Most depressing city/town you've been to?

[thenetwork]

I'll see your Butte, Montana and raise you a Havre, Montana.  I spent 6 months there on a job and it was such a s-hole.  And the place I worked for ran their business as if it was a Hooterville business on Green Acres.

Visited Havre last year before things got crazy; aside from a couple arterials, it has some of the worst pavement quality I've encountered for years in any decent-size (at least by Montana standards) city.

At least Butte has its toxic-waste-tourism traffic and the nonstop flow from I-15/I-90, and they've made significant progress on bicycle infrastructure. But some of the close-in neighborhoods are, indeed, quite rundown.

I never could figure out why Havre is used a regularly appearing city on the regional & national maps on the WeatherNation Channel, when Great Falls would be a better choice.  They make it sound like Havre is a big,, happening town when it's a fraction of the size of other listed cities on the map like Grand Junction, CO and Farmington, NM.

[Scott5114]

Sometimes weather observations are placed where they make the most sense to be because of practical concerns, and not necessarily because of human geography. The airport in one town is better sited to get accurate readings, or is more easily accessible to the people running the network, or someone donated a site for a weather station, or whatever.

Back in the Weatherstar 4000 days, TWC always reported the weather in Gage, rather than the nearby and much larger Woodward, for whatever reason. It didn't really matter, though, since Gage served the purpose of "weather station in northwest Oklahoma". Whatever the weather is in Gage is usually the weather in Woodward anyway.

[hbelkins]

Eastern/southeastern Kentucky's NWS office is in Jackson, at an airport several miles out of town at the top of a mountain which is, I think, the site of an old strip mine. It's reasonably centrally located for the territory it serves, but it certainly isn't the biggest town in the area. Temperature and snowfall measurements are skewed by the altitude there. Eastern Kentucky got its own NWS office as a result of flooding issues; I always thought in response to 1984, but it may have been 1977 or '78.

You see similar reports on weather maps from places like Wilimington, Ohio (instead of Cincinnati or Dayton) or Morristown, Tenn. (instead of Knoxville or Johnson City).

In my work, I deal with the NWS Jackson office frequently. They cover all 10 of my counties. My counterpart in Flemingsburg, however, has to deal with four NWS offices: Jackson, Louisville, Wilmington, and Charleston, WV.

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

It's a little known fact that Kenner is the armpit of Louisiana.

For other depressing cities/urban areas in this region, I would certainly nominate Shreveport, Monroe, north Baton Rouge, the Westbank of Jefferson Parish, New Orleans East, and virtually every small town/village in Mississippi south of I-20.

[Rothman]

It's a little known fact that Kenner is the armpit of Louisiana.

For other depressing cities/urban areas in this region, I would certainly nominate Shreveport, Monroe, north Baton Rouge, the Westbank of Jefferson Parish, New Orleans East, and virtually every small town/village in Mississippi south of I-20.

Yeah, north Baton Rouge was pretty bad last I was there a few years ago.

[cb98]

It's a little known fact that Kenner is the armpit of Louisiana.

For other depressing cities/urban areas in this region, I would certainly nominate Shreveport, Monroe, north Baton Rouge, the Westbank of Jefferson Parish, New Orleans East, and virtually every small town/village in Mississippi south of I-20.

New Orleans East was depressing. Just a short drive on I-10 through that area really goes to show how much is empty from Katrina still. It was stunning seeing all that for the first time, but even then the eastern half of Chef Hwy and US 11 towards The Rigolets are more depressing.

At least with Kenner and Shreveport there's some activity...people walking around, life being lived. The most depressing places are void of that.

[US 89]

Spartanburg, South Carolina would be my answer.

Having never been to northwest SC before today and knowing that Greenville and Spartanburg shared an airport, I always figured they were essentially twin cities. I drove through Greenville first and found a fairly interesting city with a neat downtown area that I'd be interested in going back to explore at some point.

I figured Spartanburg would be similar, but I was wrong...it turned out to be kind of a dump (at least the parts I drove through) - just a decayed city with nothing really going on. I have no real interest in returning now that I've clinched I-585 and 85 Business through there.

[DandyDan]

One other I forgot about was Sioux City, Iowa. I used to always refer to it as "Sewer City". After I moved here for work, I met someone who used to live there who also referred to it as Sewer City.