But werent alot of adults always walking thru? How about homeless, bums, and other street people?
There were lots of adults walking around, to and from stores and the train station and such. But homeless people, both now and then, tend to congregate in certain areas and not usually in residential areas
I live in a ward with a density of about 9,000/km^2. Hardly New York, but it’s not the rural, either.
I am a 5 minute walk from a very safe park (and a slightly longer walk, or short ride, to scores of other parks), and the schools are excellent.
I am not disputing the problems you mention, just stating unequivocally that they are not inherent to density, nor that higher density inherently means the only places for kids to play is on the street and sidewalks.
I’m attempting to keep this GQ rather than GD, but want to state that the problems mentioned there are not necessarily the result of density.
I agree there’s no strict causality between population density and crime, and even the correlation between the two is not always strong. For example, nobody knows the exact complex of reasons why serious crime has declined in the city of NY by as much as it has in the last couple of decades, 80% or more in various categories of serious crime. But when it comes to Manhattan (a ~70,000 person/sq mile area, higher than any whole municipality in the US, though the density of NY as a whole is less than that some other cities) it’s plausible that one reason for almost no real bad neighborhoods left in Manhattan now is real estate prices. Some poor people still live there, mainly by way of subsidized housing, but it seems no longer enough to form the critical mass or tipping point necessary to create large high crime areas.
And where I live (NJ city right near NY, which exceeds NY’s population density) increased population density (along with higher real estate prices) is pretty clearly a component of why crime has gone down on a per capita basis. First of all, the 50% or increase in the population in the last 20-30yrs is almost all from people not members of socio-economic/ethnic/racial groups with a high crime rate, in fact those groups’ representation has declined, because they are priced out, if they don’t live in government subsidized housing. And then there’s the reverse cycle where if an area becomes safer, and for example people feel free to walk the streets at all hours, that further deters criminals and makes other law abiding people feel more empowered to walk the streets.
The only objective reason I can think of to connect population density per se to higher or lower crime would be the similar as applies to electricity, sewer etc: it’s easier to have a higher police presence and shorter police response time for a given spending on police where the police don’t have as much ground to cover to police a given population.
But who lives in a given area is the dominant reason for why crime is high or low per person, not the population density.
In general though, seems to me the obvious disadvantage, subjectively, of high population density is that many people want more space and/or not be around other people as closely, or to live ‘in nature’ to a greater degree. That’s hard to quantify because it’s a matter of taste. And it’s also the problem with some approaches to ‘planning’, where ‘planning’ becomes another means of 50%+1 of voters turn over their lives to bureaucrats to tell them specifically how to live their lives along general guidelines they might agree with, and moreover tell the 50%-1 how to live their lives along guidelines they might totally oppose.
I say that as NY native and almost lifelong high density urban dweller.
I’d also add that as housing prices go up, the people who lve there want to protect those prices and therefore, work harder to push the bad elements out.
Like myself, I used to live in an area of Kansas City that suddenly went thru a BIG rise in home prices. People for example, could buy an old derelict or drug house, rehab it, and get a fortune for it. As prices rose rental homes were sold and owners moved in. THEN over time we got a HOA going and worked with police and code inspectors to go after the people who were causing problems or had trashed homes. For example I went after my neighbor who used to leave these old, broken cars lying around or jacked up with parts on the sidewalk. It took a couple of visits by code enforcement and they had to clean up their property.
In another neighborhood called Hyde Park, they did the above plus hired their own security service.
Cities are associated with increased creativity and productivity. Part of it is diversity- being exposed to a wider variety of people leads to new perspectives and new approaches to problem solving. The other factor is pure division of labor- when there are more people wjth more needs, you are more likely to find the particular niche where you are likely to be productive.
The guy who is a natural born piano tuner in a rural area basically has to wait until the town piano tuner retires. But in a dense area there will be many opportunities to tune pianos (and more piano tuners to compete with, ensuring everyone gets the best of the best paint tuner).
Yes, I’ve heard that in a place like New York city one can find within a few blocks someone with nearly any specialty or talent one could want which can make it easier for say a startup to find key people. So business, law, government, creative, tech, or just someone who speaks Latvian - they are all closeby.
Or gridlock can be found in cultures where everyone covets a car, even though there’s not need for it. I’m currently living in an area with excellent public transportation, but the gridlock has been getting steadily, noticeably worse the three years I’ve lived here. Everyone wants a car, whether there’s a need for it or not.
The high density “communities” here are largely self-contained; there’s hardly a need for anyone to leave their community except to get to work (unless you work in the community). Big companies (like mine) have elaborate, company-run shuttle bus routes (like the famous Google and Apple busses in Silicon Valley). The subway system is one of the best in the world (and I’ve been on subways in many parts of the world). You can take cheap interconnect busses if the subway can’t get you there. And taxis are dirt cheap. There’s literally no reason to own a car, yet everyone wants one.
Of course as a native Michigander the idea of space appeals to me, and the idea of living in a high density community is abhorrent to me, and as such I live in the suburbs and require a car. Oh, and Chinese suburbs are still very, very high density. The new subway line is supposed to open tomorrow with a station near my house, and this appeals to me, because traffic into the city is just so horrible.