What’s the ugliest city in the world?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Crawford, Tx.
The city comprising everyone in the penal system.
Bridgeport, CT has got to be a contender in that category.
Sauget Illinois.
I’ve played at Pops. Outside it looked like a bomb hit.
Egads. My home town was pretty bad. Binghamton, NY. Mostly an industrial city, but at least it was nestled in the hills of upstate NY. One of the biggest office towers was forced to close when it was discovered to be highly toxic. It was like this constant reminder that most of the area was one big chemical spill. To make matters worse, they put this huge neon “I heart NY” sign on it. Way to call attention to one of the biggest boondoggles in the city’s history.
I guess Sauget is more of a village than a city.
So I’ll say Central Falls, RI, aka Crystal City due to all the broken glass.
It’s where knowledgeable Newporters go to buy crack, right next door to Pawtucket.
Not sure about the ugliest city, but the city with the silliest skyline has to be Winston-Salem, NC, thanks to this building. Locals call it “the dick-dome”.
I used to live there, and it was always hilarious to watch visitors’ reactions as we approached downtown from the Greensboro airport. The very least you would get is a very emphatic and astonished, “Oh, my…”
That’s pretty bad, but I can’t say it even comes close to my towns’ very own Lurie Bell Tower on the North Campus of University of Michigan. It’s almost wholly anatomically complete.
And that’s not all. In neighboring Ypsilanti, we have the infamous Water Tower.
Sorry, I’ve looked at the pictures and can’t agree. Part of the reason is that, um, mine is bigger than yours.
The hugeness of the Wachovia building is part of what makes it so obscene. It seems to, er, thrust up amid the other skyscrapers and dominate them entirely. You can’t help being conscious, anywhere downtown, of this gigantic penis looming over you.
The real joke is on the city of Winston-Salem. The building was constructed to be Wachovia’s corporate headquarters, and that is no doubt why the city gave the go-ahead to its, uh, erection. Then Wachovia moved its headquarters elsewhere, leaving the city with this utterly overwhelming and comical structure in its midst.
Thanks for the pics. Funny.
So you’re saying that size does matter? 😉
It’s true, the ones around here aren’t a part of the skyline or anything. But the first time I saw that bell tower after it was built, I had to wonder if the late Dr. Lurie included specific instructions in his grant to have it modeled after, errr, himself.
I’m originally from Ann Arbor. But I’ve got to agree with you, no3reed … Winston-Salem’s is much worse. The fact that Wachovia left after building it is hardly a surprise, either … they’re dicks in every sense of the word.
When I first moved there I’d never heard of that bank and didn’t know how its name was pronounced. It is, of course, “Walk-ovuh-ya.” Perfect.
At the same time, I’d have to say the city leaders got what was coming to them. I mean, what were they thinking when the first artist’s rendering was unveiled? Did anybody say, “Well, uh, it’s … distinctive, but … Winston-Salem is a family city, you know.”
They were thinking: $$$$$$$$$$$, to the extent that they probably didn’t even notice, and in any case, were surely enthusiastic supporters (sorry, there’s another one) of the bank’s building and doing anything it damn well pleased. Predictably, they got dicked.
Although my travels have been relatively limited, I would hazard a guess that Gary,Indiana would probably be on many top 10 lists. No offense to my Hoosier neighbors is intended.
Anyone want to argue, that as of now it is Gaza City? And whether Americans and Europeans deserve a great big dollop of blame.
Heckuva job, Condi. Atta-Boy Jose Manuel.
I’d say Lovelock, Nevada has to up there in the top 10.
Normally I’d suggest Baghdad, because the concrete blast walls run everywhere across neighborhoods, rubble fills the streets, bridges and roads are bombed so that traffic cannot pass, and so many buildings are scarred. Every group from the military to the various sects marks its turf in blood and grafitti.
However, Fallujah, the City of Mosques, was demolished. Hellburners, rockets, clusterbombs, willypete, were used against a city we’d already taken and occupied. The overuse of force has been compared to Stalingrad. And it was done deliberately and thoroughly as an act of retribution in a cascade of such acts.
The numbers from wikipedia are sanitized, in that they carry no emotion or pain:
“Residents were allowed to return to the city in mid-December 2004 after undergoing biometric identification, provided they wear their ID cards all the time. US officials report that “more than half of Fallujah’s 39,000 homes were damaged during Operation Phantom Fury, and about 10,000 of those were destroyed” while compensation amounts to 20 percent of the value of damaged houses, with an estimated 32,000 homeowners eligible, according to Marine Lt Col William Brown.[7] According to NBC, 9,000 homes were destroyed, thousands more were damaged and of the 32,000 compensation claims only 2,500 have been paid as of April 14, 2005.[8] According to Mike Marqusee of Iraq Occupation Focus writing in the Guardian, “Fallujah’s compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city’s 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines”.[9] Reconstruction mainly consists of clearing rubble from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utility services. Ten per cent of the pre-offensive inhabitants had returned as of mid-January 2005, and 30% as of the end of March 2005.[10]
Pre-offensive inhabitant figures are unreliable; the nominal population was assumed to have been 250,000-350,000. Thus, over 150,000 individuals are still living as IDPs in tent cities or with relatives outside Fallujah or elsewhere in Iraq.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Phantom_Fury
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/11/14/17052971.php
blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/006593.html
http://web.knoxnews.com/silence/archives/prayer.jpg
Hauksdottir,
You are right, of course.
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/2007/06/fallujah.html
Ta,
C