Worst city center/downtown you've been to?

[Kleine Scheiße]

Amarillo, TX

This was my first thought on reading the thread title

[DavidB.]

Frankfurt am Main in Germany. No redeeming features whatsoever.

[Storr]

Of cities over 100,000 population: Pueblo, Colorado.

To be fair, this was in 2003 during a Summer road trip across the Western US. So the downtown area could have improved in the decades since. But the impression my grade school self immediately had was "wow, this place looks run really down and dirty". Maybe it's because I've matured since then, but I've never had that immediate impression in any other city center.

[vitoNova]

Frankfurt am Main in Germany. No redeeming features whatsoever.

I used to live down the road, and many native Wiesbadeners shared this sentiment.

But once you leave the immediate vicinity around the Hauptbahnhof red-light district of sausage-fest creepazoids, homeless heroin addicts, and pimply-faced 19-year-old American GIs attempting to sow their wild oats, ‘Mainhattan’ is kinda cool.

I’ve always had a blast in Sachsenhausen, especially off the beaten track where the bankers and students hung out in, like Studio Bar.  👍

[HisGrace]

Jersey City is such a dump.

[Green Line]

St. Louis

[LabourJersey]

Trenton, New Jersey is pretty grim.

[retromike22]

Downtown Los Angeles. It is very unsafe and unsettling. Using public transit there is terrifying.

I visit there about once a month for years, I almost never have any issues.

[retromike22]

I have to go with Phoenix

[Big Abraham]

Oklahoma City by far.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Alice Springs.

Depravity. People steal hand sanitiser and mix it with lemonade.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Dallas - this city is everything wrong with the American lifestyle. The downtown area is literally just office buildings, and everything is closed from 6/7 pm. The entire city is just suburbs, strip malls, highways, etc. Literally nothing to do of interest. And it's so goddamn hot in the summer.

Berlin - yes, you might be surprised that I say this considering I live here, but once you finish all of the historical buildings and monuments in Mitte, there's not actually much to do in the historic city center. I always compare Berlin to a doughnut, in that it feels like the city center is missing. There's no organic life and once you get away from Unter der Linden, the place is a ghost town. When I meet friends, we either meet in Neukölln/Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, or Charlottenburg. Mitte is massively disappointing.

Varanasi/Benares - visited in May 2017 to scatter my grandfather's ashes in the Ganges after he passed away. Every negative stereotype of India comes true here: cows and dogs roaming around freely, literal piles of sh**t in the streets, jaw-dropping poverty compared to even Calcutta and its associated problems. I now understand why my mother, despite growing up in Calcutta in the 1970s and 1980s, feels very unsafe in many parts of north India. I appreciate the religious and cultural aspects of the city, but this city needs a MASSIVE clean up.