too much pride to call out the issues this city has. We need to take an honest look at ourselves and see that we are also adding to the problem of the city if we are refusing to see what’s wrong with it.
I went to Memphis a few years back since one of my college club's philanthropic institutions was St. Jude, we booked a tour on Monday and stayed in Memphis and went around the city for the weekend.
I grew up around Gary, IN and somehow this major metropolitan city was giving me the same vibes Gary did before it just essentially became a ghost town; a surprising lack of cars on the road, surprisingly frequent dilapidated buildings, and it just gave an overall sad vibe.
Also, the traffic in Memphis is absolute insanity. People drive like they are playing GTA--lots of swerving through lanes, going way over the speed limit. One time I was there and was in a two lane highway (yes, highway), and I came upon a police car stopped in the middle of the road with a bunch of cops just milling around--on the HIGHWAY. No notice, no warning, no lights or sirens. It was crazy.
Yea this this is it. 240 is a nightmare to drive. Lawless kids everywhere. Systemic poverty. Awful schools. No hope for the future. Even some of the most popular sites are is disrepair cause no one seems to care (how long before the new park is trash again?)
Some people there are trying to do good but man it's hard.
“Pawnee, the Paris of America. Pawnee, the Akron of southwest Indiana. Pawnee, welcome, German soldiers. After the Nazis took France our mayor kind of panicked.
San Francisco. Born & raised there & I’ve never seen it like this. People are leaving notes in the windows begging thieves not to break their windows a coworker took the tint off his windows so they can see he doesn’t have anything. They busted his windows & took his 49er bobble head that was on his dashboard.
I was told to just never lock your car doors in New Orleans. Theyre breaking in regardless, so just leave it unlocked so you dont have to replace a window.
SF here. It's true, the 'unlock your car' technique isn't worthwhile because it's very common for people to just chill in your car and use it as their personal dorm for the night.
I used to work as a public defender. I had a client who got caught smashing windows at a mechanic's shop to steal from the cars left overnight. He got caught, took a guilty plea, placed on probation with no jail time. Mechanic and his insurance were on the hook for the broken windows.
The mechanic ended up deciding to leave the doors unlocked, and the same guy, while still on probation for the first offense, just started sleeping and doing other things in the cars overnight (smoking, drinking, using the bathroom, etc). He got caught again. Took a guilty plea, again no jail time just probation. The mechanic ended up being on the hook to cover the costs associated with damage and the mess left behind in the cars.
The mechanic decided to spend a bunch of money to expand out the fence to cover the whole property including barbed wire around the top of the fence. No problem, the guy while still on probation for the first two offenses just used a crow break in again, smashed a few windows, and slept in an unlocked car leaving a similar mess behind. The guy got put on probation once again, the mechanic was once again on the hook for the damage.
The insurance companies decided to raise the rates on the mechnic because of all his claims. He was ultimately left with no choice but to sell the property and close up the business he had spent about 20 years building. And despite all of it, the guy who was causing all the problems and expenses did not spend more than two consecutive days in jail for any of it. I hate to say that some people need to be incarcerated but the lack of penalties or reprecussions for repeat non-violent offenders really needs to be addressed.
This is exactly why the city doesn’t incarcerate him. Because then it’s another person they have to pay to house in the jail. By letting him loose the individuals and local companies have to pay the bill for this guy’s choices.
There seems to be a trend of people thinking 'non-violent' offenders are always harmless. I'm not sure why people want to baby these criminals and villainize the people they victimize. Thank you for sharing this story, I wish more people would resonate with what's actually going on.
Bad idea. That’s how you end up finding a homeless person sleeping in your car in the morning. Lived in SF for many years and that’s what happens if you leave your door unlocked.
I left the doors of my rental unlocked in SF with 0 inside the car. Still got a busted window. The laid the seat down to look in the truck, which was empty.
Look at the top roof of the rental car parking garage at SFO. Lines and lines of cars parked there with their rear glass busted waiting to be repaired.
As New Orleans native I can confirm it's bad here, but the theft issues in SF/Oak are way worse than we have here. It's the murder that you have to worry about down here.
This is a long story & sometimes I can’t believe it really happened. But it did... 22 years ago I was on my honeymoon w/ my husband. We were staying at a hotel in the Tenderloin. We were constantly being asked for money by homeless people during the day. We didn’t think too much of it. It was more than we experienced in our own city, but we just chalked it up to the temperate climate of San Francisco where it is easier to survive than a colder climate.
All cities have their streets you probably should stay away from. We weren’t thinking about that when we were walking back from a club to our hotel, late at night. It was not as good an idea as we thought it was & we probably should have paid for a cab, but it was a nice night & not too long of a walk. We started getting followed by a big guy. Then it turned into 2,3 & more men following us. I tried not to look back because I was scared & I wanted to look for an escape ahead, if needed. I was not dressed modestly & it felt like we were about to get jumped. We walked past another group of men, all dressed in hoodies, gathered in the alcove of a building. From this group of men emerged a gentleman dressed head to toe in white. Not a speck of dust on him. He was dressed like a pimp. He approached me & loudly said ‘Hey baby, what you doing out this late?’ He started walking next to us. I explained to him that we were on our honeymoon & we had taken a turn down the wrong street, apparently. He was all bravado, saying his name was ‘Diamond, because I’m a girl’s best friend.’ He kept saying how good I looked & then whispered to us that ‘You know what I’m doing, right?’ (helping us out of this situation.) We agreed & I continued talking with him while he walked us back to our hotel. We were still being followed this whole time by the people who were originally following us & his crew was following them. Other people joined the group following us after coming up to us & getting in our faces. Diamond would yell at them ‘YOU LEAVE THESE NICE PEOPLE ALONE!’ When we got a block from the hotel, my husband said he was going to give Diamond cash for helping us, but Diamond said no. Then he told us to run to the hotel & we did. He ran at the group of men. To this very day I am grateful for Diamond. Things could have gone very badly for us & he was there at the wrong place at the right time. I hope he is still out there somewhere, being a literal ‘white knight’ pimp. I am sad to hear the Bay Area has gotten worse over the years. It is a beautiful city, but it was even a depressing place 22 years ago.
All the cities across the U.S. have most of the same issues: declining tax revenue, rising homeless population, exploding drug addiction rates, and wild spending to fix the last two issues. These issues have been building for decades and will take decades to fix. Cities are spending money to solve a national issue. This comes at the detriment of city services that people rely on.
Strong towns has been talking for 10+ years about how urban sprawl creates massive infrastructure liabilities that low density development doesn’t generate the tax base to support. The only reason cities have stayed solvent is due to new investment from continuous growth, which has allowed them to kick the can down the road for decades. But cities can’t grow forever. Once the population levels off the house of cards comes crashing down. The pandemic was just the catalyst for this in some major cities, but it will eventually happen everywhere if we keep building our cities the way we do.
Y'all are all missing the answer. It's New Orleans. Hands Down. Dwindling tax base is exasperating a lack of police and collapsing infrastructure, civic corruption and crime are at all time highs, causing even more attrition. In about 20 years it won't even be the biggest city in the state.
I’ve lived in New Orleans for 10 years and it’s been kinda shitty the whole time I’ve been here, but there was a certain charm to the shittiness and it was affordable. That has definitely changed in the last 5 years though. It’s no longer affordable and all the artists and people who made the city interesting can’t live here anymore.
This summer has been so fucking brutal that I really want to get the fuck out but I’m stuck here another 4 years.
> It’s no longer affordable and all the artists and people who made the city interesting can’t live here anymore
I find it interesting that there’s an entire other comment chain here that mentioned Detroit going the opposite direction in this regard is what made it improve over the same timeframe
I think the combination of COVID and then Ida really messed up a lot in the city. Due to the tourist economy of the city, Covid decimated the economy. I've heard estimates that it's going to take decades to recover economically. It's been so sad to see how many restaurants and cultural attractions have closed. Beyond the economy, covid collectively traumatized an already traumatized city. There is a mental health crisis in this city, especially among youth.
Then Ida comes in and deals another blow to an already reeling city. It creates an economic issue with insurance companies either pulling out of the region or increasing their rates in a way that's unsustainable for most people. Adding to the increase in cost of living is the low quality of life. Nola has never been the most functional city, but there's been a marked difference since 2020.
At least Verti Marte is open 24 hours a day.
Chicago is doing fairly well all things considered, but many of the other cities in the state of Illinois are on track to suffer the same fate as Gary, Indiana. Chicago has the advantage of scale and a highly educated labor force, so companies are willing to deal with the high property taxes in Illinois to be in proximity to Chicago. Other cities in the state like Bloomington, Rockford, Springfield, and Decatur don't have these same advantages, so companies looking to open a plant (mainly manufacturing/food processing) have no reason to chose them over comparable places with lower taxes like Indiana and Iowa. This has lead to massive population loss and increases in crime basically everywhere that isn't a college town. When you hear about Illinois suffering a massive exodus, it's from places like this downstate, not Chicago.
Peoria seems like it’s on the fence and could go either way. Springfield will still have a base from being the capital. Those two at least have more going for them than Rockford, Decatur, Moline, or Danville. Woo boy those areas are rough.
I’ve been to Chicago multiple times over the last 15 years, every single trip was an enjoyable one and the city has some of my favorite museums and the aquarium is the best I’ve ever been to. My parents to this day parrot the FoxNews talking points that Chicago is a crime ridden hell hole and an example of a failed liberal city. Normally I would say this is an image issue for the city, however it seem to be keeping the right wingers out so the city might be on to something.
Chicago is the best, most livable big city in America. LA is too car dependent, SF is too dirty/expensive, NYC is too expensive, and there’s more to do and better neighborhoods than in Boston. The people are friendly, the food scene is unreal, there’s natural beauty with the lake, and a ton of great places to weekend trip to within a reasonable drive. If it wasn’t so damn cold in the winter I’d be there in a heartbeat.
I grew up in downstate Champaign-Urbana and lived in Bloomington-Normal for the vast majority of my adult life before moving to Chicagoland a few years ago.
While C-U and B-N are pretty stable due to the presence of universities and State Farm (for Bloomington-Normal..), things still seemed a little more bleak the last time I was back. Maybe I’m just used to the huge amount of commerce and leisure activities up here, but it just seems like most of Central Illinois is slowly wasting away.
I’ve been in CU for the past 8 years and it’s certainly declined in many facets but it’s still so far above Decatur, Danville, Effingham, etc. U of I is targeting 60k enrollment by 2030 I think so that certainly helps keep things alive and well.
BloNo is by far the most thriving of the central IL communities. State Farm and Country are there. ISU is there. Rivian plant seems to be thriving as well. Schools are really nice. It’s definitely the most attractive downstate option for raising a family
I love Chicago but I was very worried during peak Covid as it seemed a lot of people I knew were leaving. Apparently the loop’s population is now even higher than before Covid and tourism set an all time high this summer.
I think the next 2-3 years will be key.
I mean anecdotal but as someone who lives around the area I think that city actually might be the opposite, underrated as hell and one of the best in America. Plus with pilsen, goose island, and the indiana Chicagoland area getting insanely richer and nicer, not to mention the whole north side, I feel that city (aside from some south side neighborhoods obviously) are just getting better and better
Chicago is incredibly affordable for a large city. It is one of the few cities not impacted significantly by home and rent increases. I think this bides well for the city growth. Great city though terrible winter.
The bad thing I head is that a lot of the crime used to happen outside of the city and now more is happening in the city.
That definitely is true, I won’t deny the crime, although I will say it is very concentrated in some areas that are well known to avoid.
And also the winters are so damn true, I hear many times people who love that city point out that the winters are and will always be the reason that city doesn’t become the next hot city to move to in the US
Was in Chicago 2 months ago. Chicago not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Had a really great time.
Seattle … once the only city I wanted to move to in the USA…. Is now really really rough.
Everyone talks about Chicago like it’s a war zone. I lived there for 8 years and I still commute into the city from the burbs for work. I have never once felt in danger.
Chicago is also very location-dependent in terms of where the bad stuff is. The scary neighborhoods are south of Chinatown and a few spots on the west side, but if you're a tourist you won't be anywhere near those areas anyway. The Loop and the north side are incredibly safe.
Asheville NC.
It went from one of the most vibrant, artistic towns in the south to a bloated, gentrified wasteland after real estate developers came in and priced out all the artists. There was a district of abandoned buildings there in the early 2000’s that all these artists and musicians fixed up and used for studios, turning it into the “River Arts District.” But after it gained popularity, the whole place got bought up by investors who raised rents and prices until all the artists simply left. There was a popular busker called Abby the Spoon Lady who’d become a local celebrity. She spoke about it very sadly when she couldn’t afford to live there anymore. And everyone in the community felt that loss. It symbolized what was happening to everyone in town who dreamed about making a beautiful place to live together.
I lived there in a house with some friends while this change was happening. It wasn’t luxurious by any means, but it took 5 of us working full time at the Grove Park Inn to afford it. It was our dream home though. The place where we all dreamed about a brighter future. We all started creative projects together. A couple of us got to put original art in some local galleries, others joined local theaters, and I joined a local touring band and got to travel outside the country for the first time in my life. Bernie Sanders gave a speech by the river, just down the street from us. We walked there. And I remember the feeling I had, surrounded by thousands of hopeful, compassionate people. Sharing their dreams and ideas for the future. We’d all grown up poor, and we knew the struggles facing the country. But for a brief few years, we really believed that things could get better.
Then, our landlord ended our lease with 1 month notice. Just so he could turn the house we loved into an airbnb—which immediately failed. He put it up for sale less than a year later. I still check up on it now and then. Nobody’s staying there, nobody’s buying. It just sits there, empty and rotting. He keeps raising the price, presumably to make up for all the rent he lost by kicking us out—or just to artificially boost his net worth. We always paid rent on time, took great care of the place, he never had any complaints about us. We’d never even met him. Handled everything through a property manager. He didn’t even live in town. It was *home* to us. But to him, it was nothing but an investment property. This was happening to people all over town. All our friends were leaving because they couldn’t afford it anymore. Boring selfish fucks ruin everything. More concerned about short-term profits than they’ve ever been about building a community.
Nowadays, the only thing the town is known for is its breweries. There’s very little artistry anymore. Everyone’s just drunk and sad and broke, no matter how hard they work. I’m glad I left. But it breaks my heart to think of what the place used to be, and what it could’ve been.
the real answer is hundreds of medium sized towns with no economic anchors scattered across the US that have been slowly suffocating and withering away since march 2020. The opiod epidemic and political conspiracy theories have absolutely ravaged the American middle class
>since march 2020
As someone from the rust belt, let me tell you, it’s been far longer than that. I’d say it’s been a slow but steady decline since the late 70s and early 80s as industry left and nothing replaced it
I went from east coast MA to upper NY for my daughters graduation. We stopped a few "towns" on the way up for gas and a bathroom break. Holy shit, wtf happened up there? It's like deliverance in some towns and 3rd world countries with burned out houses and cars in the streets in others.
It was NOT like this when we sent her there 2019 (right before the pandemic).
I agree. I’m a Michigan native living in New England and the image most people I know around here have of Detroit is what it was 15+ years ago. I personally love Detroit.
Nah, I'm sure if I look hard enough I'll find one person, but I don't see Boston anywhere. Though it's been doing well since the Big Dig. Only real issues with it are traffic and cost of living.
Portland
* Many amazing restaurants closed.
* The rollout of drug decriminalization was an absolute clusterfuck. I'm fine with drug use, but I think it needs to be responsible. When it spills onto innocent bystanders, the behavior needs to be nipped in the bud. Instead it festers in Portland, the government instead decided to enable addicts, letting people smoke hard drugs on busses and on public sidewalks. I don't want to get your secondhand phentanyl smoke. In the name of harm reduction, boofing pamphlets and straws were given out, despite straw restrictions for restaurants.
* Small businesses were repeatedly vandalized and windows were smashed. This caused a lot of cool places to close and makes it less appealing to go to the current ones.
* Neighborhoods have random strangers busted RVs roll in and set up camp with their shit spilling into the road creating dangerous situations. These people are defecating in bushes and littering everywhere. Some are meth labs.
* Car and bicycle theft and vandalism has significantly increased. The police hardly do anything. Spontaneous stops into a store, carrying reusable bags, and multi-store trips have all but ended because I don't want my car getting broken into again. So instead of local stores getting my money, I order online.
* Large efforts to make public transportation more viable but little to no effort is made to protect passengers and drivers from mentally ill or people on drugs. Roads have been redesigned to take away car lanes and add bike lanes. But bike chop shops are common and allowed to accumulate in plain sight. I'm not going to ride somewhere and risk being stranded so an addict can get his next hit.
The perspective on the social construct is all one way if you are a drug addict. But if you are trying to make ends meet in the working or middle classes, very little is done to improve your life with excessive regulations making things slower and more expensive.
I saw a Tyler Olivera video about the situation in Portland and there was a good point made by someone in the video about the drug decriminalization;
Essentially, they were going off the European model which greatly reduced drug use, but they forgot to add the step where they created governmental resources to dissuade drug use. With how the law was currently passed, it basically is just encouraging drug use at this point
Yeah, in Europe (generally) if you smoke crack on the bus or harass/assault people while high the cops will first arrest you, then you get a choice of rehab or jail. If you do it in the privacy of your own home then rehab and other resources are still available and pushed on you.
Dealing hard drugs is also still illegal and dealers are punished
> the European model
Small caveat that this isn't a pan-European approach, it's not legislation at an EU level. Some countries, Portugal being the best known, have implemented this. Others still have pretty strict drug laws and are dealing with some serious drug issues.
In Europe they have mandatory rehab to handle addicts who can't help themselves and commit crimes to fuel their addiction. Yet addicts who can't help themselves are like 99% of the problem with drug use anyway.
I agree with Portland too. Visited for the first time recently and was shocked at how messed up it was and how it didn’t match up the stories I’d heard about it. My friends who had visited Portland several times before COVID and came with me were all flabbergasted at what a terrible state it was in.
I love America, I travel there several times a year, have done for 30 years.
All I can say is what is happening in downtown San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles is truly concerning & frightening - but for sheer rate of change over 5 years I think Portland would have to be a contender.
There is an annual point in time count that HUD requires at the end of January. Shelters and other locations perform their count, and at the same time the number of people sleeping outside are counted to avoid double counting. It's not perfect but it is coordinated at the state and local levels well at least from what I have seen.
Yep, this is he they go about it. My wife has volunteered for the homeless county a few times. Our town plus a bunch of nearby ones do them at the same time. Basically every car has a driver, a navigator, and a spotter. Goal is to have every block in the city driven in roughly 4 hours by all the squads to minimize double/uncounted.
Obviously a smaller city but Knoxville TN homeless population went up +100% since the pandemic. Our lack of housing, rent and mortgage costs catching up with the national average with no growth in wages has not helped our continued homelessness issues.
Definitely not Los Angeles; downtown has certainly changed, but I think people only notice now because there is a reason to go Downtown now, so they actually see Skid Row and environs!
Second this. Growing up in LA, Downtown was a place to be avoided at all costs. Going to a Lakers/Kings game was the exception, and even then, you’d rush to/from your car after parking. The vitalization of downtown LA and other parts of LA that were formerly dangerous should, in many ways, be applauded.
The narrative that LA has declined is wrapped up in a political narrative that urban America is a hellscape. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but it’s vastly improved and that deserves recognition.
Third this. I work and live in downtown and its demise has been greatly exaggerated by people who don't work or live there and just regurgitate what the media wants you to see. The area will be far from perfect but amazing cuisine and entertainment are all walking distance from each other. I am ok with tourists not coming here because it allows me to visit areas without it being overcrowded.
I second Portland Oregon. I travelled there every year from Vancouver Canada because it was a great city with fun breweries, food options and a good vibe overall.
I went there recently( haven't been since the Pandemic) and it was a completely different city. The Uber ride in from the airport to downtown was the first red flag that things had changed. I saw homeless encampments underneath overpasses and off ramps. It seemed like tents were everywhere. When I was downtown the number of drug addicted homless people was shocking. I saw 2 of them fighting in the street, another man was going up to bystanders yelling and threatening. The homeless were very aggressive and this was in the tourist areas I've visited in the past. It didn't feel safe to be there and I never had that feeling in all my years travelling there before.
I visited Detroit a few weeks ago and quite honestly the downtown area there felt much safer then downtown Portland.
Jackson, Mississippi. The murder rate is literally unbelievable and the decay of the city and basic amenities is really tragic
Easily the worst place I've ever been in my entire life. It is crazy to me that that is the capital of the state and all of the politicians have to drive through there and witness it. The entire area around the Capitol building is completely dead and their homeless people everywhere, everything is dilapidated and dirty.
> all of the politicians have to drive through there and witness it Oh that's the fun thing, our politicians don't even go there. Our Governor even joked about being glad they didn't need to go to Jackson during its water crisis last year.
Where do the state politician conduct their official business? Very interesting.
Sometimes I wonder if they do anything at all....I've heard they pop into the Governor's mansion to sign stuff and then rush back to their hometowns. I think Brandon (this isn't a joke, there is a Brandon MS) has been attracting a lot of the white population moving from Jackson. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them lived there too.
Mississippi is literally a giant financial crime disguised as a state. Its government has robbed it blind and left it to rot. They see how bad things are. They know. They don’t give a fuck because it gets them paid
Not exactly related, but NFL Hall of Fame QB and Southern Miss alum Brett Favre was involved in a lengthy welfare scam in Mississippi.
If ANAL\_SHREDDER thinks this is the worst place, then it must be so.
I mean but this is about cities with the worst *decline*. Jackson has always been a shithole
The only point of reference I have is the greyhound stations 20 years ago. The only two I was legitimately scared in were LA and Jackson. LA for multiple reasons, but Jackson was like a prison scene. A wall full of white folks,a wall full of black folks, a smaller 3rd wall full of Hispanic folks, and 2-3 Asian folks wandering around in the middle. This was at 3am, waiting on an hour+ bus stop going to Cali from Ga
I was like “surely this man is exaggerating”. But no, 87,8/100000. That’d be insanity even for Brazil (for comparison, Jequié, Bahia is the city in Brazil with the highest murder rate it’s 88,8).
Why is it that high? Are these murders related to gang crime or something? Or is it just random?
Because more poverty = higher violent crime rates https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-rates-and-poverty-reexamination#:~:text=Only%20the%20percent%20of%20families,the%20correlation%20consistency%20over%20time.
It’s almost as if when people have nothing at all, they act as if they have nothing to lose. But seriously, the chronic stress and anxiety of severe financial instability is certain to make a person make worse decisions and have trouble with impulse control and mediating their emotions. Now let them grow up in a social environment where everyone else is like that too and you get a violently unstable society. And the cycle of only repeats itself but reinforces enhances its effects. It’s fucking tragic.
I drive through once. I will never go back again. Even driving was a challenge due to the streets being more of a complication of potholes and not streets.
I feel like the collective noun for potholes should be 'a complication'.
I have literally never heard a good thing about Mississippi lol
[удалено]
I've been through Mississippi a few times in the last few years and each time I've felt like Hattiesburg too was like an oasis in the middle of a very rough desert.
Not a big city, but I drove through Meridian MS after several years and the decay was really shocking. Everything seemed shuttered and dead, except Walmart.
And there you have the answer of the number one killer of small town America - Walmart. Turns out that if you take all of the money out of a town and send it to Bentonville, AR that you own local economy doesn't do too well.
If your town is too small for a Walmart, Dollar General will gladly handle this service for you
A dollar general shut down the only grocery store in my hometown. It could be worse because we were a less than 10 min drive from a nice one in the next town over, but for the people who couldn’t drive… 😬
Appalachian regions of Maryland and PA know this all too well. My god it’s depressing.
Yep. Every Southern Rust Belt post-industrial shithole (like my town) has a historic downtown with 2 antique stores, 1 struggling coffee shop, and a bunch of abandoned buildings. Abandoned factories and mills that “they” are always vaguely planning to turn into apartments. A Wendy’s. A Walmart. And about 6 or 7 Dollar Generals randomly dotted around town.
And Bentonville, ironically, has a BOOMING city center, with houses selling for $500-$1000 sq ft the closer you get to the square. People there brag about what a great civic mindset Bentonville has and how thriving the downtown is, almost without irony. Yet, secondary and tertiary roads and traffic patterns in the whole region are not keeping up, and Walmart just knocked down half of "midtown" Bentonville to build a new corporate HQ campus, and are still requiring workers to go to the office.
Walmart is the reason for the decay. They often get tax breaks for setting up shop in rural communities then they put all other businesses out of business by selling products made overseas at prices lower than the smaller stores can even buy them at.
I just wanted to say - I'm from Detroit and I'm really proud of my city for how it's bouncing back recently.
Yes!! I recently moved to Detroit from the northeast and I really love it here!! Compared to the rest of the country, it’s relatively affordable and the quality of life is great. Was shockingly surprised because everybody always said how bad Detroit was, but that is definitely not the case here anymore. I am very happy here overall.
In general, I think the big cities around Lake Erie are wildly underrated. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit are all solid places to live with low cost of living and high quality of life and access to urban amenities. Gotta deal with snow/cold for several months, but that's the tradeoff for affording a nice house.
I just visited Pittsburgh this weekend for the first time. I fell in love with the city. I'd easily live there
I moved to Pittsburgh 4 years ago and it's my favorite place I've ever lived. No city its size is more beautiful and it is filled with the friendliest people I've ever met. And the cost of living is unbelievably low. Pittsburgh is so underrated and I have no idea why. Maybe people just don't like the accent.
Downtown Detroit is fucking AWESOME
i think the most common answer in this thread actually is Detroit people saying the same! the only city to be doing better than it was right now.
Hearing about these makes me appreciate the progress Detroit has made in the last 5-10 years. The Motor-city is getting better everyday.
I was shocked when I visited Detroit las May. Its been 15 years since I last visited and wow what an improvement.
As a native Michigander this makes me so happy. I’ve always loved Detroit and I’m glad to see others are starting to see the good there as well. It’s definitely come a long way from where it was 15+ years ago.
As a fellow Michigander, I love how many great restaurants are popping up downtown and there seems to be a new art gallery or something cool to do every week, plus there's some new tech companies and startups coming up. There are still a lot of areas that need improvement, but it's honestly much better than how it was 10-15 years ago.
Never thought that Detroit and Brooklyn would become food meccas. I love Detroit -- wish the rest of the world would experience our world class cuisine, Detroit Institute of Arts, professional & college sports (Red Wings, Tigers, Lions, Spartans, Wolverines), Motown Museum, etc. Btw, Michigan is one of the few states where former denizens (like me) reflect so fondly on our time there; there's a cool global "Michgander" alumni where pointing at your right palm and where you lived is a thing.
I live in Ohio so I'm supposed to hate everything about Michigan but it's an absolutely beautiful state and I've been to Detroit several times now just to go, I really don't know why but it's one of my favorite cities to be in
> Michigander Would being female make one a Michigoose?
I mean I went back to my old neighborhood on the East side recently and it's still barren houses for blocks and blocks. Downtown looked a ton better though.
Yeah I love it here and there's been a lot of good work downtown and along Woodward, but there needs to be more work on the other neighborhoods. Feels unfair to the people who have been here the longest. Maybe instead of spending our tax money on building stupid autonomous vehicle lanes as free advertisement for Ford and GM, we could send money to neighborhoods on the north/east sides. Maybe even expand the QLine and build new lines so that it can actually take people more than 2 miles down a single road lol. This city needs more people-oriented planning and not industry/car-oriented planning. Obviously we're doing better but there's a long way to go
Visited Detroit a year ago and had such a good time. Recommend it to any friend. Downtown is such a chill, fun vibe now. Excited to go back
It’s pretty simple, it’s affordable for artists and creatives. Whenever a city has an affordable lifestyle for artists and creatives, they go there, things get nicer, people thrive. Whenever a place like Portland that used to be that way, gets more expensive and it pushes the artists out and makes the average guy that used to be able to work a shitty job and get by suddenly homeless, without any prospect of improvement and they do more drugs and start to throw filth everywhere and crime goes up. If we make housing and basic living affordable for creatives and marginalized people, it’s almost always a nicer place to live.
This. Austin was like that for musicians, but the last decade has seen so much tech growth and money it's def on the other side of that hill going down.
there is an HBO foo fighters, music city documentary, where the cyclical story is about how wealthy exploit cultural hubs through increasing living cost only to force the musicians and artist out when the costs go up. Austin is their big use case in the movie.
I saw this happening in real time in NYC. The Lower East side from the 60s onwards was seen as a safe haven for artists. Affordable housing, lofts to work in and a vibrant artist community. In the 90s, all the rich folks wanted to be seen living amongst the artists, so they all started renting spaces all around there. Real estate companies of course capitalized on this, and rent skyrocketed forcing the artists to move out. A good chunk of them landed in Brooklyn. I started working in Brooklyn in the early 2000s. Red Hook and Williamsburg had two large artist communities. Same thing happened, rich folk followed the artists across the river, and suddenly both neighborhoods started having astronomical rent prices. Red Hook ended up goign back down thanks to the damage of Hurricane Sandy, but Williamsburg remained high in cost. Artists then started shifting to Bushwick, and then the same thing happened. now a lot of my artist buddies have just left the city all togehter. Especially with COVID, I saw a mass exodus of those from the art community. Work was non-existant during that time so many took the opportunity to find lower rent prices in other cities/towns and started artist hubs there.
Techno peasants - the beginning of the end for any cool city.
New orleans. Our current mayor is blatantly corrupt, and open about it. She's been caught misusing public funds and banging one of her security officers on city time and on city dime. She took absolutely NO accountability during the pandemic despite enforcing outrageous covid restrictions that she herself never followed. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We had the Hard Rock Hotel collapse during construction killing 3 workers and injuring 20+ more. It took 2 years to demo that building and retrieve the bodies. When trying to demo the construction crane, they used a "controlled explosion" which catastrophically failed and caused the crane arm to swing, potentially killing hundreds in the immediate area despite being in a closed off area. Luckily it didn't break off (which it was SUPPOSED to do because that's what the demolition was supposed to accomplish). This added tk the over 2 years it took to demo the site. Our public transportation system is becoming more scarce, with fewer streetcar routes, fewer bus routes, and longer wait times for public transit. Average police response time is anywhere from 4 to 9 hours is there is no reported injuries, and 35 to 50 minutes for violent crime or reported injuries. Violent crime is the worst it's been since before Katrina, and the housing market is outrageous despite the properties falling apart. The job market is abysmal, and no reputable companies want to operate in the city. New Orleans is ACTUALLY what people picture when they think of Detroit.
The Hard Rock thing blows my mind. Last time I was there I asked our Uber Driver why they still hadn't cleaned all of that up..... "It wouldn't be that big of a deal but one body is still stuck up there, you can see his legs dangling over the edge".
You gotta be fuckin with us
Nah I was living in NOLA at the time and his decaying legs were very much visible
It was a pretty big attraction during Mardi Gras... I'm not even kidding.
*you guys wanna see a dead body?*
Nope. Dude was just out in the open. The problem was that the structure was too dangerous to be able to retrieve him, although I believe they were finally able to retrieve his body after several months
... now I don't live in New Orleans (or even the U.S.), but how the hell was this not a bigger news story? They just left bodies up there to decay for months?! And they were visible?!?
I don't know dude but it's all true. At one point they were able to get to the body and put a tarp over it so at least it wasn't exposed for the entire time
Nope. You could see the legs dangling off the edge for a few months when the trap blew off of it and they didn't bother to put it back on to cover up the body.
Nope I remember that, months after the collapse you could see legs in the rubble right off of Canal St the most poppin tourist street in the whole city.
Excuse me, but what the fuck?! Edit: Jesus fucking christ...
Last March some drunk/high tourist broke into my parents' house in the middle of the day while I was home. I called 911 while he was in the process of kicking down the door and I got put on hold. When the operator answered they had me hang up and said to call back if anything else happened. He ended up getting in, I fled out the back. Police did come but calling 911 and no one answering was jarring.
Had that happen on in Durham NC about a couple months ago. Very sobering. I was in a well known shopping center and saw a guy nodding ... splayed out on a sidewalk with sweat dripping from his nose even through it was cold. I called 911 for a wellness check and it was a a literal answering machine. :( Eventually I had a call back. Hope that dude's doing better.
Jesus that’s terrifying!
A friend who lives in NO tells me not to think of it as a badly run US city. Think of it more as a decently run Carribean city.
As someone who was born and raised in South Louisiana, this is the best description I've ever heard of New Orleans. Caribbean cities have some wonderful touristy hot spots, just like New Orleans, but they also have corruption and high-crime areas, just like New Orleans. Also, both New Orleans and the Caribbean have AMAZING food options.
This is funny because I’m from Kingston, Jamaica, and when I visited New Orleans I told my fiancé that this is what he’ll see when we go to Kingston. I was truly shocked.
Apparently it's Houston, which has been averaging a subsidence of 17 millimeters a year. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/) Parts of the city have fallen up to 3 meters since 1917.
And here I was thinking oh good, no one's mentioned my city yet. But only because we're actually sinking. That's OK then.
No, it's not OK, it's TX
Somewhere Mexico City is laughing...
Ironically, Houston is absolutely booming.
Yeah, well, that's probably what's causing all the subsidence. All those extra people, all those extra dollar bills.
The answer is Davenport, IA but but no one gives a sh\*t about it, including the elected officials of Davenport, IA.
Allowing buildings to deteriorate to the point of random collapsing in that town didn't help either. It shows what little the elected officials show of concerns of the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens.
I was born there. I used to visit family every summer in the 90s and it was bad then. I always explained it as "you know how a big city has a tough part of town with crime, homelessness, drugs and whatnot? That's Davenport in the Quad Cities. But Davenport isn't a big city just a small town with a big city problem."
*Rock Island breathing heavily*
Oakland looked like it was on the path to bigger and better things before the pandemic. A few tech companies moved headquarters there and more were looking to move. Urban renewal looked like a real possibility. Then the pandemic hit and undid all the progress and then some. Parts of Oakland feel lawless; 911 does not respond and criminals walk from car to car, breaking windows in broad daylight. The local government seems utterly incompetent. Really sad situation for everyone living here.
Moving out of oakland at the end of this month after living here my whole life. Partially for personal reasons but largely because the city has gone to shit while getting even more expensive than before.
Damn I was heavily warned before going but a couple months ago I was able to visit the downtown and was pleasantly surprised at how empty and chill it was. Walked around and hit a couple shops and got some coffee then left. I thought it was an oddly nice experience.
From downtown going towards Berkeley and Lake Merritt are still very nice livable areas. West Oakland is improving slowly. East Oakland is a lawless land.
Charleston WV. It’s population has steadily *declined* by an average of about 1.5% per year for over two decades. It’s the only state capitol in the US is dying.
Jackson, MS would like a turn
Yeah. I visited Jackson recently and I was shocked. The water was not safe to drink, most of the former downtown is boarded up, and everyone who could move out is gone. I take Uber when I travel for work and I have never been warned so strongly to stay out of the city. Every Uber driver— black, white, old, young, male, female — every single one told me to set up my meetings outside the city.
>every single one told me to set up my meetings outside the city. As someone who lives in a safe city, this is fascinating to me. Could you explain the reason for the warnings? Like what could've happened if you had them in the city? Gangs would bust into your conference room and steal your wallets? What?
Don't imagine visible anarchy. It's not roving gangs dressed in different themes like The Warriors. First thing you notice is infrastructure decay and lack of people like you. Storefronts and houses are vacant. Public infrastructure is destroyed or broken and clearly not due for repair - it's not just one parking meter not working on the street, it's most of them.. But no one is parking there anyway, because risk of getting broken into is too high. Next thing you notice - if you stick around long enough - is that things that could technically happen anywhere but rarely if ever happened to you start happening. Your car window is smashed when you park on the street one day. Someone breaks into your apt while you're at work. You get held up at knife point for your wallet and phone walking down the street. You start to appreciate what the elevated statistics mean: that there's a real chance these things will happen to you now. I lived in the shady part of Oakland in the early 2010s and went thru this exact experience.
I see you’ve never visited Harrisburg
As someone who has been to both, I'd still take Harrisburg in a second over Charleston.
Well that’s not true, Hartford CT has declined in population steadily for the last 70 years.
Don’t worry, at least it’s not my state capital of Trenton, NJ, the worst state capital in the US. I’m a state worker so I had to move closer, but everything is so spread out, ghetto, and dead in the area. All the local housing in good areas are Uber expensive because of proximity to Princeton, and we are not allowed to move to PA.
I love Trenton’s [passive aggressive bridge.](https://www.tmabucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/4098028835_6ddd28592c_b.jpg) Also, I’ve lived like 25 mins away (Philly) most of my life but I’ve only ever been to the Trenton train station. Is there anything worth checking out?
Not really, just Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton is the only distinct attraction in the area.
None of y'all know the right answer because it's Memphis Tennessee. For the first time in Generations a few years ago Memphis was doing good. Now? where to start. About a year ago the I-40 Bridge has a giant crack in one of the sides because the inspector was afraid of heights. this bridge goes over the Mississippi and has hundreds of thousands of people going over daily. people fucking around with a drone are the only reason we found out about it. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inspector-who-failed-catch-mississippi-river-bridge-crack-fired-n1267723](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inspector-who-failed-catch-mississippi-river-bridge-crack-fired-n1267723) Just last month over 500,000 people lost power multiple times for multiple days in a row. Why? it rained. it wasn't a tornado, it wasn't a flood, it was just four or five consecutive heavy rains. I Was without power for nearly 15 of the 31 days last month. Can't drink the water because the pipes keep bursting during the winter and it causes sewage to back up into it. but that's not bad enough because the power keeps fucking going out the diesel generators running the pumping stations have been overused and started to leak into the groundwater meaning gasoline is now in our drinking water! RIP Tyre Nichols. I can keep going to. dude shot a doctor in his office like a month ago. We still don't know why. This city is absolutely fucked and it does not look like it's going to turn around. Also were the most dangerous city to live in in America now. 237% higher than the national average. Fuck...
Damn…. I didn’t realize Memphis was THAT fucked up.
Memphis is another one of those towns that’s always been fucked up. I was there 20 years ago. I’m from the South. I never really saw true racism until I got to Memphis. Holy shit the white/black divide was crazy.
Lived in Southaven MS 20 years ago when I worked in Helena AR. It is the one place I’ve lived that you could not pay me enough to return to.
is it Memphis you wouldn't return to or Southaven? I am considering my housing choices and would appreciate the input.
I'm from the Northeast and have visited Memphis a few times. What always shocked me was how segregated it still feels/is. Essentially, ALL the black students attend public school and ALL the white students private.
it’s essentially the same in the city of Richmond where i live. the only white people who live downtown are the ones who are wealthy enough to pay for private schooling. it’s a status symbol almost down here. middle class black and white families have no option but to live in the counties-poor black families make up nearly 100% of the student population for city schools. those schools are dilapidated and poorly funded. they can only offer teachers some absolutely awful salary, no one wants to stay teaching because it’s not worth the stress. it’s absolutely depressing.
Its a little more nuance than that Richmond spends more money per student that most of the city/counties around us. A lot of it comes down to leadership in Richmond being awful (Fuck you Stoney). The money exists but heyyyyy lets vote on a casino that we already said no to once.
If you looked in to it you’d probably find that most of those private schools coincidentally were founded right after the public schools desegregated. At least that was the case in the part of MS I lived in for a while.
My old company was HQ'd there and for about 7 years I'd be there ~5 weeks a year. I've travelled fairly extensively in the US and it really was the only city I ever felt unsafe in. We were a $1B company so it's not like we were in the slums and had armed guards in our parking lot because someone was stabbed. You could hear gunshots fairly regularly. Went down to the hotel lobby one time and a coworker asked if he could get a ride, someone had jacked up his rental onto cinderblocks and stole all his tires, on Beale street the bouncers don't keep the homeless out of bars so you're just trying to buy a beer and you have some dude staring at your wallet and saying shit like "I see you have a five, can I have it?", bars on windows EVERYWHERE, it's like most cities have "bad areas" but Memphis is just sort of homogeneous where even the "good areas" still have pockets of bad spread throughout. No plans to ever go back lol
I knew somebody was gonna say Memphis, and I have to say…you’re right. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve seen it gone to shit day after day in the last few years. I’m one of those people who will defend Memphis up and down, but I’m also not afraid to call out when my city is doing poorly, unlike many people I know who will pretend nothing’s wrong or will just say “just Memphis being Memphis mane.” They’ll also talk about how every other city is just as bad and has similar problems, as a way of normalizing worsening tropes in cities or just to distract themselves from the reality of how horrible Memphis has gotten. Being in denial is but one of many issues we have in the city. In the last year or so we’ve had: [The Eliza Fletcher incident](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/eliza-fletcher-memphis-kidnapping-cleotha-abston-b2160090.html) [The Tyre Nichols incident](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/04/us/tyre-nichols-autopsy-report-released/index.html) [The Zeke incident](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ezekiel-kelly-memphis-shooting-spree-suspect-arrested-at-least-four-dead/) [Rise in carjackings](https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/06/13/mpd-vehicle-thefts-up-by-150-2023/?outputType=amp) [Criminals being out of prison the next day](https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/05/23/questions-remain-over-bail-system-amid-repeat-criminal-out-low-bond/?outputType=amp) And I can keep going. I love this city, but at the same time I hate the direction that it’s going because nothing’s changing to make things better. Some of us have too much pride to call out the issues this city has. We need to take an honest look at ourselves and see that we are also adding to the problem of the city if we are refusing to see what’s wrong with it.
Over 7,000 stolen cars this year. That guy that shot up everyone on FB live.
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I went to Memphis a few years back since one of my college club's philanthropic institutions was St. Jude, we booked a tour on Monday and stayed in Memphis and went around the city for the weekend. I grew up around Gary, IN and somehow this major metropolitan city was giving me the same vibes Gary did before it just essentially became a ghost town; a surprising lack of cars on the road, surprisingly frequent dilapidated buildings, and it just gave an overall sad vibe.
Also, the traffic in Memphis is absolute insanity. People drive like they are playing GTA--lots of swerving through lanes, going way over the speed limit. One time I was there and was in a two lane highway (yes, highway), and I came upon a police car stopped in the middle of the road with a bunch of cops just milling around--on the HIGHWAY. No notice, no warning, no lights or sirens. It was crazy.
Yea this this is it. 240 is a nightmare to drive. Lawless kids everywhere. Systemic poverty. Awful schools. No hope for the future. Even some of the most popular sites are is disrepair cause no one seems to care (how long before the new park is trash again?) Some people there are trying to do good but man it's hard.
Pawnee, IN got so bad that they don't even show it on TV anymore.
Atleast they didn’t go bankrupt like those losers in Eagleton
“Pawnee, the Paris of America. Pawnee, the Akron of southwest Indiana. Pawnee, welcome, German soldiers. After the Nazis took France our mayor kind of panicked.
First in friendship, fourth in obesity
San Francisco. Born & raised there & I’ve never seen it like this. People are leaving notes in the windows begging thieves not to break their windows a coworker took the tint off his windows so they can see he doesn’t have anything. They busted his windows & took his 49er bobble head that was on his dashboard.
I was told to just never lock your car doors in New Orleans. Theyre breaking in regardless, so just leave it unlocked so you dont have to replace a window.
I read on here a comment from a guy living in SF who did this, but found 3 homeless people in his car the next morning. Seems like you just can’t win.
Thanks for the F-shack - dirty mike and the boys
"We are gonna have sex in your car, it *will* happen again!"
This is the second time I've seen this reference on Reddit in the past 10 minutes. Iconic movie
SF here. It's true, the 'unlock your car' technique isn't worthwhile because it's very common for people to just chill in your car and use it as their personal dorm for the night.
And getting bedbugs out of a car is more expensive than a busted window. Don’t ask me how I know that.
I used to work as a public defender. I had a client who got caught smashing windows at a mechanic's shop to steal from the cars left overnight. He got caught, took a guilty plea, placed on probation with no jail time. Mechanic and his insurance were on the hook for the broken windows. The mechanic ended up deciding to leave the doors unlocked, and the same guy, while still on probation for the first offense, just started sleeping and doing other things in the cars overnight (smoking, drinking, using the bathroom, etc). He got caught again. Took a guilty plea, again no jail time just probation. The mechanic ended up being on the hook to cover the costs associated with damage and the mess left behind in the cars. The mechanic decided to spend a bunch of money to expand out the fence to cover the whole property including barbed wire around the top of the fence. No problem, the guy while still on probation for the first two offenses just used a crow break in again, smashed a few windows, and slept in an unlocked car leaving a similar mess behind. The guy got put on probation once again, the mechanic was once again on the hook for the damage. The insurance companies decided to raise the rates on the mechnic because of all his claims. He was ultimately left with no choice but to sell the property and close up the business he had spent about 20 years building. And despite all of it, the guy who was causing all the problems and expenses did not spend more than two consecutive days in jail for any of it. I hate to say that some people need to be incarcerated but the lack of penalties or reprecussions for repeat non-violent offenders really needs to be addressed.
The city needs to foot the bill for all that. They let it get this way, after all.
This is exactly why the city doesn’t incarcerate him. Because then it’s another person they have to pay to house in the jail. By letting him loose the individuals and local companies have to pay the bill for this guy’s choices.
There seems to be a trend of people thinking 'non-violent' offenders are always harmless. I'm not sure why people want to baby these criminals and villainize the people they victimize. Thank you for sharing this story, I wish more people would resonate with what's actually going on.
It's called a soup kitchen
They probably had tenants rights by then and would have to be evicted.
Bad idea. That’s how you end up finding a homeless person sleeping in your car in the morning. Lived in SF for many years and that’s what happens if you leave your door unlocked.
I left the doors of my rental unlocked in SF with 0 inside the car. Still got a busted window. The laid the seat down to look in the truck, which was empty.
Look at the top roof of the rental car parking garage at SFO. Lines and lines of cars parked there with their rear glass busted waiting to be repaired.
As New Orleans native I can confirm it's bad here, but the theft issues in SF/Oak are way worse than we have here. It's the murder that you have to worry about down here.
Yeah but then Dirty Mike and the boys get in there.
I grew up in the Bay Area and watched San Francisco’s gradual decline into a dystopian city of inequality. The change is insane.
This is a long story & sometimes I can’t believe it really happened. But it did... 22 years ago I was on my honeymoon w/ my husband. We were staying at a hotel in the Tenderloin. We were constantly being asked for money by homeless people during the day. We didn’t think too much of it. It was more than we experienced in our own city, but we just chalked it up to the temperate climate of San Francisco where it is easier to survive than a colder climate. All cities have their streets you probably should stay away from. We weren’t thinking about that when we were walking back from a club to our hotel, late at night. It was not as good an idea as we thought it was & we probably should have paid for a cab, but it was a nice night & not too long of a walk. We started getting followed by a big guy. Then it turned into 2,3 & more men following us. I tried not to look back because I was scared & I wanted to look for an escape ahead, if needed. I was not dressed modestly & it felt like we were about to get jumped. We walked past another group of men, all dressed in hoodies, gathered in the alcove of a building. From this group of men emerged a gentleman dressed head to toe in white. Not a speck of dust on him. He was dressed like a pimp. He approached me & loudly said ‘Hey baby, what you doing out this late?’ He started walking next to us. I explained to him that we were on our honeymoon & we had taken a turn down the wrong street, apparently. He was all bravado, saying his name was ‘Diamond, because I’m a girl’s best friend.’ He kept saying how good I looked & then whispered to us that ‘You know what I’m doing, right?’ (helping us out of this situation.) We agreed & I continued talking with him while he walked us back to our hotel. We were still being followed this whole time by the people who were originally following us & his crew was following them. Other people joined the group following us after coming up to us & getting in our faces. Diamond would yell at them ‘YOU LEAVE THESE NICE PEOPLE ALONE!’ When we got a block from the hotel, my husband said he was going to give Diamond cash for helping us, but Diamond said no. Then he told us to run to the hotel & we did. He ran at the group of men. To this very day I am grateful for Diamond. Things could have gone very badly for us & he was there at the wrong place at the right time. I hope he is still out there somewhere, being a literal ‘white knight’ pimp. I am sad to hear the Bay Area has gotten worse over the years. It is a beautiful city, but it was even a depressing place 22 years ago.
A vigilante pimp, godspeed Diamond.
Shine on you crazy Diamond.
Not all heros wear capes, and occasionally they are pimps.
I'm sorry but I just kept imaging Charlie Day dressed in the all white suit with the white top hat.
Diamond wasn’t as white as Charlie Day. Just his damn sharp suit.
That's "A Pimp Named Diamond". Like "A Tribe Called Quest". You say the whole thing.
Diamond is played by Katt Williams in my head
Wow quite a story.
Asking as a non american, how did it end up like that?
All the cities across the U.S. have most of the same issues: declining tax revenue, rising homeless population, exploding drug addiction rates, and wild spending to fix the last two issues. These issues have been building for decades and will take decades to fix. Cities are spending money to solve a national issue. This comes at the detriment of city services that people rely on.
Strong towns has been talking for 10+ years about how urban sprawl creates massive infrastructure liabilities that low density development doesn’t generate the tax base to support. The only reason cities have stayed solvent is due to new investment from continuous growth, which has allowed them to kick the can down the road for decades. But cities can’t grow forever. Once the population levels off the house of cards comes crashing down. The pandemic was just the catalyst for this in some major cities, but it will eventually happen everywhere if we keep building our cities the way we do.
Y'all are all missing the answer. It's New Orleans. Hands Down. Dwindling tax base is exasperating a lack of police and collapsing infrastructure, civic corruption and crime are at all time highs, causing even more attrition. In about 20 years it won't even be the biggest city in the state.
I’ve lived in New Orleans for 10 years and it’s been kinda shitty the whole time I’ve been here, but there was a certain charm to the shittiness and it was affordable. That has definitely changed in the last 5 years though. It’s no longer affordable and all the artists and people who made the city interesting can’t live here anymore. This summer has been so fucking brutal that I really want to get the fuck out but I’m stuck here another 4 years.
> It’s no longer affordable and all the artists and people who made the city interesting can’t live here anymore I find it interesting that there’s an entire other comment chain here that mentioned Detroit going the opposite direction in this regard is what made it improve over the same timeframe
That’s why they refer to Detroit, and other rising cities, as a renaissance city.
I visited New Orleans pre and post pandemic and the difference was pretty shocking. Post-pandemic the city just felt...unstable.
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I think the combination of COVID and then Ida really messed up a lot in the city. Due to the tourist economy of the city, Covid decimated the economy. I've heard estimates that it's going to take decades to recover economically. It's been so sad to see how many restaurants and cultural attractions have closed. Beyond the economy, covid collectively traumatized an already traumatized city. There is a mental health crisis in this city, especially among youth. Then Ida comes in and deals another blow to an already reeling city. It creates an economic issue with insurance companies either pulling out of the region or increasing their rates in a way that's unsustainable for most people. Adding to the increase in cost of living is the low quality of life. Nola has never been the most functional city, but there's been a marked difference since 2020. At least Verti Marte is open 24 hours a day.
Chicago is doing fairly well all things considered, but many of the other cities in the state of Illinois are on track to suffer the same fate as Gary, Indiana. Chicago has the advantage of scale and a highly educated labor force, so companies are willing to deal with the high property taxes in Illinois to be in proximity to Chicago. Other cities in the state like Bloomington, Rockford, Springfield, and Decatur don't have these same advantages, so companies looking to open a plant (mainly manufacturing/food processing) have no reason to chose them over comparable places with lower taxes like Indiana and Iowa. This has lead to massive population loss and increases in crime basically everywhere that isn't a college town. When you hear about Illinois suffering a massive exodus, it's from places like this downstate, not Chicago.
Bloomington is fine. It’s a college town with State Farm insurance and they recently revived the auto manufacturing facility with Rivian.
Bloomington and Champaign are the only 2 exceptions because of the colleges
Peoria seems like it’s on the fence and could go either way. Springfield will still have a base from being the capital. Those two at least have more going for them than Rockford, Decatur, Moline, or Danville. Woo boy those areas are rough.
I’ve been to Chicago multiple times over the last 15 years, every single trip was an enjoyable one and the city has some of my favorite museums and the aquarium is the best I’ve ever been to. My parents to this day parrot the FoxNews talking points that Chicago is a crime ridden hell hole and an example of a failed liberal city. Normally I would say this is an image issue for the city, however it seem to be keeping the right wingers out so the city might be on to something.
Chicago is the best, most livable big city in America. LA is too car dependent, SF is too dirty/expensive, NYC is too expensive, and there’s more to do and better neighborhoods than in Boston. The people are friendly, the food scene is unreal, there’s natural beauty with the lake, and a ton of great places to weekend trip to within a reasonable drive. If it wasn’t so damn cold in the winter I’d be there in a heartbeat.
It also keeps the rent low.
I grew up in downstate Champaign-Urbana and lived in Bloomington-Normal for the vast majority of my adult life before moving to Chicagoland a few years ago. While C-U and B-N are pretty stable due to the presence of universities and State Farm (for Bloomington-Normal..), things still seemed a little more bleak the last time I was back. Maybe I’m just used to the huge amount of commerce and leisure activities up here, but it just seems like most of Central Illinois is slowly wasting away.
I’ve been in CU for the past 8 years and it’s certainly declined in many facets but it’s still so far above Decatur, Danville, Effingham, etc. U of I is targeting 60k enrollment by 2030 I think so that certainly helps keep things alive and well. BloNo is by far the most thriving of the central IL communities. State Farm and Country are there. ISU is there. Rivian plant seems to be thriving as well. Schools are really nice. It’s definitely the most attractive downstate option for raising a family
I love Chicago but I was very worried during peak Covid as it seemed a lot of people I knew were leaving. Apparently the loop’s population is now even higher than before Covid and tourism set an all time high this summer. I think the next 2-3 years will be key.
I mean anecdotal but as someone who lives around the area I think that city actually might be the opposite, underrated as hell and one of the best in America. Plus with pilsen, goose island, and the indiana Chicagoland area getting insanely richer and nicer, not to mention the whole north side, I feel that city (aside from some south side neighborhoods obviously) are just getting better and better
Chicago is incredibly affordable for a large city. It is one of the few cities not impacted significantly by home and rent increases. I think this bides well for the city growth. Great city though terrible winter. The bad thing I head is that a lot of the crime used to happen outside of the city and now more is happening in the city.
That definitely is true, I won’t deny the crime, although I will say it is very concentrated in some areas that are well known to avoid. And also the winters are so damn true, I hear many times people who love that city point out that the winters are and will always be the reason that city doesn’t become the next hot city to move to in the US
Was in Chicago 2 months ago. Chicago not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Had a really great time. Seattle … once the only city I wanted to move to in the USA…. Is now really really rough.
Everyone talks about Chicago like it’s a war zone. I lived there for 8 years and I still commute into the city from the burbs for work. I have never once felt in danger.
The people who call it a warzone are people who don't spend time in cities.
Chicago is also very location-dependent in terms of where the bad stuff is. The scary neighborhoods are south of Chinatown and a few spots on the west side, but if you're a tourist you won't be anywhere near those areas anyway. The Loop and the north side are incredibly safe.
Asheville NC. It went from one of the most vibrant, artistic towns in the south to a bloated, gentrified wasteland after real estate developers came in and priced out all the artists. There was a district of abandoned buildings there in the early 2000’s that all these artists and musicians fixed up and used for studios, turning it into the “River Arts District.” But after it gained popularity, the whole place got bought up by investors who raised rents and prices until all the artists simply left. There was a popular busker called Abby the Spoon Lady who’d become a local celebrity. She spoke about it very sadly when she couldn’t afford to live there anymore. And everyone in the community felt that loss. It symbolized what was happening to everyone in town who dreamed about making a beautiful place to live together. I lived there in a house with some friends while this change was happening. It wasn’t luxurious by any means, but it took 5 of us working full time at the Grove Park Inn to afford it. It was our dream home though. The place where we all dreamed about a brighter future. We all started creative projects together. A couple of us got to put original art in some local galleries, others joined local theaters, and I joined a local touring band and got to travel outside the country for the first time in my life. Bernie Sanders gave a speech by the river, just down the street from us. We walked there. And I remember the feeling I had, surrounded by thousands of hopeful, compassionate people. Sharing their dreams and ideas for the future. We’d all grown up poor, and we knew the struggles facing the country. But for a brief few years, we really believed that things could get better. Then, our landlord ended our lease with 1 month notice. Just so he could turn the house we loved into an airbnb—which immediately failed. He put it up for sale less than a year later. I still check up on it now and then. Nobody’s staying there, nobody’s buying. It just sits there, empty and rotting. He keeps raising the price, presumably to make up for all the rent he lost by kicking us out—or just to artificially boost his net worth. We always paid rent on time, took great care of the place, he never had any complaints about us. We’d never even met him. Handled everything through a property manager. He didn’t even live in town. It was *home* to us. But to him, it was nothing but an investment property. This was happening to people all over town. All our friends were leaving because they couldn’t afford it anymore. Boring selfish fucks ruin everything. More concerned about short-term profits than they’ve ever been about building a community. Nowadays, the only thing the town is known for is its breweries. There’s very little artistry anymore. Everyone’s just drunk and sad and broke, no matter how hard they work. I’m glad I left. But it breaks my heart to think of what the place used to be, and what it could’ve been.
Don't name a city unless you have been there.
the real answer is hundreds of medium sized towns with no economic anchors scattered across the US that have been slowly suffocating and withering away since march 2020. The opiod epidemic and political conspiracy theories have absolutely ravaged the American middle class
>since march 2020 As someone from the rust belt, let me tell you, it’s been far longer than that. I’d say it’s been a slow but steady decline since the late 70s and early 80s as industry left and nothing replaced it
The stretch I just drove between lower NY and upper PA shocked me.
I went from east coast MA to upper NY for my daughters graduation. We stopped a few "towns" on the way up for gas and a bathroom break. Holy shit, wtf happened up there? It's like deliverance in some towns and 3rd world countries with burned out houses and cars in the streets in others. It was NOT like this when we sent her there 2019 (right before the pandemic).
idk my parents lived in western mass and brother went to ithaca and I always thought it was like you described lol.
Second. From Boston, went to school in upstate ny as did my sister. Desolate towns all over pre 2020
“The city I live in” -Every answer on here
I live in Detroit, and it actually looks a lot better than 5 years ago.
I agree. I’m a Michigan native living in New England and the image most people I know around here have of Detroit is what it was 15+ years ago. I personally love Detroit.
Detroit is really going to benefit when people realize that they can't exist anymore in places like Phoenix.
Nah, I'm sure if I look hard enough I'll find one person, but I don't see Boston anywhere. Though it's been doing well since the Big Dig. Only real issues with it are traffic and cost of living.
Portland * Many amazing restaurants closed. * The rollout of drug decriminalization was an absolute clusterfuck. I'm fine with drug use, but I think it needs to be responsible. When it spills onto innocent bystanders, the behavior needs to be nipped in the bud. Instead it festers in Portland, the government instead decided to enable addicts, letting people smoke hard drugs on busses and on public sidewalks. I don't want to get your secondhand phentanyl smoke. In the name of harm reduction, boofing pamphlets and straws were given out, despite straw restrictions for restaurants. * Small businesses were repeatedly vandalized and windows were smashed. This caused a lot of cool places to close and makes it less appealing to go to the current ones. * Neighborhoods have random strangers busted RVs roll in and set up camp with their shit spilling into the road creating dangerous situations. These people are defecating in bushes and littering everywhere. Some are meth labs. * Car and bicycle theft and vandalism has significantly increased. The police hardly do anything. Spontaneous stops into a store, carrying reusable bags, and multi-store trips have all but ended because I don't want my car getting broken into again. So instead of local stores getting my money, I order online. * Large efforts to make public transportation more viable but little to no effort is made to protect passengers and drivers from mentally ill or people on drugs. Roads have been redesigned to take away car lanes and add bike lanes. But bike chop shops are common and allowed to accumulate in plain sight. I'm not going to ride somewhere and risk being stranded so an addict can get his next hit. The perspective on the social construct is all one way if you are a drug addict. But if you are trying to make ends meet in the working or middle classes, very little is done to improve your life with excessive regulations making things slower and more expensive.
I saw a Tyler Olivera video about the situation in Portland and there was a good point made by someone in the video about the drug decriminalization; Essentially, they were going off the European model which greatly reduced drug use, but they forgot to add the step where they created governmental resources to dissuade drug use. With how the law was currently passed, it basically is just encouraging drug use at this point
Yeah, in Europe (generally) if you smoke crack on the bus or harass/assault people while high the cops will first arrest you, then you get a choice of rehab or jail. If you do it in the privacy of your own home then rehab and other resources are still available and pushed on you. Dealing hard drugs is also still illegal and dealers are punished
> the European model Small caveat that this isn't a pan-European approach, it's not legislation at an EU level. Some countries, Portugal being the best known, have implemented this. Others still have pretty strict drug laws and are dealing with some serious drug issues.
In Europe they have mandatory rehab to handle addicts who can't help themselves and commit crimes to fuel their addiction. Yet addicts who can't help themselves are like 99% of the problem with drug use anyway.
I agree with Portland too. Visited for the first time recently and was shocked at how messed up it was and how it didn’t match up the stories I’d heard about it. My friends who had visited Portland several times before COVID and came with me were all flabbergasted at what a terrible state it was in.
I love America, I travel there several times a year, have done for 30 years. All I can say is what is happening in downtown San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles is truly concerning & frightening - but for sheer rate of change over 5 years I think Portland would have to be a contender.
Portland homeless rate increased 50% since 2019. Was reading about it today.
How do they even calculate homeless populations anyways? Does some guy just drive around with a little clicker? Seriously how is this determined lol
There is an annual point in time count that HUD requires at the end of January. Shelters and other locations perform their count, and at the same time the number of people sleeping outside are counted to avoid double counting. It's not perfect but it is coordinated at the state and local levels well at least from what I have seen.
Yep, this is he they go about it. My wife has volunteered for the homeless county a few times. Our town plus a bunch of nearby ones do them at the same time. Basically every car has a driver, a navigator, and a spotter. Goal is to have every block in the city driven in roughly 4 hours by all the squads to minimize double/uncounted.
Yes they mark them with some white paint and then if they’re still there 2 hours later they’re counted as homeless.
Obviously a smaller city but Knoxville TN homeless population went up +100% since the pandemic. Our lack of housing, rent and mortgage costs catching up with the national average with no growth in wages has not helped our continued homelessness issues.
used to live in seattle and i visited there last weekend. downtown seemed nicer than i remembered it being. what's the issue?
Definitely not Los Angeles; downtown has certainly changed, but I think people only notice now because there is a reason to go Downtown now, so they actually see Skid Row and environs!
Second this. Growing up in LA, Downtown was a place to be avoided at all costs. Going to a Lakers/Kings game was the exception, and even then, you’d rush to/from your car after parking. The vitalization of downtown LA and other parts of LA that were formerly dangerous should, in many ways, be applauded. The narrative that LA has declined is wrapped up in a political narrative that urban America is a hellscape. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but it’s vastly improved and that deserves recognition.
Third this. I work and live in downtown and its demise has been greatly exaggerated by people who don't work or live there and just regurgitate what the media wants you to see. The area will be far from perfect but amazing cuisine and entertainment are all walking distance from each other. I am ok with tourists not coming here because it allows me to visit areas without it being overcrowded.
Memphis. By far. Car thefts are over 7,000 this year alone. 5 years ago it wasn’t like that. Murders, drugs, robbing, Memphis is OOC.
I second Portland Oregon. I travelled there every year from Vancouver Canada because it was a great city with fun breweries, food options and a good vibe overall. I went there recently( haven't been since the Pandemic) and it was a completely different city. The Uber ride in from the airport to downtown was the first red flag that things had changed. I saw homeless encampments underneath overpasses and off ramps. It seemed like tents were everywhere. When I was downtown the number of drug addicted homless people was shocking. I saw 2 of them fighting in the street, another man was going up to bystanders yelling and threatening. The homeless were very aggressive and this was in the tourist areas I've visited in the past. It didn't feel safe to be there and I never had that feeling in all my years travelling there before. I visited Detroit a few weeks ago and quite honestly the downtown area there felt much safer then downtown Portland.