Illinois City Among the 10 Dirtiest Places to Live in America

Illinois is a big state but I never thought it was actually "dirty."

Look, I understand, Illinois is also the home of Chicago, one of the biggest cities in America.

I also thought for a minute there, despite the number of people living in The Windy City, it's actually quite clean.

Apparently, it's not.

It wasn't just high hopes for me either. I recall when Richard Daley was the mayor of the city, it was one of the cleanest big cities in the world. City Journal in 1993 mentioned, "The mayor's local critics see his mania for greenery and cleanliness as evidence that his vision of government is too simplistic for the complex problems his city faces."

That was four years into Daley's run as mayor of Chicago which ran through 2011. For the following 18 years, Daley continued to focus on the beautification of the city.

Daley's gone and only 10 years after he left office, Chicago is now considered one of the dirtiest cities in all of America according to 24/7 Tempo.

To get their rankings, they used LawnStarter, "a lawn care start-up that frequently conducts research into city and state amenities." From there 24/7 Tempo reviewed 200 of the largest cities in America, and 20 different metrics to come up with a list.

With a LawnStarter score of 46.5 and resident satisfaction with city cleanliness ranked 63rd worst out of 200 cities, Chicago was rated the 10th dirtiest city in America overall.

Again, for such a large city, 10th isn't the worst thing, especially when you consider smaller municipalities such Memphis, Long Beach, New Orleans, San Antonio, Houston, Newark (NJ), and Palmdale (CA) were rated as even dirtier.

What do you think is Chicago one of the dirtiest cities in America, or is this list wrong?