{"id":124201,"date":"2025-08-06T17:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T17:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124201\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T17:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T17:55:08","slug":"new-york-isnt-the-dirtiest-city-in-america-says-ranking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124201\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Isn’t The Dirtiest City In America, Says Ranking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen, we adore New York. We’ve pledged our undying love to it. But even we can admit sometimes the old girl gets nasty\u2014we’re talking mysterious fluids on subway seats, environmental pollution and traffic smog affecting our air quality<\/a>,\u00a0rodents that are far too comfortable stealing our pizza<\/a>,\u00a0etc. But despite those gritty, grody qualities that make New York, well, New York, it’s actually not the dirtiest city in the U.S., at least according to a new study from LawnStarter.\u00a0In fact, the not-so-rotten Big Apple didn’t even clear the top 10\u2014so which filthy bastard did?<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED: This garbage and rats walking tour explores the gross\u2014and engrossing\u2014history of NYC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

To find out, LawnStarter examined 20 metrics to rank 2025\u2019s Dirtiest Cities in America, grouping those criteria into four categories: Pollution,\u00a0Inadequate Living Conditions, Inadequate Waste Infrastructure and Resident Dissatisfaction. For each of the 500 biggest U.S. cities, they then gathered data on each factor from sources including\u00a0the\u00a0Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the\u00a0Census Bureau, the\u00a0Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the\u00a0Environmental Protection Agency. After eliminating 197 cities due to lack of sufficient data in a single category, they were left with a final\u00a0sample size of 303 cities, scoring each out of 100 points to determine its rank overall.<\/p>\n

And claiming the title of the dirtiest city in America is San Bernardino, with an overall score of 55.34, marking the second year in a row that the California locale has topped the list. For comparison, good ol’ Gotham ranked all the way down at a surprising No. 35, with an overall score of 39.86.<\/p>\n

While it came refreshingly low in terms of Pollution Rank (No. 209) and Inadequate Waste Structure (No. 290)\u2014looks like those new garbage bin programs<\/a> and curbside composting efforts<\/a> are graciously working\u2014New York City did top the Inadequate Living Conditions category and did come in at No. 20 in the Resident Dissatisfaction category as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum, the cleanest city in America is South Bend, Indiana, per the new study. Rounding out the top five squeaky-clean destinations are Wilmington, North Carolina; Des Moines, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa; and Athens, Georgia.<\/p>\n

Now, despite good data, rankings like these are obviously subjective and ever-changing. Just\u00a0this spring an Oxi Fresh study found New York to be the dirtiest metro area in the United States<\/a>. Did we magically get cleaner in a mere few months? Unlikely! So take it all with a grain of salt and continue focusing on keeping our beloved city clean. Because, really, we’re sick of rats stealing our lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LawnStarter\u2019s full ranking of the dirtiest cities in America can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0Check out the top 10 list below.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Top 10 dirtiest cities in America, according to LawnStarter:<\/p>\n

1. San Bernadino,\u00a0California
2. Los Angeles,\u00a0California
3. Detroit,\u00a0Michigan
4. Reading,\u00a0Pennsylvania
5. Ontario,\u00a0California
6. Newark,\u00a0New Jersey
7. Phoenix,\u00a0Arizona
8. Jersey City,\u00a0New Jersey
9. Las Vegas,\u00a0Nevada
10. Corona,\u00a0California<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen, we adore New York. We’ve pledged our undying love to it. But even we can admit sometimes…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":124202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10336,405,403,10337,5226,5225,5228,5227,1072,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-124201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-categories-things-to-do","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news-city-life","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-things-to-do","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114983110408893532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}