I live in Barcelona and not even Gaudi’s architecture can distract you from the amount of dog feces and piss that are rampant in this city, plus a considerably lack of cleaning in recent years for some reason.
That's become extremely common in American cities too, in the past 2 years or so.
Here in Tokyo, I never see dog feces on the ground. Dogs are always on a leash, and their owners always clean up after them. I guess it's a cultural difference: dog owners outside Japan (and maybe Germany) think they're entitled to let their dogs run wild and crap wherever they want.
It reminds me a bit of a compressed version of older, less affluent northeastern towns, where buildings are a mish mash of styles and designs. It's an overused term, but it gives a sense of character or that it's a discrete place with it's own history. This building is a good example.
The random mishmash of houses and shops is exactly the type of place that makes walking viable negating the need for a car (and the expense and waste of space storing one).
I wish I could find neighbourhoods like those found in many Japanese and Korean cities; they're very small and hard to find even in Toronto and SF (and not really comparable anyway).
Just a planter box or two would be a massive improvement!
OTOH, while I heard that Paris is considered beautiful by some people, I didn't like it at all, and no longer visit there even if I happen to be going to other parts of France.
Similarly, I would never voluntarily spend a day in SF and several other famous US cities.
I guess the idea of "ugly" is quite subjective.
亀戸中央通り商店街 https://maps.app.goo.gl/9yY4Ncb5oM3hXqLY6
It's not particularly hideous by Tokyo (or world) standards, it's just exactly what was described earlier, a random mishmash of houses and shops in various states of repair.