Some of America’s most famous cities inspire surprisingly divided opinions. A destination that one person considers exciting, beautiful, and culturally rich may strike someone else as expensive, congested, unsafe, or simply an undesirable place to live.
That divide showed up in a July 2025 YouGov survey of 2,175 U.S. adults, which asked respondents whether they had favorable or unfavorable opinions of dozens of American cities. Several nationally prominent cities—including Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and San Francisco—received substantial unfavorable responses.
Those opinions shouldn’t be confused with objective measures of which cities are “best” or “worst.” Public perceptions can be influenced by personal experience, media coverage, politics, reputation, and concerns about issues such as crime, housing costs, traffic, homelessness, taxes, and public services. And every city on the list contains enormous variation from one neighborhood to another…