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I find most of Europe quite pretty even run down Eastern Europe. Maybe because there is a lot of intertwined history in creating beautiful cities.
My favorite pretty cities.
Prague
Edinburgh
Bern
Barcelona
Brugge
Amsterdam
Paris
Ugly cities:
I find most of Asia's major cities quite ugly. In a way they all look quite the same. It is like the tore down 90% of the original city and built a bunch of modern crap and residential towers that look the same. Other developing countries have nice CBDs but the rest look so run down and will likely be torn down and replaced with towers that all look the same.
Not all are bad. Kyoto is very beautiful as well as old traditional parts of Seoul, Beijing, Malacca, Malayasia. Singapore and Hong Kong is above average for Asia.
American cities are average overall compared to Europe and Asia
Prettiest American are Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco
Ugliest are Las Vegas, Phoenix, Oakland, Honolulu
Prettiest: Vancouver (as anyone who’s had the misfortune of seeing me bombard the forum when I was younger knows...). I’m still in love with it nearly a year after moving there.
Ugliest: maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but New York. It has a really cool skyline, and I’m sure the view is amazing from above, but when I’m actually in the city it feels suffocating and looks awful to me; the polluted air doesn’t help either (I feel bad saying that since New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprint per capita; unfortunately the air’s still not gonna be too clean with so many people packed in there)
Why do many people keep saying that Paris suburbs are really ugly? I’m curious. How bad are they compared to other cities lol
The suburbs of Paris look like an average and featureless city. It's not an awful ugliness, unless we compare them with Paris properly and its sumptuous arrondissements.
Meanwhile, it's funny to read people bashing the suburbs of Paris while pointing Rio as one of the prettiest cities of the world, while the suburbs of Rio look far, far worse than the ugliest suburb of Paris.
Nonsense. The very fact that you divide London into "CBD" and suburbs is completely out of touch with reality. There's a very good reason why Central London is among the most highly desired real estate locations in the world.
(Google image search)
And the non-Central areas of the Paris metro area are much worse than the suburbs in London.
The only place of London which I don't find beautiful is the City, with those asymetric skyscrapers, like the Walkie Talkie, the Nova Building, the Shard... these buildings are truly monuments to the bad taste of our times, and buildings spoiled forever one of the most stylish skylines of the world. But the other parts of London, especially the West End, are still beautiful.
As for the suburbs, they look nice. The only thing is that some streets look all the same.
Bariloche is a well known destination for us, brazilians.
I went to there one year ago. The Nahuel Huapi lake is one of the most amazing natural landscapes I have ever seen.
Prettiest
Tokyo
Taipei
Seoul
Chiang Mai
Luang Prabang, Laos
Vancouver, BC
Calgary
Sydney
Amsterdam (Only there briefly)
Vienna
Minneapolis
Seattle (Not the people but the city)
Portland, OR (Same as Seattle)
Salt Lake City
Boise
San Diego
Medellin, Colombia (Parts of it)
Ugliest
Indianapolis
San Francisco
LA (Parts of it)
Milwaukee
Chicago (Parts of it)
Spokane (More boring than ugly)
New Orleans
London, England (Parts of it)
I'll throw Skopje, Macedonia in the ring for the ugliest. They did a serious amount of building in the last 20 years or so, but tried just a little bit too hard for that 'Ancient Greece' theme and completely missed the mark. It comes across as a kitschy, overblown Las Vegas-like facade with zero substance. Outside of the central area with all of this new tacky architecture, the rest of the city is very Soviet. The city is literally covered in HUNDREDS of (sheet metal - very cheaply constructed) statues.
Downtown Chicago is really nice, other parts of the city, with some exceptions, not so much indeed.
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