It doesn’t. Cheyenne would be a small neighborhood anywhere else.  
The others, are just very small towns.    Even still, there’s a surprising amount of crazy people and crime.

I honestly cannot understand why they aren’t put into mental institutions.    It should be a bi-partisan issue.   The local business owners and tax payers and tax payers should insist on it.   The tourist trade, should support it.
It’s simple common sense.
What I see, is a society, committing suicide.

Most if not all of the government run mental institutions were closed down in the early 70s.

ETA Plus who gets to decide if a person is mentally incompetent?
What if some doctor said we gun owners were mentally incompetent?
It's a slippery slope.

The only "big" cities I've been to that aren't poop are in Europe. That said, Brussels ranks as my all time shittiest big city. It's worse than NYC, Chicago, or Detroit (which I've been to as well).  

Seems to just be an issue of how well they confine the 'disgusting' to areas that they have essentially given up on.  Some do it better than others, but the phrase "like any other city, you have to know what areas to stay out of" has been around for a long time, and many cities seem to have expanded those 'areas'.




I can go years between trips to downtown Nashville (with the exception of the four years when my daughter was a student at Hume-Fogg), but it seemed to me that things started somewhat improving (in the downtown area) with the construction of the stadium and pushing the homeless out (essentially just relocating them to the suburbs), then went back the other way in recent years.  Overall, the Nashville area has probably been declining that whole time, with the suburbs getting worse (homeless being spread out, then section 8 doing its part) as downtown seemed to improve, and downtown now shifting back the other way as the problems spread from the suburbs back toward downtown.  The insane level of development over the last decade also played a part, as developers looked for cheap land (and it was cheap because it was an area that had problems) then did what they could to push the problems elsewhere.

Not long ago, I watched a news report that surprised me by slipping more truth into the report than expected.  It was about a cleanup day at Brookmeade Park.  The neighborhood group that has been demanding something be done about the homeless camp for years, seems to have been guilt tripped into adding 'making housing more available' (more federal grants to study how to solve the housing problem for the poor) to their message, but one of the cleanup volunteers was singled out toward the end of the report, explaining that he was very familiar with the camp, having lived there for 8 years and didn't get out until he accepted that he had mental health problems that had to be addressed.  Past reports seemed to portray the Brookmeade Park homeless camp as just people that were temporarily down on their luck and not able to afford rent (please ignore the truck handing out free needles, and the filthy person laying on the side of the road after they OD'ed), but this one report ended up acknowledging the root of the problem - many (most?) of them are there because their own problems prevent them from living a normal life, not because there is a lack of available housing.

"Never let a crisis go to waste."

There is federal funding available for programs to find a solution to the "unhoused" (they don't even want to use the terms that have been used for ages) problem.  If that problem is solved (or mostly solved), there is no justification for applying for more federal funding.

Tennessee passed a law against camping on public land that is not designated for camping.  It's a felony offense, but a person can't be arrested for it unless they are still there 24 hours after being told that they are illegally camping and have to move somewhere else.  The left lost their minds, claiming that the republicans running the state government are doing this simply to take away the voting rights of the homeless and criminalize homelessness.

Were they ever not disgusting? Cities generally attract a type of person that is repugnant to free men.

Recently visited London. Smelled like piss everywhere. Sometimes shit.

So yes.

I'm not a fan of large urban areas, but for the most part they are better than they were in the 90s.

Treatment vs incarceration is difficult. Treating the seriously impaired mentally ill in a state mental hospital can be done. It's simply rare.

the garbage contracts went to shit after hurricane ida. Funny trash collection for surrounding areas have no problem. Their idea of fixing streets is a pothole machine that puts asphalt down and leaves without packing it down. The mayor jets around the world on tax payer's dime. And was named the murder capital of the country.

Yes, it certainly is.    However, it could be done fairly, and it needs to be done.    They should be treated well.   It should be the sort of place that people want to go.

Well back in the day, the mentally ill were in institutions. These places didn't have very good reputations for safety and such because the mentally ill lived there. The do-gooders blamed the institutions, not the mentally ill, for the problems and they were closed. Now we, the public, get to deal with them daily, and they live in far more detrimental conditions than at the asylum. The do-gooders still gloat in their boomer brains that they got the institutions shut down.

Always have been

What city is that ?

Never mind I see it’s Singapore

Don't forget that Covid destroyed the system that helps a lot of mentally ill people that were able to live on their own with some level of oversight from government health workers that checked in on them to make sure they were taking their meds. Once those home visits stopped, tons of those people went off their meds and stopped getting psychiatric help. Once that happened, they lost their jobs and housing and ended up on the streets.  It will be extremely hard, if not impossible, to get them help again because they are now self medicating with illegal drugs and have dropped off the radar.

I'll take the counterpoint.

Lots of people will tell you that Houston is a shit-hole.  I live outside of Houston and my wife and I go into Houston all the time.  We go to the nicer parts, during daylight hours (and sometimes are night) and never have an issue.

There can be both nice and shitty areas in the same city, just like there are shitty places.  Sometimes the same area can be nice during certain hours and sketchy during other hours.  Similarly, many rural areas are overrun with meth-mouth shit-heads.  This does not mean meth-mouth shit-heads live in your particular neighborhood.  The same safe gas station you buy gas at regularly during the day, way out in the country might be a shit-show at 2:00 AM.

Cities are the same way.

Cincinnati is pretty nice. No homeless camps, no drug markets, a prosecutor who cares, and generally good judges.

Or, look for a  MLK  street somewhere. That there's what you call a clue.

It isn't too good either.

San Antonio isn't awful either, but my kids have seen grown men sleeping in their own piss and others smoking crack from a "glass sucker". Not a cultural experience like NOLA, but still a bit more than I want to explain to my kids.

You're reasonably correct about most of that. However,  mental illness actually accounts for a pretty small percentage of the "homeless ". Bad choices resulting in bad living is not covered in the DSM. Drug use can certainly exacerbate or even cause mental illness, but self-imposed problems rate zero sympathy from me.

You're reasonably correct about most of that. However,  mental illness actually accounts for a pretty small percentage of the "homeless ". Bad choices resulting in bad living is not covered in the DSM. Drug use can certainly exacerbate or even cause mental illness, but self-imposed problems rate zero sympathy from me.

Boston is actually really nice now of you don't count Mattapan, Hyde Park, Roxbury, half of Jamaica Plain, and Allston.  Those are the places a tourist would never visit anyway.  The actual city is awesome.

Nashville

Ive been to most of the big cities except in the pacific Notthwest.

I hear thar Martha's Vineyard is pretty nice.
They must be doing something different than most cities.

Downtown Ft Worth is much better kept than downtown Dallas, and doesn't really have much of a permanent homeless population the way Dallas does.  It also has the Bass private security that are more present than Fort Worth PD is in many parts of downtown.  Downtown Dallas is also more of a work in the day and leave in the evening kind of place, leaving it desolate outside of the homeless.

Needs to be on a travel poster.

Big cities? Yeah mostly, at least in the US. Almost all cities are going to have their crappy areas and better areas though.

Dubai has a very nice downtown area. London too, but the last time I was there was 10 years ago.

Haven't been to Eastern Asia yet but planning on it.

In the US, I find small to midsize western, northwestern and Midwestern towns/cities to be the most appealing. No big cities.

Yes.  This is what happens when there are no repercussion or consequences for ones actions.  Bad people continue to do bad shit, good people continue to get victimized until they move from the area, and people stop visiting.  Then businesses shutter, and you wind up like Detroit.

When it isn't safe to be out in certain areas after dark, in a free Country, then we have serious fucking problems.  The pendulum needs to swing back, and swing back bigly!