America is enormous, diverse, and full of surprises. You can walk into a diner in one city and feel like family within minutes. Cross a few state lines, and suddenly no one’s making eye contact and the person behind you in the checkout line is basically breathing on your neck. So what really makes a city rude? The answer, it turns out, is more data-driven than you’d expect.
According to Preply’s widely cited 2024 rudeness study, a total of 2,533 survey participants across 46 of America’s largest cities were asked to recall how often they had experienced fellow residents demonstrating behaviors such as listening to music or watching videos in shared spaces, ignoring strangers, being disrespectful of personal space, and careless driving. The results were eye-opening. Let’s dive in.
1. Miami, Florida: The Undisputed Rudeness Champion
If you’ve ever been stuck in Miami traffic while someone lays on their horn for sport, this might not shock you. Miami ranks as the most inconsiderate city in 2024, with a rudeness score of 9.88, an almost perfect score on a scale measuring bad behavior, putting Miami in a category entirely its own. No other city came close to that number.
Lack of awareness in public, loudness in shared places, and rudeness to service staff members are just some of the behaviors that branded Miami as having the rudest residents. Honestly, the service staff aspect hits different. It takes a real lack of social awareness to be rude to someone literally serving you food.
Locals in Miami, Oakland, and Tucson said people in their city are ruder than those in any other city, which means Miami residents themselves agree they’re living in rudeness central. That’s a sobering kind of self-awareness, even if it doesn’t seem to change much.
2. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The City of Brotherly… What?
Philadelphia carries the nickname “City of Brotherly Love.” It’s a beautiful sentiment. The data, however, tells a very different story. Philadelphia, deemed in the 2022 survey to be the rudest city, earned a score of 9.12 in 2024, putting it in second place. Still an uncomfortably high score.
Although nicknamed the “City of Brotherly Love,” Americans typically stereotype Philadelphians as rude, but locals tend to attribute their behavior to a feeling of insularity in the city. Reluctant to incorporate outsiders, many residents have learned to keep to themselves while growing up in a busy city. There is something almost poetic about that explanation.
Although Philadelphia ranked as the second rudest, the city’s residents have actually gotten kinder since 2022, when they ranked number one. So technically that’s progress. A 9.12 out of 10 on a rudeness scale still isn’t cause for celebration, but let’s give credit where it’s due.
3. Tampa, Florida: The Surprise Climber
Tampa might surprise you here. It’s a sun-drenched, tourism-friendly city with a booming economy. Yet the rudeness numbers tell a harsh story. Floridians in Tampa come in as the third-rudest residents in the U.S., and the area scored a point lower than Miami, with 8.88 out of 10 points.
In the initial 2022 study, Tampa didn’t even make the top 12. Within just two years, it catapulted all the way to number three, a trajectory that surprised a lot of people who thought of the city as a relatively easygoing place. That is a stunning rise, or rather, fall.
Ironically, Tampa’s tourism industry is booming at the same time its residents are earning this reputation. Visit Tampa Bay said 2024 will be a record year for tourism in Hillsborough County, bringing in more than a billion dollars in taxable hotel revenue. The tension between massive visitor numbers and increasingly impatient residents seems to be showing up in how people treat each other every day.
4. Louisville, Kentucky: Southern Hospitality? Not So Fast.
Here’s the thing about Louisville. It carries that Kentucky charm, the Derby hats, the bourbon culture, all wrapped up in a supposedly Southern-friendly image. But the 2024 numbers smash that stereotype hard. Rounding out the top five included Louisville, Kentucky, with a rudeness score of 8.72.
Louisville, Kentucky, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas, all placed at least five spots higher in the rude rankings than they did in 2022, which means things are getting worse, not better, for the Derby City. That kind of trajectory is genuinely alarming for a city built on hospitality culture.
A report in the New York Post noted that Louisville residents are among the rudest in the nation, even more so than they were in 2022. I think the real story here is rapid growth and change straining community bonds. Cities that expand fast often lose the social glue that kept neighbors polite to each other. Louisville seems to be a textbook case.
5. Oakland, California: A City Turning on Itself
Oakland is a city of real energy, real culture, and real passion. It’s also a city, apparently, where daily public behavior has become a genuine source of frustration. Rounding out the top five was Oakland, California, with a rudeness score of 8.67. That places it firmly in the “avoid eye contact and walk fast” category.
Locals in Miami, Oakland, and Tucson said people in their city are ruder than those in any other city, and Oakland residents volunteering that self-assessment is particularly telling. When the people who live there are pointing fingers at each other, you know the everyday social experience is taxing.
In 2024, lack of care for others, being loud in shared spaces, and lack of self-awareness were the most common rude actions that people noticed in public. The cities were ranked based on behaviors including a lack of self-awareness, talking on speakerphone in shared spaces, being excessively loud in public areas, watching videos or listening to music without headphones, and a general disregard for others. Oakland scored high across nearly all of these categories.
6. Boston, Massachusetts: Cold as the January Wind
Boston has long had a cultural reputation for being, let’s say, direct. Some call it East Coast efficiency. Others call it something less flattering. Boston, Massachusetts, scored a rudeness rating of 8.35, placing it sixth on the 2024 national rudeness list. That’s a number that tracks with what most visitors report when they come home from a trip to Beantown.
Whether you encounter being ignored, loud shared spaces, or closed-off body language, depending on where you are in the country, you may experience social behaviors that seem questionable or even rude. Boston hits nearly every one of those markers. The “closed-off body language” piece in particular resonates with anyone who’s tried to ask for directions on a Boston street corner and gotten a blank stare in return.
It’s important to note that perceptions of what’s rude vary by cultures and individual preferences. For example, the researchers considered “closed-off body language” an indicator of disrespect, but some may not view it as a big deal. That said, Boston still lands in the top tier of the rudeness rankings across multiple measured behaviors, so cultural nuance only explains so much here.
7. Charlotte, North Carolina: The Biggest Climber on the Rude List
Charlotte is booming. New residents pour in constantly, drawn by jobs, affordability, and the energy of a fast-growing Southern city. That growth, though, seems to be chipping away at whatever warmth once defined the place. Charlotte was found to be the 10th rudest city with an 8.11 score out of 10 on rudeness. In 2022, Charlotte ranked 15th with a 5.02 rudeness score. That is a jaw-dropping jump in just two years.
Louisville, Charlotte, and Austin all ranked at least five spots higher on the rudest cities list than they did two years ago, and Chicago ranked one spot higher. Charlotte’s climb is the steepest of the bunch. Think of it like a small-town coffee shop that suddenly becomes a franchise: the vibe changes, the warmth fades, and the efficiency takes over.
The data suggests people in the U.S. have gotten more rude, or at least have started noticing more disrespectful behaviors, in recent years. Charlotte is perhaps the clearest symbol of that national trend. Growth without intentional community investment tends to produce exactly this kind of result.
Now, the Cities That Actually Prove America Can Be Nicer
Here’s the good news. For every Miami, there’s an Omaha. The cities that ranked as least rude in 2024 are Omaha, Nebraska, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and San Diego, California. These three consistently topped the “least rude” charts, and each for different reasons.
Omaha, Nebraska, was rated as the least rude city, with an average ranking of 6.24 on the rudeness scale. This was followed by Minneapolis, with 6.35, and San Diego, with 6.68. For context, remember that Miami scored nearly 9.88. These cities exist in a completely different social universe.
Omaha, Nebraska, ranks the highest for politeness, and Minneapolis in Minnesota follows. Neither city was on the polite list in 2022, which suggests meaningful, positive cultural shifts can and do happen. That is genuinely encouraging in a landscape where rudeness seems to be trending upward nationally.
5 Cities That Break the Rude Stereotype
Beyond the top three, the data highlights several cities that defy expectations. Preply also ranked the least rude cities in the country, with Omaha, Nebraska, earning the lowest score on the rudeness scale with a 6.24. The other least rude cities included Minneapolis, Minnesota at 6.35; San Diego, California at 6.68; Columbus, Ohio at 6.7; and Kansas City, Missouri at 6.78.
In July 2024, a total of 2,533 survey participants in 46 of America’s largest cities were asked to recall how often they had experienced fellow residents demonstrating behaviors such as listening to music or watching videos in shared spaces, ignoring strangers, being disrespectful of personal space, and careless driving. Columbus and Kansas City scored low across all of those categories, which is impressive for cities of their size.
Surprising some, New York City didn’t even place in the top 10 rudest cities, which challenges one of America’s most stubborn stereotypes. Meanwhile, the top cities that improved most on rudeness by moving down on the list the most spots were Washington D.C., Detroit, Michigan, San Jose, California, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Cities can and do change, and that matters.
More polite cities seem to be concentrated in the southern, midwestern, and western parts of the United States, with a noticeable lack of Northeastern cities. So if you’re planning a move and social warmth matters to you, the data points pretty clearly in one geographic direction. Whether that shapes your travel plans or just your expectations, the numbers are worth knowing.
What’s fascinating is that rudeness is never just about individual people. It’s about density, political tension, rapid growth, and the invisible social contracts that cities either maintain or let slip. Nearly one in four Americans have considered moving somewhere else due to people’s rude behaviors in their city. The poll also highlighted that politics is playing a role in rudeness, with roughly half of Americans reporting that their cities have become more rude ahead of the 2024 election. That stat alone should make us all pause and think about how we treat strangers.
Does your city make the list? Whether it does or doesn’t, the real question worth sitting with is: what are you personally contributing to the social atmosphere around you? Tell us in the comments what you think about your city’s reputation.