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(obviously I will not share the city name publicly for the sake of privacy, but I want to make it clear that I am not in the US)

The defeatist "this city isn't worth living/investing in" attitude is unfair, and even the ugliest city deserves respect & deserves working hard to make it liveable. And ppl ARE working hard. I don't think the city is only valuable for what it might become in the future, but also for what it is now.

Except it isn't. It reflects its population: Poor, unemployed, immigrants. Ppl nobody wants, in a city nobody wants to go to. And the city has one thing no other city I've ever been to has: honesty. There's no beautiful façades hiding the way people suffer behind them. What you see is what you get.

I plan to venture into street photography here, I wanna present it like "beautiful" cities- but not hide what's ugly and rather celebrate it. The cityscape is dominated by construction sites & abandoned shops, which tell the story of this place. A former almost-metropolis, now almost a ghost town.