Study on Nine Worst-Designed Cities in the World Names Montana Town

You don't need to travel far to see one of the nine worst-designed cities in the world.

Thrillest took a look at what qualifies as a "badly designed" city and highlighted some of the biggest flaws of the world's biggest—and smallest—cities.

Among the top dogs like Brasil, Dubai, and even Atlanta, this Montana city can never compete when it comes to traffic load, skyscrapers or 20-lane highways. Yes, this is a thing.

Low and behold, Missoula, Montana's "slant-street" neighborhoods and other dysfunctions come in at number nine, according to Thrillest.

On its surface, Missoula looks like just another Montana city, albeit its second-most populous one. That's until you notice its weird "Slant Streets" neighborhood, so named because it's the only section of town that doesn't follow a grid pattern, with streets running diagonally toward the Clark Fork River instead. This offbeat part of town actually dates back to the 1890s, when the area below the river was first being developed. Two lawyers wanted to break away and establish a new town imaginatively called South Missoula, and began laying out a street plan that ran parallel to Bitterroot Wagon Road; unfortunately, the town's moneyed interests said "no dice," and surrounded their street plan with a grid that completely threw everything out of whack. Thus, Slant Streets was born.

 

As if that weren't enough, Missoula also developed numerous needlessly complicated intersections, the most heinous of which is a five-lane intersection appropriately nicknamed "Malfunction Junction."

Everyone and their dog complains about Reserve Street traffic, so I guess now is more of a reason to.

Jarkarta, Indonesia took the number one spot, highlighting the capital's traffic time, known to be "the worst traffic in the world."