#5: Highland Park – Detroit, MI
Once a jewel in the Motor City’s crown, Highland Park has become one of its most distressing cautionary tales. Encompassed by Detroit, this 2.9-square-mile enclave has fewer than 10,000 residents, and nearly half live in poverty.
Its streets feature more vacant homes than occupied ones, and streetlights—literally—have been removed due to unpaid electricity bills. Car theft, assault, and gun violence persist, while the city itself struggles to keep basic services running.
#4: North Memphis – Memphis, TN
A child dodging broken glass on cracked sidewalks. A grandmother triple-bolting her door before sunset. These images illustrate life in North Memphis. With high rates of poverty and violent crime, it’s a neighborhood on edge.
Roughly 60,000 residents call it home, and many navigate food deserts, failing schools, and aging homes. Industrial sites border residential streets, bringing pollution as an unwelcome neighbor.
Yet culture pulses rich and defiant in its churches, music, and Black history. The issues are systemic, the trauma generational.
#3: East St. Louis – St. Clair County, IL
Think of East St. Louis as a city caught between eras—once booming, now bruised. The collapse of manufacturing gutted jobs, and over 40% of the city’s 18,000 residents live below the poverty line. Streets often go unrepaired, and basic services sputter.
Crime statistics are chilling, with a violent crime rate among the highest per capita in the U.S.
What makes it tragic is not just the violence but the feeling of abandonment, like the rest of Illinois turned its back decades ago.
#2: Camden – Camden County, NJ
In Camden, the shadows of lost industry still loom. Once a manufacturing hub, it now wrestles with some of the nation’s highest poverty and crime rates. Over 70,000 people live here without reliable access to healthcare, education, or even grocery stores.
Though redevelopment projects dot the waterfront, the benefits rarely trickle inward.
Whole blocks feel forgotten—vacant homes, closed schools, and streets patrolled more by sirens than smiles. Camden’s challenges stem from decades of institutional failure, not the people within it.
#1: Englewood – Chicago, IL
Gunfire punctuates daily life in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood where hope battles hard against hardship …
