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>> the deadliest regions have gotten much safer. Not so sure I agree with that. - St. Louis, MO - Detroit, MI - New Orleans, LA - Baltimore, MD - Chicago,

>> the deadliest regions have gotten much safer. Not so sure I agree with that. - St. Louis, MO - Detroit, MI - New Orleans, LA - Baltimore, MD - Chicago, IL All have had incredibly high murder rates since 2002. That's over a decade of violent crime that hasn't slowed down at all and continues to remain steady to this day.

dionidium 10y ago
I'm from St. Louis, so I happen to be familiar with those numbers. Here are the homicide rates in St. Louis in the early 90s (per 100k people): 1991 65.0 1992 57.4 1993 69.0 1994 63.5 1995 54.9 And here's 2002-2014: 2002 31.4 2003 21.8 2004 33.7 2005 37.9 2006 37.2 2007 39.6 2008 46.9 2009 40.3 2010 45.1 2011 35.3 2012 35.5 2014 49.9 Homicides here started falling in the late 1990s and remained (relatively) low throughout the 2000s. The rate did jump in 2014 and has remained higher since, but it's still lower than it was in the early 90s. Which, I think, is to say that your narrative isn't correct, at least regarding St. Louis. It's much messier than that (and mostly good news (relatively)).
- grecy 10y ago
  Wow. In the mean time, Toronto has a homicide rate of around 2.0 (in 2012 [1]), making it almost 18x lower than St. Louis. Genuine question, why do you continue to live there? Why wouldn't you move somewhere safer? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Toronto
  - jdminhbg 10y ago
    Violent crime is almost entirely concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods, and the people living there don't generally have the means/ability to move.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    There are (at least) three things to understand about those numbers: 1. The City of St. Louis occupies a very small portion of what any reasonable person would call "St. Louis." And those numbers include only the City portion. The rest of the area is much safer. St. Louis County, which surrounds St. Louis on three sides and contains three times as many people (over 1 million), had 15 homicides in 2014 for a homicide rate of 1.5 (lower than Toronto) [0]. Most people living in the St. Louis area are living in very safe places. 2. Not all cities occupy such a small portion of their region. Toronto, to keep your example, is 243.33 sq mi. St. Louis is 66 sq mi. If St. Louis's borders were extended to match Toronto's reach, then it would include a whole bunch of the safe areas in St. Louis County, which would considerably soften the numbers. (Note that nothing on the ground would actually change.) This is why reasonable regional comparisons should be done at the level of the MSA. Arbitrary borders are, well, arbitrary and produce misleading comparisons. 3. Even when looking only at the City of St. Louis, you have to understand that many neighborhoods have 1 or 2 or 0 homicides each year. [1] Most of the violence is concentrated on the city's Northside and in the Southeast. Extreme violence is not a part of the everyday lived experience for most citizens. The way outsiders talk about crime in places like St. Louis very sloppy. (Bonus #4: Crime and safety and law and order aren't the only metric by which to choose where to live.) [0] This number is almost certainly too low, because of how crime is reported in the County. I got that number here: http://www.kmov.com/story/29948033/homicides-on-the-rise-in-st-louis-county http://www.kmov.com/story/29948033/homicides-on-the-rise-in-... Some other sources suggest it may be around twice that for the entire County, meaning the rate is likely closer to 3.0 per 100,000 (which is still considerably lower than in the City). [1] https://nextstl.com/2013/01/understanding-st-louis-homicides-2005-2012/ https://nextstl.com/2013/01/understanding-st-louis-homicides...
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      This is a very good list, and I'd like to expand on point four: even among city-life-specific dangers, murder generally ranks fairly low. Where I live, the annual pedestrian and bicyclist death count is is comparable to the St. Louis murder rate. And, of course, far more evenly distributed across neighborhoods. Add in car crashes and I'm probably at far more risk here than I would be in St. Louis. I'm at more risk from smog and water pollution just by living in a city, and to fight that I should move not to Toronto but to a ritzy suburb. But dense populations mean good emergency response times, which argues for city again! The list continues - you're absolutely right that safety isn't the only goal, but even on that basis it's not clear that murder is the statistic to observe.
  - nikanj 10y ago
    These statistics don't tell the whole truth, as it can often be members of a subgroup killing eachother while the general population remains relatively safe.

dionidium 10y ago

I'm from St. Louis, so I happen to be familiar with those numbers. Here are the homicide rates in St. Louis in the early 90s (per 100k people): 1991 65.0 1992 57.4 1993 69.0 1994 63.5 1995 54.9 And here's 2002-2014: 2002 31.4 2003 21.8 2004 33.7 2005 37.9 2006 37.2 2007 39.6 2008 46.9 2009 40.3 2010 45.1 2011 35.3 2012 35.5 2014 49.9 Homicides here started falling in the late 1990s and remained (relatively) low throughout the 2000s. The rate did jump in 2014 and has remained higher since, but it's still lower than it was in the early 90s. Which, I think, is to say that your narrative isn't correct, at least regarding St. Louis. It's much messier than that (and mostly good news (relatively)).

grecy 10y ago
Wow. In the mean time, Toronto has a homicide rate of around 2.0 (in 2012 [1]), making it almost 18x lower than St. Louis. Genuine question, why do you continue to live there? Why wouldn't you move somewhere safer? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Toronto
- jdminhbg 10y ago
  Violent crime is almost entirely concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods, and the people living there don't generally have the means/ability to move.
- dionidium 10y ago
  There are (at least) three things to understand about those numbers: 1. The City of St. Louis occupies a very small portion of what any reasonable person would call "St. Louis." And those numbers include only the City portion. The rest of the area is much safer. St. Louis County, which surrounds St. Louis on three sides and contains three times as many people (over 1 million), had 15 homicides in 2014 for a homicide rate of 1.5 (lower than Toronto) [0]. Most people living in the St. Louis area are living in very safe places. 2. Not all cities occupy such a small portion of their region. Toronto, to keep your example, is 243.33 sq mi. St. Louis is 66 sq mi. If St. Louis's borders were extended to match Toronto's reach, then it would include a whole bunch of the safe areas in St. Louis County, which would considerably soften the numbers. (Note that nothing on the ground would actually change.) This is why reasonable regional comparisons should be done at the level of the MSA. Arbitrary borders are, well, arbitrary and produce misleading comparisons. 3. Even when looking only at the City of St. Louis, you have to understand that many neighborhoods have 1 or 2 or 0 homicides each year. [1] Most of the violence is concentrated on the city's Northside and in the Southeast. Extreme violence is not a part of the everyday lived experience for most citizens. The way outsiders talk about crime in places like St. Louis very sloppy. (Bonus #4: Crime and safety and law and order aren't the only metric by which to choose where to live.) [0] This number is almost certainly too low, because of how crime is reported in the County. I got that number here: http://www.kmov.com/story/29948033/homicides-on-the-rise-in-st-louis-county http://www.kmov.com/story/29948033/homicides-on-the-rise-in-... Some other sources suggest it may be around twice that for the entire County, meaning the rate is likely closer to 3.0 per 100,000 (which is still considerably lower than in the City). [1] https://nextstl.com/2013/01/understanding-st-louis-homicides-2005-2012/ https://nextstl.com/2013/01/understanding-st-louis-homicides...
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    This is a very good list, and I'd like to expand on point four: even among city-life-specific dangers, murder generally ranks fairly low. Where I live, the annual pedestrian and bicyclist death count is is comparable to the St. Louis murder rate. And, of course, far more evenly distributed across neighborhoods. Add in car crashes and I'm probably at far more risk here than I would be in St. Louis. I'm at more risk from smog and water pollution just by living in a city, and to fight that I should move not to Toronto but to a ritzy suburb. But dense populations mean good emergency response times, which argues for city again! The list continues - you're absolutely right that safety isn't the only goal, but even on that basis it's not clear that murder is the statistic to observe.
- nikanj 10y ago
  These statistics don't tell the whole truth, as it can often be members of a subgroup killing eachother while the general population remains relatively safe.