What is widely considered the worst place to live in your country?
July 31, 2025
What would people consider the worst place to live in your country?
29 comments
As a Brit, probably Blackpool. It’s a run-down seaside town with severe lack of investment, crime, drugs, poverty etc. It also has the lowest life expectancy I’m the country.
The joke answer would probably be Urk, Almere or even Lelystad.
But in reality it’s probably some shitty small town like Pekela or a small city like Heerlen… or ‘bad’ neighborhoods in the bigger cities.
Socioeconomically I think it’d be Heerlen, however if you are anything that ultraconservative christians find offensive, then Staphorst.
Stereotypically it was East-Helsinki, since a gang called Kurdish Mafia used to be a scarescrow over there. Not sure if it’s that anymore tho..
I personally believe it’s Laestadian-part in Ostrobothnia. Some of them are very close-minded and we constantly hear horror stories about them from former members in media..
Near a train station is the worst neighborhood in any German city. Closely followed by near a mcdonald’s
Charleroi or Brussels. Charleroi is quite uniformly poor, but Brussels has some serious inequality. The east is the richest area of the whole country, the west the poorest.
Any of those concrete jungle type suburbs that were quickly and cheaply built in the 1970s. I have lived in the Itäkeskus neighborhood of Helsinki and in Suvela in Espoo, and it was not good. Not terribly bad, but not great either. The main risk was that you went to the shop or kiosk, there were often people that caused disturbances. I hear that it’s worse further east, but I have no personal experience of places like Mellunmäki, Kontula or Jakomäki.
Eastern Slavonia is pretty depressing place to live
Especially Vukovar area.
The joke answer in Poland? Radom. Or no, Sosnowiec!
Seriously though? Post-PGR villages with almost non public transport when you have no car or driving licence.
Probably a mid-sized town in Northern France. Lens, Roubaix, Calais, Amiens, Douai, Arras,…
The weather is absolutely terrible for french standards. It’s grey and cold. It’s old mining or industrial towns where most factories relocated and those towns have a history of unemployment, boringness and hillbilly behavior. A lot of this is probably just stereotypes but that’s probably the worst region in the french collective imaginery. Lille stands out as an exception in the north because it’s a metropolis with plenty to do with young people and jobs in a lot of sectors.
Other answers you might get are small towns in central France who also have a bad reputation for being ugly and boring like Saint-Étienne, Limoges, Clermont-Ferrand,…
Many french people would answer something like Bondy, Saint-Denis or another “dangerous” suburb of Paris or Marseille.
I personnaly think the absolute worst place to live in in France is Mayotte. It’s decades behind the rest of France and even the other oversea regions. It has a huge immigration problem from neighboring island-states like Comoros. It’s dirty, dangerous, crowded,…
I think perhaps IJmond, where Tata steel operates a big steel factory. Because of all the polution average life expectency is 2,5 months lower than in the rest of the Netherlands.
Dordrecht might also be a nominee because of a Dupont (later Chemours) factory that used pfoa until 1998.
Depends who you ask.
Kerkrade or Heerlen: a lot of crime and poverty.
It’s gotta be Bor.
It’s one of the highest average salary cities in Serbia, but heavy mining and pollution make it one of the worst places to live. God knows how many health complications people living over there have.
Also Čačak 😉
I’d say Wels because everyone else would say Wels on Reddit but personally I’d say all of Burgenland, never gotten used to all that flat land.
Charleroi, by far.
A lot of people would probably say Limerick just because of the reputation it used to have as being the stab caputal of Ireland. Im sure most people from there would say its nothing like its reputation anymore.
In Russia it would be Tuva.
The poorest people, the highest crime and homicide rates, the highest alcoholism rate, the highest support of the war against Ukraine.
In European part it would be Karelia. Same issues, except for the crime and homicide rates and a nice contrast to Finland, from which Karelia was annexed.
No particular city or place really comes to mind. Parts of east Oslo have a bad reputation and some socioeconomic problems, but i still wouldn’t consider it a bad place to live. For me personally i wouldn’t want to live up in the far north, because of the ruralness and harsh weather. A lot of people like it though.
Where I live now, in Denmark, they say that the worst place to live is in Sweden.
Except for the Swedes. Then we would say that the worst place for them to live is Denmark.
It’s a tie between the battlefield front lines and the areas already under Russian occupation.
Segregated minority towns/villages but if we go by subdivisons then it’s the north east especially Vaslui and Botoșani
For Slovenia out of the bigger towns I would say Jesenice. Ugly, industrial, socialist and in a mountain valley with little sunlight.
Some very nice hiking nearby though.
Does the middle of the Greenlandic icecap, where the only infrastructure is unmanned stations, count?
Probably the two North African cities, Ceuta and Melilla, although the people I met from there liked them as a place to live.
They are quite isolated, like very tiny islands and arriving there from the rest of the country is quite difficult, specially to Melilla. Lots of economic struggles and border pressure as well. On the bright side, pretty good weather and beaches and they are not so expensive.
Extremadura is badly communicated with the rest of the country and has also low salaries.
Some of the cities around Madrid and Barcelona (Móstoles, Parla, Coslada, Badalona, L’Hospitalet, Santa Coloma…) have their struggles too.
Probably Amadora. It’s a city part of the Lisbon metro area and has a very bad rep. To be honest I don’t think it’s bad as people claim, but I’ve only been there a few times. I find it to be kind of ugly and uninteresting, though it’s more known for being dodgy.
Entroncamento is also a city with a very poor reputation. It’s name literally means “junction” and there’s not much else going on there. It’s considered ugly and also kind of dodgy.
Being Italian, three places come to mind:
– The infamous “Terra dei fuochi”, (land of fires) between Naples and Caserta, where the Camorra has been illegally burying and/or burning hazardous waste for decades, making some of the most fertile and productive countryside in the country a vastly toxic wasteland and ruining the towns and villages within it.
– The city of Taranto – actually a beautiful port city with plenty of history and sights to visit, but also the home of the largest steel mill in Europe, standing right next to a huge petrochemical plant, both of which have been polluting the area for decades. As a result, the citizens of Taranto suffer from one of the highest cancer rates in Europe, their houses are worth nothing and their sea is ruined.
– Inner Calabria. The region as a whole is beautiful, with breathtaking coastal villages and plenty of historical sites and places to visit. It is also the home of arguably the most powerful and fearsome among Italian criminal organizations, the ‘Ndrangheta, whose grasp on the region’s administration and economy is really, really strong. That’s why so many smaller communities in the region’s mountains have basically turned into ghost towns.
Probably Chánov. It’s a housing complex in Most with apartment blocks gutted on the inside for scrap metal due to wide poverty.
Hyltebruk, an inbreed small town that everybody tries to leave.
In Norway its probably Løren in Oslo, because its a poorly planned new part of the city, its all concrete and the buildings are on crammed into each other, giving the area a claustrophobic feeling.
29 comments
As a Brit, probably Blackpool. It’s a run-down seaside town with severe lack of investment, crime, drugs, poverty etc. It also has the lowest life expectancy I’m the country.
The joke answer would probably be Urk, Almere or even Lelystad.
But in reality it’s probably some shitty small town like Pekela or a small city like Heerlen… or ‘bad’ neighborhoods in the bigger cities.
Socioeconomically I think it’d be Heerlen, however if you are anything that ultraconservative christians find offensive, then Staphorst.
Stereotypically it was East-Helsinki, since a gang called Kurdish Mafia used to be a scarescrow over there. Not sure if it’s that anymore tho..
I personally believe it’s Laestadian-part in Ostrobothnia. Some of them are very close-minded and we constantly hear horror stories about them from former members in media..
Near a train station is the worst neighborhood in any German city. Closely followed by near a mcdonald’s
Charleroi or Brussels. Charleroi is quite uniformly poor, but Brussels has some serious inequality. The east is the richest area of the whole country, the west the poorest.
Any of those concrete jungle type suburbs that were quickly and cheaply built in the 1970s. I have lived in the Itäkeskus neighborhood of Helsinki and in Suvela in Espoo, and it was not good. Not terribly bad, but not great either. The main risk was that you went to the shop or kiosk, there were often people that caused disturbances. I hear that it’s worse further east, but I have no personal experience of places like Mellunmäki, Kontula or Jakomäki.
Eastern Slavonia is pretty depressing place to live
Especially Vukovar area.
The joke answer in Poland? Radom. Or no, Sosnowiec!
Seriously though? Post-PGR villages with almost non public transport when you have no car or driving licence.
Probably a mid-sized town in Northern France. Lens, Roubaix, Calais, Amiens, Douai, Arras,…
The weather is absolutely terrible for french standards. It’s grey and cold. It’s old mining or industrial towns where most factories relocated and those towns have a history of unemployment, boringness and hillbilly behavior. A lot of this is probably just stereotypes but that’s probably the worst region in the french collective imaginery. Lille stands out as an exception in the north because it’s a metropolis with plenty to do with young people and jobs in a lot of sectors.
Other answers you might get are small towns in central France who also have a bad reputation for being ugly and boring like Saint-Étienne, Limoges, Clermont-Ferrand,…
Many french people would answer something like Bondy, Saint-Denis or another “dangerous” suburb of Paris or Marseille.
I personnaly think the absolute worst place to live in in France is Mayotte. It’s decades behind the rest of France and even the other oversea regions. It has a huge immigration problem from neighboring island-states like Comoros. It’s dirty, dangerous, crowded,…
I think perhaps IJmond, where Tata steel operates a big steel factory. Because of all the polution average life expectency is 2,5 months lower than in the rest of the Netherlands.
Dordrecht might also be a nominee because of a Dupont (later Chemours) factory that used pfoa until 1998.
Depends who you ask.
Kerkrade or Heerlen: a lot of crime and poverty.
It’s gotta be Bor.
It’s one of the highest average salary cities in Serbia, but heavy mining and pollution make it one of the worst places to live. God knows how many health complications people living over there have.
Also Čačak 😉
I’d say Wels because everyone else would say Wels on Reddit but personally I’d say all of Burgenland, never gotten used to all that flat land.
Charleroi, by far.
A lot of people would probably say Limerick just because of the reputation it used to have as being the stab caputal of Ireland. Im sure most people from there would say its nothing like its reputation anymore.
In Russia it would be Tuva.
The poorest people, the highest crime and homicide rates, the highest alcoholism rate, the highest support of the war against Ukraine.
In European part it would be Karelia. Same issues, except for the crime and homicide rates and a nice contrast to Finland, from which Karelia was annexed.
No particular city or place really comes to mind. Parts of east Oslo have a bad reputation and some socioeconomic problems, but i still wouldn’t consider it a bad place to live. For me personally i wouldn’t want to live up in the far north, because of the ruralness and harsh weather. A lot of people like it though.
Where I live now, in Denmark, they say that the worst place to live is in Sweden.
Except for the Swedes. Then we would say that the worst place for them to live is Denmark.
It’s a tie between the battlefield front lines and the areas already under Russian occupation.
Segregated minority towns/villages but if we go by subdivisons then it’s the north east especially Vaslui and Botoșani
For Slovenia out of the bigger towns I would say Jesenice. Ugly, industrial, socialist and in a mountain valley with little sunlight.
Some very nice hiking nearby though.
Does the middle of the Greenlandic icecap, where the only infrastructure is unmanned stations, count?
Probably the two North African cities, Ceuta and Melilla, although the people I met from there liked them as a place to live.
They are quite isolated, like very tiny islands and arriving there from the rest of the country is quite difficult, specially to Melilla. Lots of economic struggles and border pressure as well. On the bright side, pretty good weather and beaches and they are not so expensive.
Extremadura is badly communicated with the rest of the country and has also low salaries.
Some of the cities around Madrid and Barcelona (Móstoles, Parla, Coslada, Badalona, L’Hospitalet, Santa Coloma…) have their struggles too.
Probably Amadora. It’s a city part of the Lisbon metro area and has a very bad rep. To be honest I don’t think it’s bad as people claim, but I’ve only been there a few times. I find it to be kind of ugly and uninteresting, though it’s more known for being dodgy.
Entroncamento is also a city with a very poor reputation. It’s name literally means “junction” and there’s not much else going on there. It’s considered ugly and also kind of dodgy.
Being Italian, three places come to mind:
– The infamous “Terra dei fuochi”, (land of fires) between Naples and Caserta, where the Camorra has been illegally burying and/or burning hazardous waste for decades, making some of the most fertile and productive countryside in the country a vastly toxic wasteland and ruining the towns and villages within it.
– The city of Taranto – actually a beautiful port city with plenty of history and sights to visit, but also the home of the largest steel mill in Europe, standing right next to a huge petrochemical plant, both of which have been polluting the area for decades. As a result, the citizens of Taranto suffer from one of the highest cancer rates in Europe, their houses are worth nothing and their sea is ruined.
– Inner Calabria. The region as a whole is beautiful, with breathtaking coastal villages and plenty of historical sites and places to visit. It is also the home of arguably the most powerful and fearsome among Italian criminal organizations, the ‘Ndrangheta, whose grasp on the region’s administration and economy is really, really strong. That’s why so many smaller communities in the region’s mountains have basically turned into ghost towns.
Probably Chánov. It’s a housing complex in Most with apartment blocks gutted on the inside for scrap metal due to wide poverty.
Hyltebruk, an inbreed small town that everybody tries to leave.
In Norway its probably Løren in Oslo, because its a poorly planned new part of the city, its all concrete and the buildings are on crammed into each other, giving the area a claustrophobic feeling.