Worst Places to Live In Iowa (article)
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This. My dad was born there. Terrible, depressing city (most of Iowa is that way, now that I think about it).
I also agree with the notion of marshalltown being a not so nice place. Can't see how anyone can argue in its favor (unless you're from there).
Don't care. Just want to stay out of the social engineering capitol of Iowa. And the smell? Unshaven legs and armpits. Dope. KY jelly. Refuse from the Emma Goldman clinic. Got the picture? And Iowans flock there for football??!!
My wife is from Waterloo and we live there now. Like you said there is that one part of town that sucks (like any other town that size) and the rest is great.
The data is the data. It's objective. You can't say "X town should be higher/lower" just like you can't say a basketball player should be ranked higher in points per game. You can only argue that different data sets should have been used or given more/less weight.
That said, I think the biggest flaw in the article's premise was that a town had to have a population of 5,000+ to be ranked. That eliminates a lot of really bad (and some fantastic) Iowa towns.
That said, I think the biggest flaw in the article's premise was that a town had to have a population of 5,000+ to be ranked. That eliminates a lot of really bad (and some fantastic) Iowa towns.
I think you have to cut it off at 5,000 or so. If there is no bottom to this it gets really hard to make the numbers work. Wadena, Iowa is a complete dump (besides Barney's and having the rock fest way back when) and if there was no limit on size you would have a bunch of Wadena's on here that no one has ever heard about.
I understand why you need to have a cutoff point. You can't run these numbers on every single town in Iowa. It's just, in my opinion, not that representative of the state of Iowa.
Shouldn't MP and Burlington be swapped out. The Ol' Dirty B has had a rash of murder, theft, breakins and mayhem recently. That town has always been gritty, but for its population it seems like a fairly dangerous place
If by "go out of your way" you mean "drive north out of town on Highway 63" then I agree.
The absolute worst of the worst is a pretty isolated neighborhood, but pretty much everything north of downtown along 63 looks like Detroit.
The SW part of Waterloo and downtown are pretty nice. Cedar Falls is very nice.
Waterloo is the same situation that is going on in Chicago(on a much smaller scale). Where one part of the city generates the large majority of the crimes but individuals without knowledge think the crimes happen everywhere.
And now you have me hungry for burgers.
I don't know if Wadena is any more of a dump than any small town. I've been through much worse in the southern couple tiers of counties. I can't think of many "on the map" towns in northern Iowa that are on par with southern Iowa/northern Missouri in terms of dilapidation.
Yeah I guess I was a little too friendly with that statement. Besides driving through, there isn't any reason to go to that part of town (unless you want to go to a Waterloo Bucks game for some reason), so the violence is easily avoided. that would be a better way to put it.
Barney Burgers are great!
To me it's pretty dumpy, but for only having 150 people literally in the middle of no-where, it's probably about as good as it can be.
I would agree that the towns in Northern Iowa in the 1,500-5,000 population range are 10X better than those in Southern Iowa, SE IA anyway.
When was the last time you drove north out of town on 63? They've really cleaned that up over the last couple years. The turds in the punch bowl are all over by where Rath Packing was now.
Probably 2 years. Last time I was in downtown, I was on bikes and had rode down from Cedar Falls. I've been in the neighborhood SE of East High (between MLK and Franklin) in the past 5 years or so, and that was pretty bad.
Agreed.
They've done a ton of streetscaping and have started to tear down the old eyesore buildings and are putting new houses in. The Allen Hospital campus has gotten pretty impressive.
They'll be tearing down the old Logan Middle School and that old gas station next to it this fall and that will dramatically improve the aesthetics.
