The ugliest places

Travel & Holidays Travel & Holidays: Chat / Discussions
1

I’ve been travelliing for a couple of weeks now…in former Soviet Bloc countries: Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. And yee gads…the Soviets certainly had a particular brutalist style of architecture…especially when building apartment blocks. Square, ugly concrete blocks repeated in each country.

Bucharest is, in my books, one of the ugliest. Not only does it have hideous buildings, over crowded streets, but many of the buildings are covered in graffiti. I’m sure there must be some charming streets here, but I didn’t see them.

Somehow, Bulgaria, though it has its share of this apartment blocks, has also maintained its Roman/medieval cities and sea gardens–lovely parks along the side of the Black Sea.

Wondering what’s the ugliest place others have visited?

2

I know Croydon I was born there and the downward spiral that has taken over now is alarming…the many years since I married and moved away it has become…

So these plans sound good…

Croydon town centre regeneration | Croydon Council.

but the Croydon Council is still Bankrupt… :confused:

‘People are frightened to come to Croydon’: nightlife suffers from dangerous reputation – Eastlondonlines.

got it…
clown silly me
How it use to be…

3

I thought Coventry was worth a mention, but it’s all just reputation, bad reputation. Google it and it actually seems to be quite a nice place nowadays.

Croydon’s the same … I read something more recently about how property prices are rising, how young trendies like to live there.

4

IMO some of the ugliest buildings were built upon cleared land after the Luftwaffe bombed some of London into piles of rubble. Concrete & glass just doesn’t do it for me :worried:

5

… especially when there’s more concrete than glass.

I agree LD. Thankfully most of those post WW2 structure are now gone, replaced by something a little more cheerful.

6

Two places spring to mind. Detroit in the 90’s - desolate, ruined, trash everywhere, bankrupt. I understand some of Detroit has improved now. Second is Kharkov in the 90’s. Bleak, poverty ridden, Stalinesque buildings. I would guess it slowly got better, until another Russian dictator decided to make it a whole lot worse again.
Today, I don’t think you can get much more ugly that Blackpool.

7

I saw something in the paper about a new town in Iran abandoned. Looks bleak, they were to have grass & trees, hospitals & schools, but never got that far.

“some 200,000 units lacked access to water, heating and sewage systems. Add in skyrocketing inflation rates in a struggling economy and it wasn’t long before the developers halted the project mid-construction"

8

Sad to see places you’ve known in a downward spiral. Vancouver is spiraling downward as well…

9

Maybe it will become a nicer place???

10

I tend to be drawn to rural settings State Parks Camping and Cabins, have no desire, none on the bucket list to visit other countries. I just go rural, sometimes late January head for warm sun for a couple of weeks to pass the cold of early February and return home to warming sun gradually turning to early spring. Then the rains and winds of the change of season blow for a month or more. The Wind decorations in the yard run 100 mph. haha

1st weel of May, winds quiet, mid 80’s and hard planting time here now. Everything about life runs now hard toll the end of July when Maturity sits in the seats. Tons of hours sitting on the Seats of Tractors and all that stuff.

11

Chicago…LA…NYC…New Orleans…every one sets the bar in some way for ugliness.

12

Many cities do have their ugly parts, but they also have some lovely areas…

13

Yes I was thinking the same. OK some people like cities more than others, but the above four have their interesting parts, even the modern glass scrappers are not all bad.

14

The Gorbals

15

Croydon…

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Now there’s a building that’s going to stand the test of time and be celebrated.
Croydon is a place for passing through, or at best changing trains

16

Slough. Horrible place, lived there for years.

Slough by John Betjeman.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Not been back for years & he didn’t like it either. :grinning: :grinning:

1 Like
17

Let me know when you next visit the south side of Chicago so I can get your actual first-hand response rather than a generic “I’ve never actually been there” response

18

I spent a week in Chicago about 20 years ago. I thought the entire place was grim and ugly. Its only saving feature was being on a vast lake. But going around the industrial areas to the south, this place gave Slough a run for its money.
Sorry, the other saving feature of Chicago was its fantastic art gallery. It has some of world’s best pictures. Slough struggles to compete in that aspect.

19

I was looking on google maps/streetview at Chicago southside: it’s boring. And I understand that it’s not a safe place to visit.

I like those NY apartment blocks with fire escapes as shown on the Physical Graffiti album cover. And the New Orleans old colonial housing.