Cities overrun with garbage and pollution are not only found in the far-off third world countries we see on television and in movies. The dirty, sad-looking places we like to think are on the other side of the planet and are therefore irrelevant in our day-to-day lives are actually not too far from home. There are plenty of American cities that are surprisingly disgusting, and I am not just talking about one or two of them. There are enough to fill this list of 15, and I did not even have to look that hard.
Just beyond your own doorstep is a world of people in need, often living in squalor and struggling to get by every day. There are people whose laziness grossly contributes to the appalling, trash-filled streets, parking lots, and neighborhoods, people who treat our planet as if it is replaceable, which is altogether untrue. Another way man destroys cities is by air and water pollution.
Why people allow their cities to sink to the level of outrageous uncleanliness that is required for this list will never be understood to me. I did not realize how gross some American cities truly are until one day in a new city for the first time, I found myself looking around and having the honest-to-God thought that this place, just two hours from my own city, was more repugnant to me than some of the dirtiest cities on the planet, many of which I have visited or even lived in. At that moment, had I not been aware of my location, I would not have been able to distinguish my surroundings from one of the poorer, dirtier cities on the other side of the world, the so-called "third world".
Following are 15 American cities that are every bit as gross as those of the third world countries that many Americans think they have nothing in common with.
There are a lot of great things about the city of Camden, New Jersey. It sits on the Delaware River just across the water from Philadelphia, one of our country's founding cities. It has a huge aquarium and lots of activities and events that take place on the waterfront. But Camden also has a darker side. It was ranked the most dangerous city in America in 2012, and the previous year the murder rate was 10 times that of New York City, which is morbidly impressive. Camden is made up at least in part of crumbling residential buildings inhabited by drug dealers and pimps. More and more crack houses have sprung up in the area, which is also dotted with boarded-up factories and empty houses. It has been said by one resident in an interview that "there is no real policing in Camden; they're just there to pick up the bodies." A testament to all of this is that the city's population has decreased by 40 percent in recent years. This is definitely worse than economically-deprived and dirty third world countries, because at least there, the violent crime is nowhere near as high.
