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PRETTIEST
Rome- god I love this place
Paris- I was impressed, just don't venture too far from the Seine
Florence
Venice
Verona
Cuzco
New York- Very divisive. I love the place, but it is indeed more grand and intresting than classically "pretty." Also, in context, I like urban decay and things that mark the passage of time. I stick by it, but not for everybody.
Dallas- I like the spareness of the Texas environment.
Seattle
Portland
Ugliest
Milan
Las Vegas
Reno
Newark
Tijuana
Los Angeles
Lima (sorry, loved Cuzco, though).
Fresno
Bakersfield
Barstow
Chicago and Boston looked nice, but I didn't have time to take a proper look.
San Francisco is both. Amazing city in a totally unique spot between an ocean and a bay. Nothing beats the Golden Gate Bridge. But man, it is a pathetic dump these days of bums and criminals. Think "Mad Max." and don't come here.
Also, a lot of people saying Oakland. It is dangerous, but not at all ugly. The iconic Tribune building...the Lake Merritt district...the Temescul area...Chinatown...Jack London Square...really neat place. Just stay away from International blvd.
Last edited by cachibatches; 12-05-2020 at 02:16 PM..
Haven't been to as many as some here so it's more limited to North America and Asia where I've spent most of my life in between.
Prettiest (in various degrees of scenery, cityscape and architecturally)
North America:
Maui
Sitka, AK
San Juan, WA
San Francisco
Carmel
Tofino
Vancouver
Banff
Quebec
St. John's (NL)
Asia/Oceania:
Sydney
Hong Kong
Kyoto
Fujiyama
Jeju (Korea)
Ugliest:
North America:
Prairie city...take your pick (sans Calgary), I've been to all of them. Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina and all the smaller ones in between. They're not awful places to live but they are hideous in the flatness, the months of the year affected by snow (and resulting snowmelt), dirtiness and general brown/grey colors. Winnipeg has decent architecture to stand above the rest.
Riverside California also did not leave a good impression. It's just a mass concentration of people to get itself onto the top ranking MSA list but it looks and feels like LA spillover country.
Inland small town USA in general, is what you'd expect. Nothing much to see.
Asia:
Many regions of China are very beautiful and underappreciated, but the cities themselves look awful. The more developed ones are concrete jungles of skyscraper oneupmanship fever without the harbor and the setting benefits of Hong Kong.
Prettiest:
Sydney
Seattle
Boston
Paris
Dusseldorf
Munich
Lisbon
Oporto
Zurich
Lucerne
Ugliest:
Houston
Orlando
Raleigh
Memphis
Beijing (I think I got pneumonia here..)
Most of New York City (Staten Island, Bronx, ~112th Street and Up in Manhattan, Most of Queens and Brooklyn)
SOuthern Tier of Boston (Hyde Park, Dorchester, Mattapan)
Some parts of NYC: beautiful architecture in a lot of Manhattan, especially near Central Park
Quebec City: downtown area looked gorgeous
Vancouver: city's architecture is rather meh but natural setting is unparalleled
Ugliest:
Some parts of NYC like Harlem, Bronx: project blocks, rotting infrastructure.
Kowloon, Hong Kong: very grey and dense, full of massive apartment blocks with dripping AC units on the windows, the buildings look like they are melting.
Beijing: very ugly, grey, weird choice for the capital of China. Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, or many other cities would be much better choices.
A lot of the US Midwest/Canadian Prairies: very desolate, flat, not nice to look at besides a few areas. Many cities have gutted out downtowns surrounded by seas of parking lots.
Most of stripmall-y North America: so much concrete and cars, very few redeeming features.
Dead small towns in Japan: pretty depressing, future seems grim.
Metro Manila: traffic is ridiculous, luxury skyscrapers next to slums in literal garbage dumps.
The periphery areas of Japanese metro areas, like Saitama, Ibaraki and Sakai. Very brown and grey, lack of natural beauty
Seoul's copy paste skyscraper apartment blocks
Most places I've been have been of mixed quality, can usually find beauty and ugliness everywhere. Haven't been anywhere entirely beautiful or ugly.
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.
Just as more than one person on this thread has listed El Paso as one of the ugliest cities, with never a mention of its larger sister city right across the river, the hideous shantytown Cd. Juarez.
(I'm sorry for not having any pictures, but it did not work so well)
Hmmm, I think I can only really think in terms of the places I'm most familiar with.
I'd say that prettiest or ugliest are hard to qualify, because either in terms of cultural buzz, street life, street art and people, incorporation of foliage and natural environment, and the built environment and the architecture of a certain city, helps to give that city it's beauty. If a city is an architectural 2 but a cultural 5, I'd consider it as pretty as a city that is an architectural 5 but a cultural 2. If that makes sense.
Then there's practicality to consider. It's pretty, but is it economical? Is it conducive to reasonably comfortable living? This is always important to me.
In America, the prettiest city that I've been to is Charleston, as a whole. In America, it's an architectural 5 and a cultural 3.
I actually can't think of the "ugliest city in America"! I'm sure some that I've been to are candidates - I went to Jacksonville, when I was really young, so I cant make a fair judgement - I associated the city with sterility in my mind, and it probably is culturally kind of weak, but the built environment, if not the architecture, as well as the incorporation of flora, the suburbs, etc, seems kind of pleasant (using my few memories and online images to make that judgement).
Similarly, Des Moines isn't a poppin' city, culturally, nor is it architecturally amazing, but it isn't downright ugly.
I rag on it, but the ugliest city for it's size on the continent is Toronto. It is exceptionally boring and unattractive, and it offers very little that's that locally unique, in a cultural sense. It has no "vibe". I've never been, but I would put Houston kind of in the same category. No natural environment to salvage a sterile-looking, kind of vibe-less, unattractive city. What saves it is the Texan regional association, the decent hip hop scene, the mission control center, and the great food - ever tried Vietnamese/Cajun fusion?
I think it can more accurately be said that neighborhoods look ugly, not necessarily entire cities.
Some people seem to be naming cities like Detroit based on an association with crime and urban decay, but the city has, throughout history, been a cultural powerhouse, and it has some very pretty architecture. It's suburban areas are also pretty gorgeous.
As for Europe, the prettiest city I've been to was Santorini, but I'm not sure that's a city. The ugliest city in Europe was easily Athens. It was very decayed and dirty looking in a number of quite central areas. It's not particularly pretty to me. Valletta, Malta was pretty but boring.
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