Revealed: The country's 25 most dangerous neighborhoods... and the top three are all in Detroit

The troubled city is home to four of America's seven roughest neighborhoods

The troubled city of Detroit has the rather ominous distinction of being home to the three most violent neighborhoods in America.



The rankings come from a report of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods released this week by NeighborhoodScout.com.



With its violent crimes, high unemployment, dwindling population and financial crisis, Motor City was always a likely candidate to feature on such a list, but not only does it take the top three spots, it also has a neighborhood in the seventh spot too.



New research to find the most dangerous neighborhoods in the entire country has found the top three are all within the troubled city of Detroit

Four Chicago neighborhoods also featured on the list, while the remainder were mainly smaller cities in the South and Midwest.



Neighborhood Scout's founder Andrew Schiller said the findings - in particular the absence of New York and Los Angeles - might surprise many people.



‘So many people think, well, I live in a medium city so it can't be that bad, not like big cities like New York or Los Angeles,’ said Schiller.



'But those cities aren't that dangerous overall - of course they have dangerous neighborhoods - but overall, they aren't nearly as dangerous as places like Indianapolis.'

NeighborhoodScout analyzed FBI data tracking violent crimes of homicide, forcible rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault to compile this list

Broken city: Detroit suffers from violent crime, high unemployment, a dwindling population and financial crisis

NeighborhoodScout used census tracts to define neighborhoods, excluding those with less than 800 residents. Then they analyzed FBI data tracking violent crimes of homicide, forcible rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault.



Schiller also noted that rather than city centers, the neighborhoods found to have the highest incidents of crime also had high levels of vacancies and were dominated by single-family homes.



While Detroit is well known as an area of economic blight and major social issues and the number of vacant structures is estimated at 35,000, with many more vacant lots.



The city's violent crime rate is also more than five times the national average, according to last year's Forbes analysis of 2011 statistics.



In February Detroit earned another dubious honor when it topped Forbes’ list of the most miserable cities in the U.S.

Ghost town: A wrecking crew tears down an abandoned building that once housed Motown Records from 1960-1972 on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit

‘Detroit's problems are hardly news. It has been in a four-decade decline paralleling the slide in the U.S. auto industry,’ according to Forbes.com , which compiles the yearly ranking.

Earlier this year, a panel of experts said the automotive city was facing a fiscal emergency and potential bankruptcy, as well as a possible financial takeover by the state.

Once hailed as one of the nation’s most industrious cities, Detroit has been ravaged by a perfect storm of plummeting home prices, astronomically high crime rates and a mass exodus of residents.

Violent crime in the Detroit metro division was down 5 per cent in 2011, but it remains the highest in the country with 1,052 violent crimes per 100,000 people, according to the FBI.

Mayor Dave Bing responded to Forbes in a statement: ‘There is no question that Detroit has many challenges. With all due respect to the data in this report, Detroit is in the midst of a transformation.

‘That transformation is being driven by my restructuring plan, which is focused on four key areas: public safety; public lighting; public transportation; and neighborhood blight removal.’