America's Cleanest City Is An Underrated Midwest College Town, Per A 2025 Study

When it comes to big-hitting city sights, the U.S. has some serious stars up its sleeve. From Central Park (recently named the No. 1 tourist attraction in America) all the way to the trendy culture hub of Koreatown over in Los Angeles, you can hop from coast to coast, exploring some of the planet's most enthralling urban environs. But which is the cleanest town of them all? Where has the purest air, the best water, and the lowest littering rates? A recent study has done the legwork, and the results are in. Take a bow, South Bend, Indiana!

The findings come as part of a 2025 ranking of the dirtiest cities in America by LawnStarter, an online portal that matches homeowners with lawn care service providers. It collated a whole host of different metrics related to the cleanliness — or dirtiness — of cities, ranging from Median Air Quality Index numbers, a measurement of the chemical composition of the air we breathe, to the provision of landfill space per capita, including even niche things like the percentage of smokers in the given urban population. South Bend scored well all round, ranking among the top 13 places when it came to low pollution scores and among the top 14 places with the most satisfied residents.

The result probably shouldn't come as too much of a surprise — this town has been ranked among the top places to live for quality of life and the best places to retire in America. Indeed, those in the know speak of South Bend as a "grossly underrated" gem of the Midwest, with its bustling farmers markets, river walks, and gastronomic scene, while drop-in visitors wax lyrical about the surprising attractions, from the vast university campus to the local motor museum.

Most folks agree that there's one attraction that leads the way in South Bend, Indiana: the University of Notre Dame. It's been hailed as one of the most handsome university campuses in the country by Times Higher Education and even one of the most beautiful campuses in the world by House Beautiful. Within, you'll discover buildings that hearken back to the mid-1800s. You can't miss the glittering, twinkling Golden Dome that caps the top of the Main Building. It's an icon of the campus and the city as a whole, dressed in shimmering metallic leaf and crowned by a statue of Mary.

Tree-lined running paths knit the whole university quarter together, going beside not one but two lakes, all the way around the other great landmark of the area, which rises in the form of the Notre Dame Stadium. If you ever needed a reminder that this is a college town through and through, then here it is — this colossal amphitheater is among the most iconic football venues in America, with space for a whopping 80,795 people at any one time.

Just as it does in Lafayette-West Lafayette, Indiana's other vibrant college city, the buzz of a football-mad, youthful college town spills out from the campus and into the surrounding neighborhoods — the clean, clean neighborhoods — beyond, too. Hit up South Bend's newly revitalized downtown core. They now call it, simply, DTSB, and it boasts highly rated (like, 4.8 out of 5 on Google level) attractions like the Studebaker National Museum, where you can head to see vintage motors and old American military gear on display. Tummy rumbling? No worries, DTSB is a gastronomic hub, too, offering Irish-themed taverns, Indiana wine cellars, oyster bars — the list goes on and on.