Shittiest American City

you are right to list gary, indiana

No poll without Houston is valid.

East Memphis, AR?

Save the EM3

no dayton, ohio, no etc etc

more like Skankectady, amirite? i have never been in an uglier city, much less an uglier city with an equally ugly college campus.

Chester would run a close second. the fifth GIS result for Chester is a police cruiser ;)

misery and poverty can make for cool pix though

thank you for not including Atlanta

You left out ELIZABETH

oooh, Elizabeth is bad.

if we're going by pure poverty, crime, and population stats, Camden would win for sure.

east orange is MUCH MUCH worse than elizabeth, yo! though in any other state, elizabeth probably WOULD be the worst city in that state -- but when you're up against newark, east orange, camden -- plus irvington and paterson (also not on this list) -- elizabeth is practically chappaqua, NY in comparison.

not according to this website i just googled! xp

http://www.morganquitno.com/cit04pop.htm

trenton, NJ and wilmington, DE are also toilet bowls.

Houston is basically as bad as it gets.

Do you mean West Memphis, AR?

And if so, why is it on the list? Compared to e.g. Detroit or Gary it's paradise.

I shouldn't vote because I've only been to two of these places but if Gary isn't the right answer then I don't want to know what is

nuke this poll, eisbar left off a million worthy candidates.

So many omissions. And Houston is a fucking cakewalk xpost.

You have no idea how bad Camden is until you've taken a bus through it. I have to take a train there to get home (and then I transfer to bus), and EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME, someone on the platform asks to buy or sell drugs. 4 times now, I think. Or people will approach your window and knock on it and otherwise be scary.

Houston is basically as bad as it gets.

the upstate ny cities listed really are not that bad. how about elmira? small and not too dangerous, but famous as a new york times example of a shitty permanently economically depressed city.

Houston has some fantastic museums.

Rothko Chapel and the Cy Twombley museum may redeem Houston all by themselves.

i'm going to try to avoid commenting on this fucking thread

Gary wins. And I hate Houston. But god, GARY INDIANA, PEOPLE.

Well, not to wax too thoughtful, but I think there's a difference between a pre-war city like Gary that was once fine and prosperous and grew shitty due to economic circumstances beyond its control, and post-war cities that were built fast, paved quick, and didn't have the time or inclination to make itself interesting, and became choked by themselves.

You know, museums or not, Houston probably wins in the latter category, though a lot of southern cities are contenders. Houston really is a horrible place to live and work.

you foorgot HOOS teen

He is also a horrible place to live and work, it's true.

Very very sadly, New Orleans is the actual answer to this question, at least in terms of whether or not IT'S IN FUCKING RUINS.

if Houston is the worst US city then we are in the midst of paradise! i live and work there and i like it fine. you gotta dig a little to find the cool stuff, and there is a shitload of sprawl surrounding it, but it's not as this isnt true of 99% of american cities...

not that it's great or anything, but come on, there are a LOT of places that are way worse...

if Houston is the worst US city then we are in the midst of paradise! i live and work there and i like it fine. you gotta dig a little to find the cool stuff, and there is a shitload of sprawl surrounding it, but it's not as this isnt true of 99% of american cities...

oh please. Houston is LA without good movies.

pretty sure they have movies in houston

East Orange is pretty terrifying. I worked very briefly as a reporter covering Orange/East Orange before I was transferred to Cranford. My first day on the job, the veteran reporter, J3rry Fr8nk, showed me around East Orange. He was a middle-aged Italian guy with a gray pony tail who actually wore sweat pants and a leather jacket to work every day. He showed me "the teen streets" and basically told me never to go there at all, and NEVER to go there at night. He also told me that cops will totally understand if I need to run a red light due to whatever might be going on/whoever might be approaching me.

I did get to see Ja Rule shooting a music video.

i had no idea houston was a bad town. i had always though dallas was the worst, having heard that somewhere once. just saw a houston-bound friend off, i guess my jealousy was misplaced...

i don't mean any malice when i say gary is a hellhole. i get the impression that there are reasons to hate houston and i certainly don't feel that way towards gary but i sure as shit would not want to live there

pretty sure they have movies in houston

yes, but in LA they have EVERY movie. It's movie paradise. Houston is like po-dunk Alabama "if I want to see that, I have to drive an hour" movie hell. That's all I meant.

Unless you live in the center of it, which no one but college students do.

Well, and homosexuals and artists and the strange types... you know, the kind of people that inhabit a city. But that's like, 5 square miles of Houston. The rest is sprawl, office park, and office park masquerading as a downtown, which is really just slightly taller office park for oil companies.

Houston has, block for block, the most depressing architecture of anywhere I've ever been, much less seen. Iowa corn fields are more varied and exciting.

Ok, I defended it before, but you all win -- Houston is the worst goddamn city in the country.

Keep in mind, I lived there for 10 years.

well ok, if you want to call anything outside the loop "houston" then you have a point. i think of "houston" as inside the loop. which is not nyc or la or sf, obviously, but it has some charms, and plenty to do and plenty interesting people for a city this is in no way a cultural center or pretty much anything but a place for people to live and work. along with atlanta perhaps, it's a city im really curious to see what will be like in 30 years or so, as mass transit systems get put in place slowly, and as the population continues to get more and more diverse, in all senses of that word.

then again, remember I LIVE in houston, and it's not really in my interest to sit back and proclaim that it sucks, but rather to seek out and try to find what's good about it. so maybe im in delusional survival mode! so i just think there aint nothing depressing about houston that isnt depressing about modern life. and there is a kind of space and light here, and in texas cities in general, that tend to miss when i am in denser places.

plus houston has changed a LOT in the last 10 years or so. and is still changing pretty fast. not sure if for good or bad, but it's changing into SOMETHING.

xpost

i think of "houston" as inside the loop.

that's cool, i never lived inside the loop. I had the unfortunate experience of the other 2-or-so million people who live in what is called Houston.

haha. fair enough. i grew up outside it. it is shit, i agree.

also: houston is mercifully free of the fake "quirky" atmosphere of much of austin, which is crawling with noxious hipsters who got lost on their way to williamsburg. (now im just being mean, i love austin)

including rochester = wtf

plus houston has changed a LOT in the last 10 years or so. and is still changing pretty fast. not sure if for good or bad, but it's changing into SOMETHING.

It's never for the ultimate good, really. Strip malls are built, to bring white-people dollars in. This is seemingly profitable to the businesses that move into these awful places, but the places turn out to be as disposable as the businesses.

Then they fail and move out to a further ring of strip malls. Into those original, and suddenly cheap, strip malls move ethnic businesses, and they thrive based on the ethnic communities that surround them.

Meanwhile, someone builds another awful strip mall further out, and the cycle begins again.

Springfield, Mass. and Bridgeport, Ct. are pretty dreary too. I'm not sure why Detroit isn't considered an "entire large city". I didn't vote-- I can't think of a standout. Plus, it doesn't seem fair to judge them by a bus ride (always goes through the worst part of town) or an interstate drive-by (Gary). Come to think of it, Gary was so awesomely industrial that it was kind of beautiful.

the only one of these ive been to and not just passed through is Albany. Most of the other places on the list are rundown places, i assume Albany is on their for being comotose/boring?

I've spent a fair amount of time in Reading PA over the years, it was my mom's hometown and we'd visit relatives there in the 60s and 70s. A small industrial town in the PA Dutch farmland. When my dad retired in the late 80s they moved there, actually to a leafy suburb west of Reading. The city's deterioration over the next five or ten years was remarkable and sad -- industry gone, influx of immigrants, you know the score. By the later 90s Reading had become a sort of Lower East Side satellite, mean streets and abandoned buildings, dope & crack on sale 24/7, just unimaginable decay, my ancestors turning in their graves.

This situation has been a theme in my life, I moved east from Michigan in 1981 largely because of the downward spiral in the rust belt. My brother lives outside Flint MI and that city is exploded, a dead zone.

But equating this kind of tragic decay with mere "shittiness" -- which to me suggests someplace that's simply boring or annoying to live in seems I don't know what. There are shitholes and there are shitholes.

Bridgeport has to win here, even though it's not on the list. First American city to go bankrupt, carjacking capitol of the US, etc. etc. It makes Hartford look like Dubai.

BOULDER COLORADO

TAMPA FLORIDA

SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA

it doesnt just have to be dire there are other shitty qualities out there

How about the shitty town of 500 people that I'm from? I'd take Gary of it any day. At least I would be driving distance to Chicago.

over it

are you basing shittiness on lack of ikeas or something? because anyone who thinks that elizabeth is BETTER than newark is fucking insane.

boldbury to thread re: houston architecture

I grew up in Houston (mostly inside the Loop) and ryan is right, there are some redeeming qualities. Besides the museums mentioned above, there is great food, some good record stores and book stores, etc. That pretty much eliminates it from worst. Granted, I would not live there again as an adult, but when I visit every five years or so, I am pleasantly surprised.

Rothko is awesome and Houston has an Angelicka which when I lived there showed everything you could want to see. Still, hate it. Exclusion of big cities puzzled me but I voted for Schnet-whatever b/c it sucked. Heart Detroit, Gary etc. . .

houston, while an abomination against good taste, has WAY too much wealth to be a shit hole. sure it has some fucked up parts of town but every major american city does. i think cities like gary or east st. louis (or lawrence, ma) that were company towns where the industry packed up and left 3 or 4 decades ago leaving the municipality to crumble should be the possible answers.

Bridgeport has a waterfront park/beach, a 400+ acre wild park with lake, a baseball team and public transit access to the greatest city in the world and even if you somehow don't find it distasteful to call out as shitty cities that have been hurt by manufacturing decline (or that don't share the tax base of adjacent major cities because they are cut off by say a river), i think its fortunes may change significantly in the next 10 years absent a major recession

SALT LAKE CITY

NEW YORK CITY

Greenwich, CT

DC

NAME VOYAGER CITY

Bridgeport has about 20% of its building stock that is totally vacant and shabby. It is a dump. Hartford's a little better, but not much.

And East Orange and Newark-how can they be separated? They border each other.

Camden gets my vote.

youda loved Newark 35 years ago if you think it's bad now.

HOT SPRINGS ARKANSAS

You forgot New Haven.

every city is better than it yusta be, everyone says that, so boring.

HYANNIS CAPE COD

SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA

every city is better than it yusta be, everyone says that, so boring.

New Orleans, not so much. Austin neither though for different reasons.

I'm going to vote Rochester, NY but only because that's where my son's stepdad is from. I decline to participate in this thread except as a vehicle for weird paternal bitterness.

bitter away.

yeah, cities are better when you quell the riots and put out the fire.

Newark - 14% white non-hispanic
East Orange - 3% white non-hispanic
Camden - 7% white non-hispanic
Chester - 18% white non-hispanic
Gary - 10% white non-hispanic
East St. Louis - 1% white non-hispanic
Detroit - 11% white non-hispanic
Richmond - 21% white non-hispanic
Compton - 1% white non-hispanic
Hartford - 18% white non-hispanic

hay guys, which is the shittiest, omgwtflol?!

e st louis lol

are you basing shittiness on lack of ikeas or something? because anyone who thinks that elizabeth is BETTER than newark is fucking insane.

Indeed. I actually kind of like Newark. It has some very nice architecture and beautiful, wide main avenues. Also there's the Ironbound, the Newark mueseum (ok, I've never been to that but hear it's nice), a couple of large universities, etc.

Houston might be low on urban values compared to denser places but it contains enough academia, business, arts and culture to make it one of the best cities in America

no

gabbneb=the Geir Hongro of cities

http://www.norwaymountain.com/images/main_page/teamnorway_logo_sml.gif

as long as we're ragging on connecticut - long may that particular activity thrive - i'm changing my vote to stonington, because that was the ONLY town in connecticut that wouldn't pick me up on the on-ramp when i desperately needed a lift. all mercedes and stuff; i literally saw grateful dead stickers on BMWs, etc, high school kids laughing at me as the sky slowly darkened.. bridgeport would have been there for me.

i like newark but it's missing rickey henderson.

everywhere rickey isn't is missing rickey henderson h.

also always so much traffic in bridgeport wtf 15 yr road widening project

Stonington is basically Rhode Island, so no surprise there

plus, it's a Town. with a vineyard.

Newark - 14% white non-hispanic
East Orange - 3% white non-hispanic
Camden - 7% white non-hispanic
Chester - 18% white non-hispanic
Gary - 10% white non-hispanic
East St. Louis - 1% white non-hispanic
Detroit - 11% white non-hispanic
Richmond - 21% white non-hispanic
Compton - 1% white non-hispanic
Hartford - 18% white non-hispanic

hay guys, which is the shittiest, omgwtflol?!

If you change the omgwtflol in this post to kekekeee it magically transforms before our eyes into a Carlos Mencia joke.

"I wonder if these guys know the Commodores?"

Buffalo sucks (in my v ltd experience)

gabbneb (who lives in one of his city's whitest neighborhoods) trying to out-trife trife SHOCKAH.

i don't see the relevance of where i live, but if you want to play that game, i live less than a ten-minute walk from a 7% white non-hispanic neighborhood

First American city to go bankrupt

I remember going into Bridgeport for a week of job training back when that bankruptcy thing was going on (1991, if I recall). It was really depressing and run-down back then.

I think since that time it's improved at least to some degree (as noted in another post), but haven't really been back there to find out...I see from the Metro-North on the way to NYC that they've torn down the long-abandoned industrial houses (with broken windows and garbage strown about) that looked really awful from track-side and put up a baseball stadium there.

it has an A- bond rating

guys i changed my vote to stonington, let's be cool.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://nymag.com/travel/weekends/houston/

I'm glad that my hometown of Flint, MI, is represented.

i saw charalambides play at the Live Oak Friends Meeting Home in houston (it's mentioned in that link). it's an incredible place.

Very very sadly, New Orleans is the actual answer to this question, at least in terms of whether or not IT'S IN FUCKING RUINS.

New Orleans has a ton of problems, and big portions were destroyed and plenty of others are still hobbling along, but it is still a fantastic place. It's not an easy place to live, and it always had serious poverty and crime which are now impossible for a visitor to ignore, but it's in no way shitty.

impossible for even a visitor to ignore

Oh, and I think Camden probably wins, though I've not been to most of the other cities listed (except Gary, which ranks higher than Camden in my estimation).

Gary smells like fuel.

but it's in no way shitty

don't get me wrong, I love it, but I'm still angry about it.

including rochester = wtf
yeah buffalo is way worse!

also i have a soft spot for elmira, though the term 'city' seems debatable.

and, houston SUCKS.

Gary = hell

Hell, even after Katrina, New Orleans isn't the shittiest place in Louisiana.

I swear, I can stick my nose out the door and smell Bastrop from here on some days.

hahaha

I disagree with whoever said New Haven above. I've always enjoyed my time there. Plus, when you're competing with Bridgeport and Hartford, it's easy to look good.

Ahem. Buffalo doesn't warrant a shittiest city mention. Sure, the suburbs can be pretty bad (hello, Cheektowarsaw!), but the city itself (save the East Side, and parts of Kaisertown) is actually pretty great. Allentown, the waterfront, Elmwood "Village" are all really wonderful. And beer is still uber cheap, as is rent. I've been in way worse cities than Buffalo, i.e. Syracuse.

What about Richmond Virginia? Has anyone actually stayed in the Church Hill area of the city? Sure, it's historic, but it's no place to live.

I was going to suggest Richmond.

I vote for Niagara Falls, NY. It crushes one's soul.

</i>SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA

-- jhøshea, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 14:05</i>

hey f u buddy

I cast my vote for either RIVERSIDE or SAN BERNARDINO, CA

I also have only horrible things to say about Amarillo, TX and Oklahoma City based on a new experience with each that I have had within the last 2 weeks, but whatever. It's Riverside for now.

oh yeah brackets

How about Fresno.

hey iiiijjjj, are you in san diego?

I imagine Fresno has a better art/music scene than a large number of cities of its size

i'm slightly surprised that newburgh, ny and environs didn't get a mention. really bleak.

Fresno has Brian Kenney Fresno so NO

Yeah, Newburgh is bleak! It's crazy that you have millionaire toytowns like Cold Spring all around it, and even cool scruffy places like Beacon don't even come close to the feeling of just total run-down decrepitude in Newburgh. There are these swish restaurants on the waterfront near there (right across the river from it, I think?) where I got a really overpriced cup of coffee and I asked somebody what they thought of Newburgh and they were like "It's a good place... to get shot"

chicago kevin, I'm from San Diego and was there last week but I'm living in northwest Arkansas currently.

Fresno isn't that bad, certainly nowhere near as bad as Bakersfield, based on the fact it didn't produce Korn. Plus Fresno is close to Yosemite.

But Bakersfield produced Buck Owens and Merle Haggard! Shame about Korn, however.

yeah don't front on the Bakersfield country scene, some of the best country of the 60s for sure

Have not read thread but LOL thread-opening picture is of Bedford Ave, right?

I was talking to someone who works in some sort of social services in Orange County, and he said when some homeless people get offered places in Newburgh, they refuse them.

Sorry, not Bedford -- Classon.

Riverside, San Bernardino, Marysville...

When CA is grim, it's pretty bad.

Merle Haggard is from Bakersfield? News to me. I guess I always took "Okie from Muskogee" too literally.

No no, he's not. But he was part of the whole "Bakersfield Sound" and producing music that would sound good on an AM radio. Yay, trivial facts!

no, he is from Bakersfield

Riverside is so depressing. My family's from there (I was born there) and you can trace its visible decline through family photos.

once shakey was born the whole community kind of threw in the collective towel.

Oh, right. It was Buck Owens who was born elsewhere (and then moved to Bakersfield).

When CA is grim, it's pretty bad.

Riverside is so depressing. My family's from there (I was born there) and you can trace its visible decline through family photos.

the photos are probably increasingly sepia-toned the later they were taken as a product of the accumulating smog-contact emulsion

Joey Porter (ex-Steeler, about to be suspended Dolphin) is a negative strike against Bakersfield.

Modesto isn't THAT bad.

I don't know if I'd call it a city but Woonsocket RI was one of the most horrible and depressing places I've ever been.

Also, Rochester? I really like Rochester!

What about Atlantic City? It's hard to beat a shitty version of Vegas for shittiness.

yeah but does Atlantic City spend $20 billion dollars an hour just on decorations and then spread its city limits over two-thirds of the state

Wow, a lot of hate for H-Town? Why, specifically?

Kenan, you cited strip malls and office parks, and then shared the typical fearful Katy / Woodlands / Friendswood view of what life is like in the Inner Loop.

If you judged Austin by Pflugerville and Round Rock and then said something like "Man, inner Austin is full of gays and freaks," I would think you were some kind of ignorant redneck who deserved to live and die in Williamson County.

Yes, there are plenty of office parks and strip malls in north Austin, and even between Mopac and 183.

So many Houston suburban kids split for Austin without ever giving the funkier parts of Houston a chance. It's a shame.

I attack this city regularly in my writing, but its getting a really bad rap on this board.

It is one of America's most international cities, home to thriving communities of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Nigerians, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Chinese, Colombians, Koreans, Venezuelans, Cubans, gays, Katrina exiles, Cajuns, Creoles, African Americans, South Asians, rednecks, and Yankees, all of whom brought their food with them, and many of whom brought their music. Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu temples are sprouting all over town.

As for the artsy stuff in that New York article...That's the standard pat on the head piece from NYC. I'm past caring about that stuff, for the most part. Sure, the museums are great, and so are the bars, restaurants and coffeeshops NY mentioned, but there's a lot more than that here. There's the African American boho strip on Almeda Blvd. The hedonistic gay club cluster on Pacific Street. Ensemble Metro stop, home to a Houston-themed record shop, Houston's branch of the Continental Club, the Breakfast Klub (a hugely popular soul food breakfast joint) and the Mink (a hipster venue), Ensemble Theatre (African American plays) and world-class dive bar The Big Top.

There's Warren's and La Carafe downtown, two of the best bars in America. There's the weekly zydeco dances at any of the six or eight Creole Catholic churches here. There's the warm winters and the live oak trees and the nights crawling with toads, anoles, geckos and yes, cockroaches. There's the summer storms and the thrilling fear of hurricanes. There's UGK and the Geto Boys and Devin the Dude and Z-Ro and Chamillionaire and Paul Wall and K-Rino and the legacy of all the great blues that came out of Third and Fifth Wards. (Some of which lives on.)

So yeah, glamorous and hip by Pitchfork standards it aint. But it sure as hell isn't the shittiest city in America either.

I lived in the Heights and still didn't like it. There are pockets of good stuff there, as in every city, but the city is too spread out and there wasn't enough of a cohesive feel to the culture there for me (10 years ago). Austin is definitely more my speed.

I've been to all the places on the poll and the only one I'd add is Atlantic City. Still though, most of the go-to rust belt cities that always turn up in these kinds of polls all have a remote possibility of returning to some kind of non-shitty life.

In the end, I voted for East St. Louis. The best thing you can do with it is mow the whole place down and sow the earth with radioactive salt.

Oh, and Pomona is the shittiest city in California. Full stop.

the upstate ny cities listed really are not that bad. how about elmira? small and not too dangerous, but famous as a new york times example of a shitty permanently economically depressed city.

-- Maria

Oh, and Pomona is the shittiest city in California. Full stop.

I hate the whole Inland Empire but jeez, even Fontana or Chino is worse than Pomona

OTM, novamax.

Houston has changed drastically since I left in 1991, but it seems like things may have improved. Not that it was horrible then, although I felt like it was and desperately wanted to get as far away as possible. Actually, it was good place to grow up in the scheme of things, esp. in Montrose at that time. My family now lives in Austin so I rarely visit Houston on holidays, but I should take a trip down there to check things out again.

That said, Austin is a more coherent place in terms of local culture simply because it's much smaller, but it's very true that it also has less to offer for the same reason.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a lot of people here don't appreciate the shittiness that is east orange, NJ, apparently.

I hate the whole Inland Empire but jeez, even Fontana or Chino is worse than Pomona

Chino is desperately trying to be an OC bedroom community and is too middle-class.

Fontana is California's very own rust belt town with the site of the old Kaiser steel plant now a NASCAR raceway, the highest per capita average of fast food restaurants to residents and a legacy of being the birthplace of the Hells Angels.

Pomona wins for me because unlike Fontana or Chino (which were just patches of dirt and farm and are still basically nothing) it once had a strong middle class, tracts of nice traditional bungalows, and a semi-strong local economy. All of that power-dived into hell in the 1980s and now it reminds me of the violent future Hill Valley in the Back To The Future movies. The whole Inland Empire is shitty but only Pomona has a murder rate comparable to Compton or Richmond.

Follow up to Mike Davis' "Ozzie And Harriet In Hell"

I remember driving up to Chicagoland one time, a couple of years ago on a particularly bleak and overcast weekday and seeing people huddled together against the cold in several small groups on an unprotected, elevated railway platform adjacent to the expressway whilst uniformly grey factories belched industrial filth into the skies in the background as far as the eye could see and I just thought that these, these are the people who have given up - everything.

That is why I voted for Gary, IN.

Poor Gary. . .

I remember driving up to Chicagoland one time, a couple of years ago on a particularly bleak and overcast weekday and seeing people huddled together against the cold in several small groups on an unprotected, elevated railway platform adjacent to the expressway whilst uniformly grey factories belched industrial filth into the skies in the background as far as the eye could see and I just thought that these, these are the people who have given up - everything.

hey, this is like 5 months out of the year for those of us who ride the blue line on the wild wild west side.

That sounds like a South Shore Line station.

orig pic today on streetview

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.685617,-73.959403&spn=0.018875,0.042872&t=h&z=15&layer=c&cbll=40.685689,-73.959367&panoid=YXY2KGA_yRDsMHb-ecHgLQ&cbp=12,259.83,,0,-7.97

a lot of people here don't appreciate the shittiness that is east orange, NJ, apparently.

i was gonna say.

i'm surprised compton was on this list and that someone voted for it -- it's not that bad. it's not even the shittiest place in south l.a.!

I WAS RIGHT, I SAID IT WAS ON CLASSON

I mean, I'm glad my memory of that building was actually accurate, 3 years ago, from having biked past it once or something. It was pretty obviously an amazing building even thought I saw it in the Before phase, not the After one.

http://graphics.latimes.com/san-bernardino/

Four decades ago, this motel boasted a cheery coffee shop, a heated pool, valet parking and palm trees that swayed in the hard wind coming over the Cajon Pass.

Now it’s a way station for broken people in a broken city.

As other California cities lift themselves out of the recession, San Bernardino, once a blue-collar town with a solid middle class, has become the poorest city of its size in the state and a distillation of America’s urban woes.

"post-apocalyptic" gets thrown around too much but E. St Louis is exactly that