I’ve been teaching one or two American students. They commented on how safe Dublin was. I was saying that it is generally quite safe and that my general perception is that it has got safer over the last 15 years. One of them started talking about ‘no-go’ areas near her, neighbourhoods you wouldn’t go into for fear of being shot. I suggested that perhaps there areas weren’t as dangerous as she imagined and that there’s a racial component to her fear. That is, being white, she would stand out as a target for muggers or other miscreants. In Dublin, although ethnic ghettos of a sort are forming, encountering a preponderance of people of one skin colour or another is no real indicator of how safe/dangerous an area is. Anyway so I thought I would ask, would you be in more danger straying into a notorious part of a big American city than you would be doing the same in a big European city? Because this isn’t just about the statistics, but also perceptions I’ve put it in Great Debates but mods feel free to move it if you deem it necessary.
I’ve been in a number of other European cities, Barcelona (the worst), Paris, Berlin (the best), Glasgow, London, Valetta, Naples, Edinburgh, and Manchester.
In the US I’ve been in NYC (Manhattan), Chicago, Cleveland and Richmond. I don’t really have enough experience of any of these cities to say much authoritively about relative safety although FWIW Manhattan felt safer than anywhere in Europe I’d visited bar perhaps Berlin. Euro-dopers please feel free to chime in.
Overall, safer. I found that while there is a higher level of deadly violence over in the US, that violence seems to be much more localized, and occurred in areas I did not enter.
Further, I saw much less low level violence, which is that which affected me in the UK. Many fewer bar fights/street crime.
As to the question itself… there were never really areas of London/Oxford (where I lived) I would avoid totally. Certainly there were areas where I felt less safe, but not to the point of “what the HELL am I doing here.” Some parts of Chicago I didn’t feel like I should be in during daylight hours, let alone at night.
Hmm, out here, I’d say parts of East LA and East Palo Alto would be bad areas to go in. Actually, being White in a Black or Hispanic neighborhood might not be as dangerous as being the right ethnicity and wearing the wrong colors.
There are also a few areas like in SF which are heavily populated by the “homeless”, and there it could be dangerous if you are seen as having any money. During the day, you might be “lurched at”, followed by a angry man demanding a handout, or just bothered by a crazy person.
In general, though, other than late at nite, there are few areas in the USA I would feel afraid to enter.
But that’s because I know not to wear lots of red in a Sureno area, and etc. Note that a middle-aged well-dressed white dude is not likely to be thought of as a member of the opposing gang. But if you are young and Hispanic, wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood could get you killed.
I worked five feet north of MLK Boulevard in Queens for five years, at an AIDS treatment facility. We had other facilities, that were in similarly bad locations. You know, we’d count the burned out cars dumped on the street at the end of a weekend. (The record was three.)
Currently, I work in a network of substance abuse centers in equally bad locations.
I’m white and nerdy, man. I got no problems. And no worries. Wouldn’t want to be wandering around after midnight, now, but that’s just stupid.
(I admit, someone tried to mug me with a knife once, but he was strung out and I just hit him with my briefcase with the 20 pounds of tools in it, then ran for the facility door. He was still trying to figure out what his legs did when I got buzzed inside.)
As Web Smith said in Rising Sun, rough neighborhoods are America’s last advantage.
Check out these pics of NYC from 1965-1995. Note the abandoned car near the World Trade Center. Granted, NYC is a lot safer now, but there are still plenty of scary areas in the U.S.
Manhattan is very safe. There is nowhere I wouldn’t go in Manhattan any time of day or night. In fact there are very few that I haven’t been at 3 AM.
There are not many places in the US where you would just get straight up murdered for going, but there are places you wouldn’t want to find yourself a lost outsider, like areas of Baltimore.
Generally violence in the US is perpetrated by people who are a few degrees of separation from one another. Rival gang members, drug deals gone wrong. That sort of thing. If you live in a ghetto you are more likely to get murdered there than someone who is lost there.
I lived for years in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn which used to be famous for being a bad neighborhood. It’s started to gentrify, partly as a result of my being there at all. The Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg bought up lots of property and built apartments that younger but more upwardly mobile people of all races moved into.
There are portions of Albuquerque New Mexico where I’d be more concerned than most parts of New York. The thing that’s scary about New York though, is that even though you can hear the gunshots you have no idea where it came from, so even calling the cops doesn’t give them much to go on because it could be in any of thousands of apartments or alleyways within a couple blocks.
The place you are most likely to be mugged or so I’ve heard are in the trendy areas of Manhattan where drunk tourists are likely to be stumbling about, like the East Village.
Yeah, can’t imagine any place in the US I would be afraid to go into… knowingly. Now there are a lot of places I would hate to be lost in and have to ask for directions!
Nice link, Moidalize. I disagree with what he said about the treatment centers, mind you. I know we’re aware of the issue he described, and trying the damn best to overcome it. We do… fairly frequently. But not always.
And less frequently on the first time through. But if someone comes back to us… the second time, yeah, we do pretty okay.
And those cars are still there even today. For a week or three. Lot of times they get lit on fire before being abandoned, to get rid of fingerprints/dna/for fun.
Personally I think the best way to do a comparison is pick a worse-case urban neighborhood in the US and one in Europe and compare per capita crime stats. Maybe pick two or three each, and I would say that you have to drill down the the neighborhood level, since there can be a huge variation within city limits. IMHO perceptions are not the best way to do a comparison, people have different cues that they use to judge safety. As an example, some women take catcalling as a red flag, but you can get catcalled in a perfectly safe area (and vice versa). Don’t get me wrong, when it’s just you walking down the street then you have to use your instincts, but for the purposes of a comparison I would go to stats as well. And of course there will variation in the reporting but at least numbers are something to talk about.
New York really is quite safe these days but there are some parts that are less safe than others. Here is a NYC crime map that I found: link. I am not sure what is going on in MidTown South, but I would guess incidents involving Penn Station commuters who don’t count towards the ‘capita’ part of the equation.
If you want to try to find a European neighborhoods then I can find the numbers for an area in NYC or Chicago. IANA criminologist or a statistician, just someone who likes to look stuff up.
Be aware, though, sugar and spice, that different countries record/report crime in very different ways. You might not be getting an apples to apples comparison.
Yes and I did acknowledge that. There is variation among US cities as well, but I think it useful to see actual numbers in addition to discussing personal anecdotes and perceptions.
Interesting map. It looks like the only particular spike in the numbers for MidTown South is in burglaries…I’m thinking maybe the commercial buildings in that area prove particularly attractive to criminals, or are more likely to lose goods worth reporting stolen, than some other locations. Just my WAG.
heh, you’re right, my eyes don’t work well either. I should that around here if someone tells me that a certain area is safe or unsafe I take it with a grain of salt. My university gets a lot of transplants and who I feel get a false sense of security from the clean streets and mowed lawns, and they pretty much ignore all warnings to not walk around by themselves at night. Likewise you’ll get locals who are influenced by opinions from their parents’ generation, and who are thus more conservative than I am about unsafe areas. And not to say I have perfect vision here, I am probably on the ‘too stupid’ side. Just that perception and actual odds are different, which the OP does acknowledge as well.
The only place I’ve ever not felt safe was Harlem at 3AM. Generally, I’m not worried about crime and nothing has ever happened, but there were some shady motherfuckers hanging around and I’m not a very intimidating target.
You haven’t been around, then. I’ve been in some pretty nasty ghettos in parts of Charlotte and surrounding areas, some bad parts of LA, and there are areas of Phoenix that look like scenes from Mad Max.
You know the ULish story that everyone tells about being pulled over and told by the cops to get the hell out of this neighborhood because you’re in danger? It LITERALLY happened to me and some friends in East Spencer, NC.
Also, I know people from Chicago and New Orleans who claim that police would not come into their neighborhoods. One guy’s uncle supposedly sold crack from his front porch with a megaphone.
Yes, we live in a nice country but there are parts I wouldn’t not want to walk around in at night, make no mistake.
I think it really depends on where you are. When I lived in Budapest, I would say that the “bad neighborhoods” there are on par with an average city neighborhood in Chicago. There literally is no neighborhood in that town I’d be weary of walking through at midnight. I would not say the same of Chicago. Even around my neighborhood, I’m vigilant and always pay attention to my surroundings.
However, that’s just my experience with Budapest, and it’s not a false sense of security, as spent many years there and have a good idea of the lay of the land, and I think I can make a fair comparison. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if, say, Paris or Berlin or whatnot had rough neighborhoods I wouldn’t want to traverse at night, but my overall impression of European cities in general was that they felt safer. However, for those cities, I don’t have an intimate knowledge of the bad neighborhoods, and I would have been sticking to fairly well-populated and busy areas.