I live in an OK area between two shit areas (that's how UK cities are invariably set up), but it is important to know which you are in. I have some thoughts on this and believe the indentifying factors are:
a proliferation of betting shops,
mums pushing pushchairs and wearing school uniforms,
despite a pervasive air of poverty, the mums appear to have unlimited access to foods high in sugar, fat and refined carbohydrates,
the shops have shutters and close early, but the Solicitors are open 24-7,
the playgrounds always have teenagers loitering around trying, despite the laughable incongruity of it all, to look tough and streetwise,
in the newspaper shop, every paper is a red-top,
you can identify less than half a dozen of the fruits outside the greengrocer's shop,
takeaways which look like downmarket KFC,
lots of people wearing conspicuously new and shiny clothes using new and shiny mobile phones (why is it no mattter how poor people are they can always afford shiny new pay as you go phones?), repeating the matra "call me back, I'm running out of credit"
cars with blacked-out windows and body-kits which suggest that the owners were not permitted to play with meccano or technical lego and get it out of their system at an early age,
dog poo everywhere (not sure why this is, but maybe cleaning up after your dog is a middle-class thing).