My longtime friend and reader Scott pointed me toward this Daily Telegraph list of the 10 best and worst cities on Earth according to Mercer, Inc., a company which apparently gets paid to come up with really, stunningly obvious (and elitist) information for the corporate titans. Such lists appear regularly and spark time-killing message board debates. I'll save you the trouble of clicking through the list: Europe is good. South America does not exist. Nor does the U.S. Africa is bad. Very, very bad.
Did someone really need to pay Mercer, Inc. to tell us that Bangui, Baghdad, Kinshasa, Khartoum, and most of the Congo are sweltering, violent, and pestilent shitholes? Likewise, did we need yet another slide show-style affirmation of the awesomeness of Vancouver, Auckland, Vienna, Frankfurt, and other places with 99.7% white populations and exorbitant costs of living? I have not yet been in a position to be a world traveller, but I always have a hard time imagining these places to be either as great or as awful as magazine rankings suggest. People tend to see these lists and picture themselves living in the World's #1 Metropolis where the streets are paved in candy and fairies grant one's every wish.
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At the same time we are to imagine the untold horrors of living in the average African superslum with curiosity and revulsion. Would I bet that Bern, Switzerland or Auckland or Frankfurt are great? Would I bet that Africa's conurbations of 10,000,000 people with no effective government are shitty? Yes and yes. But rather than turning me on or off of these places, such rankings always make me want to go. To find out what it's really like.
More importantly, the cultural and class biases inherent in these lists are interesting.
I have a very hard time believing, for instance, that Lahore, Pakistan or any of India's obscenely crowded asylums are any better than N'Djamena or Port-au-Prince. Everything I have ever heard from travellers to the subcontinent suggests that its megacities have everything the suicidal tourist could want: crime (both petty and violent), unfathomable pollution, ineffective governance, oppressive heat, diseases that opportunistically attack our Western constitutions, and an overpowering sense of filth and crapulence. But India is a "good" non-Western country now, ripe with investment and job-siphoning opportunities. Mercer can't say anything bad about Calcutta to its rich, outsource-happy Western clients. That would be rude.
My India-travelling friends also report in the same breath the many things they loved about India or Pakistan. That's why I always greet these lists with skepticism. People live in and travel to "the worst" places every day and it is not always clear to me in what way these cities are supposed to be inferior to the dozens of other shitty cities dotting the globe. These lists feel like little more than periodic reminders of the unfettered glories of teutonic, Aryan European outdoor museums like Vienna and the sweaty, barbaric other-ness of Africa. Coincidentally, the "worst" lists conveniently omit some countries renowned for their horrendous urban ghetto-cities – China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, etc. – when they happen to be our latest low-cost trading partners of convenience.
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All that said, I do find the topic fascinating. What are the best and worst places you've been?
Nate says:
I have no idea how Frankfurt won out anything. It's alright, I guess. We found it incredibly cold and uninteresting (and all the town residents leave after 5pm. The only nightlife we could find was from overnight businessmen. Awesome).
Munich is probably one of my favorite cities, but so are Denver, Boston and Lexington, KY.
Worst places I've been? Oklahoma City, OK; Waco, TX. Nonetheless, there were redeeming qualities about even these cities.
cerb says:
I've lived abroad for a year and work for an airline so I do a lot of traveling for fun. My favorite large city would have to be Paris followed closely by Antwerp. While Paris gets a lot of hype, it deserves it. Hamburg and Berlin are great cities as well, especially the very interesting neighborhoods in each (St. Pauli especially).
Worst place is easily Barcelona. The entire city is extremely dirty, the beaches are shit, the food is worse, and the city apparently thinks that having all the street signs be earth brown when all the buildings are the same earth brown is a really great idea. Try getting around in Barcelona at night, it's ridiculous.
Parthenon says:
The only time I've been in an overseas city was Nadi (pronounced nawn-di), Fiji. It was pretty fucking cool, actually, though we met some fellow Americans at the airport that derided it as a third-world destination. It was dirty and lively, with merchants standing on the street trying to entice you to come in and have a look, a very plastic tourist sector downtown and plenty of warnings to hold onto your wallet (which I did). Some kids knocked open a fire hydrant to goof around. Our cabbie parked illegally but assured us the plain clothes police wouldn't ticket him while he had Americans in the car. Sure enough they kept on going.
Overall, I'd recommend it.
FMguru says:
Houston, TX is an amazingly terrible city, in almost every way. Sprawl that made greater Los Angeles look like Portland (or one of SimCity's arcologies). The total lack of planning and zoning was mindblowing. An adult bookstore next to a church next to a refinery next to an elementary school. No public transit, a terrible airport (the megolamaniacally-named Houston Intercontinental Airport), zillion-lane freeways that were clogged-up all the time, and whole thing is just about as ugly as you can get and not be a dying industrial town like Flint or Gary. The best treat: sunrise turns the air over the shipping channel into a riot of shimmering rainbows – on account of all the petroleum droplets in the mist. A complete shithole.
Phoenix, AZ is close to it in terribleness. Giant grid, it takes 45 minutes to get from one place to another because it's so sprawled out. Hope you like traffic signals. The ugliness of the city does get overshadowed by the beauty of the desert most of the time. Plus, Spring Training and Taliesen West. Should make for some fun ruins in 2050 (along with Las Vegas) when the water runs out and its 137 degrees in the summer.
Ed says:
I second that. It's staggering how much Houston sucks. There are no redeeming qualities. That it has electricity and a sewer system is its only advantage over places like Kinshasa.
FMguru says:
The greatest moment in Independence Day is when the President orders a nuclear attack on Houston. I'd like to think the possibility of destroying an alien mothership was coincidental to his decisionmaking.
Nan says:
Count me as another vote for nuking Houston. It has to be one of the ugliest and dirtiest cities I've ever had the misfortune of visiting. Had to go there for a conference, and what I saw in one weekend was enough to make me decide I never wanted to go back. No discernible redeeming qualities at all.
Nate says:
Poor neighborhood in Detroit about 9 years ago at around 1am in the morning. Scary as hell, I was just walking back to a car after my first rock concert with a group of friends. One of them almost got into a fight with a rather large drunk black man walking along the street. The black man is not at fault, rather my friend was the instigator and everyone else was prepared to leave his dumbass there.
Nate says:
Poor neighborhood in Detroit about 9 years ago at around 1am in the morning. Scary as hell, I was just walking back to a car after my first rock concert with a group of friends. One of them almost got into a fight with a rather large drunk black man walking along the street. The black man is not at fault, rather my friend was the instigator and everyone else was prepared to leave his dumbass there.
Also, outskirts of Gary after dark. I was headed to Madison, WI with a friend and had to fill my car up, because we wouldn't have made it past Chicago. Yikes.
Shane says:
I have travelled fairly extensively, but this is a hard decision to really make objectively. When I think about the best or worst places I have been, generally it has more to do with what I was doing there than necessarily anything inherent to the place itself. When you are vacationing and staying at nice hotels or bed and breakfasts or led by a skilled tour guide to the very nicests parts of the city you are in, it is difficult to see the dirty realities that might be hidden just below the surface. When you arrive late in a german city, even a beautiful one, only to find out that the youth hostel is closed for the month and you have already run through your hotel funds and you wander around the icy sidewalks with your backpack in 5 degree weather, until you can catch the train to the next city…not so lovely. Plus as you already mentioned, sometimes the good and bad can all be rolled into one. Having said that,
Best places: Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh, Scotland; Salamanca, Spain; Silverton, CO.
Worst places: El Paso, TX (I hear you guys on Houston, but seriously El Paso has got to be the armpit of America. Admittedly, the only time I did more than drive through it I spent 4 hours in the middle of night at the Greyhound station.) Any small town in East Texas, the town I went to college in still had white churches and black churches, a white college and black college, and even white and black grocery stores, the downtown was completely dilapidated and abandones, it was depressing. So if we are going to drop a nuke, seriously we must have one big enough for the whole state, save Austin perhaps, which is a pretty great place.
By the way Phx is my home town and sadly I can only agree with everything that has been said about it, it is a mess yet for some reason people still flock there.
As I side note, I always find the lists of cities with the happiest people more interesting, generally they are states which far greater social safety nets then we have here. Typically when I think about my dream location it has more to do with weeks of paid vacation, maternity leave, costs of healthcare and education, and lack of pollution, then beautiful views or available night clubs. God I am getting old.
yam says:
For all of you wishing to travel to the 10 worst, allow me to introduce you to the Anti-tourist Daniel Kalder.
grendelkhan says:
I remember being horrified at Los Angeles when I visited it. It looked clean, but stepping over the homeless folks lying in the street was something I didn't want to get used to. New York is awfully grimy, but it's got life and culture and history to it, and I'd rather be grimy and cold in New York than warm, sunny and soulless in LA.
On the other hand, I have very fond memories of San Francisco, despite it also being Californian. It was similarly warm and sunny (at least, when I visited, it was), but I was far, far happier there. Maybe it was all the history that, at the time, I knew little about. Plus, I got to visit Muir Woods, which was like a cathedral made out of nature.
Outside of the States, the only place I've ever been is London. The seats in the Tube cars were cushioned. Cushioned! You don't get that here in the States. I didn't realize that we'd gotten a hotel in a relatively shitty section of town until we'd nearly left. People were friendly, beer was warm, and sausages were awesome.
Oh, and I visited Oxford, which filled me with immense sadness because I'd never be able to live there. It's incredibly old, yet people were still living there and using the buildings and whatnot.
I know the British have their own problems, but it seems like a much nicer place to live than the States.
JohnR says:
I can't understand how Albuquerque could be left off of any such list. As I understand it, (among many other positive features) anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel! Beat that, Vancouver!
You can call me, 'Sir' says:
I was fortunate enough to have been stationed in England for 4 years and lived outside of Cambridge. It made for a great jump-off point for all kinds of travel, official and recreational. As a result, I have a serious affinity for Scotland. Edinburgh's spectacular, but after a well-traveled lifetime, St. Andrews is still the greatest place I've ever been.
The worst was without a doubt Irbil, Iraq. Any time you spend anywhere that sporadically involves shit getting blown up by assholes is not time well spent, nor does it translate itself to the top of any list of places that make one gleeful.
Steve says:
Have you ever been to Vancouver? 97% white, not so much.
Via Google: Vancouver's Ethnic composition: 21% Chinese; 11% English; 4% East Indian; 72% of single origins; 28% of multiple origins
It is fucking expensive, though.
Oblio says:
Minimal travel, but strong opinions. El Paso, TX leaves me speechless with its awful weather, surly people and crappy environs. Boise, ID was amazingly modern, friendly (?!?!) and a great place to spend a few summer weeks, but 5 miles outside of town and it becomes DELIVERANCE-like. New Orleans was a HUGE disappointment… shabby, moss-ridden, worn-out and dangerous. Vancouver BC was OK, horrific traffic in and out of the downtown metro area. Fly into Newark airport and you heart will sink, but once into the New Jersey countryside the greenery and quaint towns are really cool, but two-way traffic snarls everything. Only decent city in Florida is Fort Walton Beach, but the locals consider it LA (Lower Alabama) and not part of the rest of that horrible, flat, humid, stupid state. Sorry, Floridians! As for my home state of Cali, it is both awesome and awesomely awful, depending on where you are.
J. Dryden says:
My fiancee and I were making a road-trip to Chicago to visit relatives and were both low on gas and hungry. I told her to keep an eye peeled for a promising off-ramp. Upon taking one such, she looked around and blurted out "Where the fuck *are* we?!" in a tone of voice that suggested we'd just pulled into a small town from one of Stephen King's short stories. It was worse–we were in Gary, Indiana. There's a kind of "Holy Shit, No *Way*" quality to the awfulness of Gary, which has the resigned air of a crack-whore beaten to within an inch of her life. We left, still hungry and low on gas, but knowing that we'd live to see another sunrise.
I've always said that if I could afford to live anywhere, I'd live in London. But then, I'm an Anglo-phile, so for me it's the urban equivalent of Disneyland.
Sophia says:
It's tough to answer when you've only been a tourist — 24 hours in London, for example, and I wanted to live there forever, but my friends who've had to try to find flats and pay insane living expenses and navigate within the city are sort of burned out on it. These kinds of lists also don't take into account the trade-offs, since living in the beauty of a third-world city on a tropical beach makes up for the other things, to some people.
Mostly, though, I'm struck by the accompanying photos with the piece you linked to, which show buildings for "the best" and people for "the worst." Nice way to indicate that the worst is "anywhere brown people live."
judith weingarten says:
I've travelled a lot. Worst: Tripoli in Libya or, in fact, any place in that god awful country. It's not the poverty (which isn't so bad, since everyone gets a pittance from the oil revenues) but the 100% lethargy and unbelievable filth. And I've seen filthier places (I won't name and shame) but nothing so depressing even when the dirty locals threw rocks at us. At least they DID something.
Best: too many gorgeous places still on earth. Maybe I should just nominate 'MOST OF ITALY, including most cities' and stop.
Kevin says:
Yeah, Dryden — Gary, IN is like evil 1985 from Back to the Future Part II.
grendelkhan, we'll have to agree to disagree — LA is anything but clean, but it does indeed have plenty of life and history and culture to it. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of NYC overall.
Susan of Texas says:
El Paso looks like it was carved out of dirt.
I live in the pretty part of Houston–our feeble equialent of Greenwich Village. We have tree-shaded avenues, fountains, universities, museums, rich people, recent immigrants, artists, cafes, and even a few narrow sidewalks.
Outside this little area, it's a pit of strip malls, strip bars, and endless hot, dangerous freeways.
Darryl says:
Um… Vancouver is not 99.7% white. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world.
Web Dunce says:
Seriously, Middletown, CT. I've been here four years and absolutely love it. Nice restaurants, safe bars, wonderful cultural events, a large Buddhist community and a fair mix of everyone. Not the typical lily white snobbery that exists in places like Avon and Simsbury, but at the same time not the bullshit crime and nonsense of Hartford. Since I'm the only college educated member of a large blue collar family I feel very much at home here as I can navigate both worlds seamlessly.
Desmond says:
LOL, Vancouver is many things, but 99.7% white is not one of them.
And Vienna and Frankfurt also have fairly diverse populations.
MildlyDisturbed says:
Jackpot, Nevada for its reasonably priced hookers.
Prudence says:
I'll be honest, Pakistan largely pissed me off. The Sufi stuff in the South was worth seeing, but generally, meh. Conversely, I really like Afghanistan. And I usually find something to like about a place, though admittedly, I haven't been to Houston. The rudest people on earth, to my mind, are white South Africans and Israelis.
Prudence says:
Best place? Might be Porto Ercole or Todi, both in Italy. Margaret River, Western Australia is heavenly too.
Ed says:
Very interesting comments, much appreciated.
I hope (think) that we all realize that when naming places like El Paso (which I honestly didn't mind that much!) as the worst we mean the worst in comparison to other Western cities and according to our Western standards. Because I'm pretty sure that El Paso or Houston – God, Houston fucking blows – would seem like paradise to a lot of people on this planet.
I'm perfectly OK with this type of best/worst discussion so long as we can all admit that El Paso isn't even in the bottom 100 in the larger sense.
jazzbumpa says:
Having never been off the continent, I can only say my personal favorites are Toronto and San Fransisco. Chicago is good, as is Ann Arbor, MI. Pittsburgh is actually OK.
Ohio is unbelievable. There are five or six cities, at various levels of mediocrity, and then the countryside, which might as well be in the amorphous depths of the deep south.
Missouri sucks about as bad as Texas.
But I really hate Phucking Philadelphia, serious contender for the most ironically misnamed place on earth.
Shane says:
Good point Ed, but you did ask us to write about the best and worse places we've been, which for most of us limits the scope to those not at the true bottom of the barrel.
Daniel says:
I was fortunate enough to visit Hawaii one time. About as good as it gets. I've also been to Boston once and while it's an interesting city, it is quite confusing to drive around. It's not a city built for modern needs, but it's quite for American history and tourism.
Daniel says:
good*
dude says:
Lived in Vancouver many, many years can say with confidence that this town is way over-hyped. Pretty as can be but terrible weather, one of the least friendly place I've lived (and I've lived in many places in Canada and the US), and very expensive with below average job opportunities. Great to visit for a couple of weeks in the summer, not so much for the long run.
nicolien says:
Having lived in 8 cities in 4 different continents (and traveled to many, many more), currently calling Beirut (Lebanon) home, I can only say that any city can be the best place to live as long as you have money – significantly more money than most other inhabitants, that is. If you live in the neighborhood of your choice and have the means to get around safely, it all depends on whether your particular tastes can be catered to (live oriental jazz, for example, or mexican food, or… you get the idea).
'You can call me, "Sir" ' above says 'Any time you spend anywhere that sporadically involves shit getting blown up by assholes is not time well spent, nor does it translate itself to the top of any list of places that make one gleeful' – but blowing people up seems a regular occurence here in Beirut (see: history of the past 4 years) yet the city made it to no.1 on the NYT list of 44 places to go in 2009. It's also not the worst place in the world to live, I can tell you from experience (keeping in mind the 'if you have money'-clause I mentioned).
Thought I'd chime in from the other side of the ocean… because Ed, as much as you try to be non-Western-centric (or so it seems) by saying 'I hope (think) that we all realize that when naming places like El Paso (which I honestly didn’t mind that much!) as the worst we mean the worst in comparison to other Western cities and according to our Western standards. Because I’m pretty sure that El Paso or Houston – God, Houston fucking blows – would seem like paradise to a lot of people on this planet', I think you're overlooking something here: for most of the people you think that these cities would be like paradise, there would be a paradise much closer to them: the better neighborhoods of the cities they already live in.
K-Max says:
I don't have a best or a worst city, but I do have something to make you feel better about your new job. When I was living in Athens, Ga in the early to late 80s a friend of mine who had lived in such metropolises as NYC and Berlin told me Athens, GA was her favorite place in the world besides Paris, France.
Twisted_Colour says:
Auckland 99.7% white????
That's gonna surprise the Maoris, Islanders and Asians who make up half the population.
Also, not expensive.
Ben says:
I've traveled a lot, which makes me cooler than you, and I also happened upon this 'best places to live list', and my reaction was, more or less, "what asshole compiled this bullshit list? A dry cleaner? A bank auditor?" It has to be somebody boring, white, middle-aged, and even more sedentary than me, which is chilling. The cities prescribed are pleasant. That is all. Pleasant. The megaslums and ass-poisoning attendant to the more interesting locales are completely worth it. Gimme the unwashed every time.
Shell Goddamnit says:
Yeah, the dead or dying are no fun to visit, and less fun to be stuck in; I'm from SE MI, where there's several mid-to-larges on that list. Detroit's been on & off it more times than I can count.
However, I moved to Texas, and I can say that the worst places for me are always those thin schmears of sprawl involving too-large, identical houses crammed together on tiny lots without a tree in fucking sight. Whether in the cornfields of MI or the former pastures of TX, these places will suck your soul out and vaporize it before your eyes while laughing maniacally.
Hudson says:
Worst place to visit in the U.S.: Kearney, Nebraska. The entire town smells overpoweringly like manure.
Hudson says:
Good places to visit if you aren't looking for a middlebrow businessman's golf holiday:
Santiago, Chile
Montreal, Canada
Yerevan, Armenia
St. Petersburg, Russia
Blantyre, Malawi
Uh, NEW YORK CITY
Also for a hilarious take on what some do or do not consider a shithole, rent "In Bruges."
David Recine says:
In these three "worst" they don't even explain or allude to why these cities are bad. Kinda cryptic:
"Mauritania's largest city, Nouakchott expanded from a tiny fishing town in the 1950s to become a city of nearly 900,000 residents, many of whom moved to the city to escape drought."
"Located on the confluence of the Blue and the White Nile, and the stage for Chinese Gordon's last stand, the Sudanese capital has seen a great deal of development in recent years, driven largely by the country's oil money."
"Originally a French military post, Bangui became a colonial administrative centre and now has a population in excess of 500,000. The city manufactures textiles, soap and beer, while a number of archeological sites outside the city have UNESCO World Heritage status."
Robert says:
I would concur with Nicolien above. My own hometown, Oakland CA, is a perfectly lovely place to live if you have an income above a certain point. In that case, you can live in a pleasant, relatively safe neighborhood, have access to quality schools for your kids, and enjoy a booming nightlife with restaurants, clubs and bars. If your income is below a certain point, you might as well be living in [fill in the blank with your favorite non-USA hellhole].
That said, my least favorite place I've visited is Jekyll Island, Georgia. Mostly because it was a businees trip, and I was stuck in a seaside resort (on the unfashionable side of the island) conveniently out of walking distance of anything more interesting than a Quik-E-Mart. That, plus a combo platter of jet lag and persistent nausea, made it a trip to try and forget. Unexpectedly delightful place – Curacao, in the Caribbean. Hot and dry with a constant breeze, a remarkable absence of visible poverty, generally pleasant and agreeable locals, and cheap, good local beer.
Patti says:
Jackson, Mississippi might as well be up there. Probably had more vacant buildings than Gary, Indiana, including some that had caved in less than 2 blocks from the State Capitol. Plus, even when you leave the hellhole that is Jackson, you are still in Mississippi.
Some of the crappy towns I've been to in the non-tourist area of Mexico (the You're Not Giving Blood For Two Years Due To The Plague and Hunta Virus areas) at least had some charm and a sense of a full culture behind it, even with the armed guards at your hotel. Jackson had nothing that would encourage people to stay there longer than it took to drive through it. It looked as I assume Leipzig looked in 1946.
Tom says:
Heh, I love Phoenix, it's my adopted hometown. I love the grid, it's so easy to navigate in Phoenix and everything is new. Traffic is also rarely bad compared with cities 1/5 the size.
I hate Seattle. The whole I-5 corridor is a nightmare. The traffic here makes me want to punch babies. The people are ugly and unfriendly, it rains all the time, and there is no good Mexican food. Talk about poor layout and slow drivers…all the opposites of Phoenix really…
I was coming here to comment on Mercer putting Frankfurt on the list as a top city. Frankfurt sucks so many donkey cocks. Seriously, it's such a boring city, everything closes early. It looks like a smaller abandoned version of New York or Chicago.
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