re: What’s the dirtiest US city you’ve been to?

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My goal is to avoid cities, but NOLA is by far the dirtiest I’ve seen.

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New Orleans is really bad. I think there's a cultural element that doesn't value cleanliness. And New Orleans also has a very poor philosophy around maintenance, which doesn't jive well with their recent refusal to enforce the laws. That all just makes a broad swath of the city feel so neglected and run down. That city would be so much more competitive if their leadership just sweat the small stuff and actually tried a little.

San Francisco, Atlanta, and Seattle have all felt much cleaner in the 1990s than they do today. At least their downtowns and major parks all are filthy right now. That's an unfortunate trend nationwide, but those towns are leading the race to the bottom IMO.

Memphis always felt dirty unless you stuck to the Poplar/Walnut Grove/Union corridors. Which is weird because their eastern suburbs like Collierville, Germantown, Olive Branch, and Arlington are all quite clean and nice.

Los Angeles went from okay to downright disgusting in the past 25 years. They have massive homeless encampments and huge open drug markets - possibly the worst in the country right now.

Detroit is really run down, but they've done excellent work to the area around their downtown and towards Wayne State on that new transit/street car line. I think that's Woodward Avenue but not sure. Their airport is phenomenal too but I think Wayne county runs it and not Detroit. Go any farther out beyond Wayne State, and the city features astounding garbage and decay until you get to the suburbs.

Chicago was surprisingly clean to me. Far cleaner than NYC and Los Angeles at least. I suspect the winter clears out the homeless in Chicago, and they also use alleyways for public services so it hides the garbage out of sight.

San Diego, Tampa, and Clearwater were also surprisingly clean given their size and demographics. I hope that hasn't changed in the past few years. I haven't been back to any of them since the pandemic.

Pittsburgh was surprisingly clean although it had some run down sections too. I'd put the Hill District up against the worst neighborhoods from St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincy, or Detroit. But they also have a huge variety of older middle class neighborhoods that have neither gentrified into expensive housing nor have declined into total crap. Rare for an American city.