5 of the “Dirtiest Cities in America” Can Be Found in New York

There are some pretty filthy cities out there, but one of the dirtiest of all can be found right here in New York and, no, it is not New York City.

What makes you label a city as "dirty"? Is it piles of garbage on the side of the road or maybe the number of rats scurrying around in broad daylight?

According to LawnStarter, a dirty city is classified by its pollution, infrastructure, living conditions, and consumer satisfaction. Using these four categories, the publication compared America's largest cities against each other to determine the top 150 filtiest.

In the end, five cities in New York made the cut, with Buffalo being crowned the least dirty out of the Empire State bunch. The Upstate NY city was ranked 147th dirtiest in America.

Syracuse also appeared on the roundup, finishing in 112th place. It was also found to have the 28th lowest score in consumer satisfaction.

Coming in as New York's third most-filthy city was Rochester, which finished in 80th place overall and ranked 18th worst in the living conditions category.

The final cities from New York managed to snag a nod in the top 15, with one coming in tenth place overall.

In 12th place was the Big Apple itself, New York City, which also ranked worst overall when it comes to living conditions. It also ranked 13th worst in the consumer satisfaction category.

And, finally, taking the crown as the dirtiest city in all of New York and 10th dirtiest in the entire country was Yonkers. It had the eighth worst overall score in living conditions and 14th worst in consumer satisfaction. It also had a far worse score in the pollution category compared to NYC, which was a respective 46th place vs 102nd place.

See the list below to see how they ranked in all grimy categories:

Also in the top 10 were two nearby cities in neighboring New Jersey.  Jersey City ranked 5th filthiest overall while Newark claimed second place. Both obtained abysmal scores in living conditions, pollution, and consumer satisfaction.

As for America's dirtiest city, the honor goes to Houston, Texas.

Are you surprised by this roundup? Let us know what city in New York deserves to be at #1.