How do you describe New York City in a negative way for a story?

Answer 1

There are lots of negative things about New York that you could say. It is a dirty, polluted place. It often smells bad, especially in the summer, and you can walk into the subway and find that someone has spread human excrement all over the seat. You see rats in the subway all the time too. There are cockroaches. It is crowded, it is hard to see the sky, and even at night you can never see the stars. You have to go to a park to find grass and trees sometimes. The rent is abhorrent, and if you want central air and a washer and dryer in your apartment (normal things in many other places), you have to be rich to be able to afford it. (There are many good things too, of course, but you did ask for the negative.)