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My very limited experience with Mexico City is that I'd treat it like many U.S. cities: it's fine, if you know which areas to avoid after dark, and which areas
by _delirium 10y ago
My very limited experience with Mexico City is that I'd treat it like many U.S. cities: it's fine, if you know which areas to avoid after dark, and which areas to avoid entirely. It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. But most U.S. cities don't fit that description either. And it's not at the other extreme that some people imagine, some kind of Somalia-esque set of private compounds separated by lawless warzones.
- homakov 10y agoMaybe I was lucky, but I never felt in danger in major US cities walking literally everywhere. While in D.F. I had some anxiety outside of central roads.
- _delirium 10y agoIt's hard to give some objective analysis, but I don't personally feel safe walking alone at night in large areas of NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, St Louis, Miami, etc.
- Trill-I-Am 10y agoWhat parts of NYC?
- _delirium 10y agoMost of the Bronx, about half of Queens, about 1/3 of Brooklyn. Manhattan is mostly gentrified these days, with only a handful of exceptions. Staten Island is odd b/c it is barely walkable to begin with, so it's neither safe nor dangerous to walk.
- magic_beans 10y agoTo be fair, unless you live in the hood in the Bronx or Brooklyn, why would you be walking around alone at night anyway? Also... in which parts of Queens did you feel unsafe? Queens is actually quite safe.
- shados 10y agoEverything is relative to what you're used to I guess. I'm from a Canadian suburb, where a 16 years old girl who got attacked in a dark alley at 3:30 am while alone made the news for 3 months because that was the worse thing that had happened in decades. Now I'm in Boston, in a heavily gentrified area, and I'm scared shitless after 11 pm. People all tell me it's a super safe area, but I know a few people who got mugged a few blocks away in various occasions. Maybe it's just bad luck. Maybe compared to other areas, a few people getting their backpack stolen is nothing. But feelings are not always rationals. I don't feel safe here.
- Arizhel 10y agoI wouldn't want to walk around Washington Heights in Manhattan alone at night; I didn't feel terribly safe there during the daytime. The Bronx is not a terribly safe place either. Sure, downtown/midtown Manhattan are very safe, but Manhattan is a minority of the overall area of NYC.
- aianus 10y agoI was more scared just outside work at the Twitter HQ in SF (Market and 10th) than I was anywhere in DF.
- akinalci 10y agoThere are parts of SF I'd rather not be in at any time of day. That includes the area around Twitter HQ.
- driverdan 10y agoWhy? You find homeless people scary?
- magic_beans 10y agoLet's be real: some of the people on drugs or with mental illness can be really aggressive.
- ptaipale 10y agoHomelessness is not a root cause for things; it is one symptom of fundamental problems that people have. Other symptoms include aggressiveness and unpredictability. These other symptoms may also be at least a partial reason why the people are homeless. Not all nor even a majority of homeless people developed countries are aggressive or unpredictable, but the risk is higher. Around here most of them are quite tame and humble, at least most of the time, and I'd much rather use the word "weak" than "bad", though. But yes, homeless people can be scary. Being a stranger in SF, I was somewhat alarmed when driving in the city and finding myself in a central neighbourhood where I wouldn't want to stop at the red light.
- ralfd 10y agoAs a European that sounds terrible! That it is not as bad as a lawless warzone in a failed African state isn't much consolation??
- rtpg 10y agoI remember reading some anecdote from an Iraqi at the peak of the war. They talked about how most of the time you're totally safe, but every once in a while a bomb will go off and a bunch of people will die. There's a spectrum of danger that a lot of us have had the privilege to not experience. I could imagine getting mugged in some places in Europe, but not really imagine dying in the "mugging gone wrong => someone is dead" scenario you hear about in the US. And of course the idea that I might get killed in a traffic stop is something I have the privilege to not experience.
- douche 10y agoEh, if you're not black and also not acting in a threatening or irrational manner, in the US, you're pretty safe. Now, if you're either of those, much less both...
- purple-again 10y agoMore dead whites than blacks. Individuals don't care about per capita statistics when they lay dying in the street.
- magic_beans 10y agoMore dead black people by cop guns, that's for damn sure.
- douche 10y agoActually, no. People just don't care when white trailer trash get gunned down.
- 10y ago
- pdog 10y ago> It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. Which European city are you referring to? The major European cities (e.g., Paris, London, and Berlin) don't fit this description either.
- _delirium 10y agoWhen were you last in central London or Paris? It's been a long time since Limehouse or Montparnasse were dangerous to walk in at night.
- branchless 10y agoHead out of canary wharf onto the isle of dogs. Or parts of peckham. Or West Ham. Christ.
- _delirium 10y agoIf the goal is to prove that going to some godforsaken suburb miles out into the countryside is dangerous, sure. This is true in any country. But not if you live in an actual city.
- branchless 10y agoShorter to write: i don't know London
- _delirium 10y agoAs a Cornishman, this is basically what's taught in the schools, yes. You live in a godforsaken suburb miles out of London but you pretend that, unlike us, you somehow live in a city. ;-)
- pjc50 10y ago"isle of dogs. Or parts of peckham. Or West Ham." All of these places are in London. They have London postcodes, are inside the M25, and are administered by the Mayor of London.
- Cyph0n 10y agoIf you want to see truly safe cities, even by EU standards, check out Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, or Doha.
- yincrash 10y agoWith the exception of Hong Kong, aren't these all pretty authoritarian states?
- tmslnz 10y agoNot been to Mexico City, but I have been in many US cities (NYC, L.A., SF, San Diego, Salt Lake…) a variety of times during a 15 year span. One time I will never forget I was on the bus from the L.A. airport to downtown, and chit-chatting comes out that I was staying at hostel downtown. A couple of reactions were priceless, like I were a dead man walking. It was perfectly fine in the end. The thing is if you are showing bling in some form or simply being unaware, you are at risk _anywere_ in a city. Hell I got cash-robbed inside a Times Square restaurant when I was 18, thinking I was getting a good deal on a Sony ultra slim CD player with 30 seconds skip buffer.
- douche 10y agoThis is why I prefer to live in parts of the US that resemble the demographics of most European city centers. It turns out that tends to be kind of a demographic optimum...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sametmax 10y agoWell, there is a huge difference between Europe and the US/Mexico: most people don't have guns. You will rarely see anybody with a weapon here. If you get attacked, it will be with fists, sometime a knife. Having the possibility that somebody pulls a gun on you is crazy to me, like something that should only happen in a movie.
- diamondo25 10y agoLiving in the Netherlands, I know that people with bad intentions most likely have guns. Even in my small hometown, a citizen that owned a spy equipment store got shot up in daylight in front of his home. Other example would be people getting robbed in their house with guns (not daily, but it happens). There are plenty of other examples... I cannot say I feel 100% save most of the time.
- mattmanser 10y agoIt might not make you feel better, but Holland's gun death per 100,000 is in the 0.5's compared to the U.S.'s 10's and Mexico's 10's. You're 20 times more likely to get killed by a gun in the US or Mexico. Note that in the whole of Holland there are 50 gun homicides per year, so you were actually pretty unlucky to experience that. Your experience is exceptional and not a common occurrence, especially as I assume most Holland murders are not widely reported spouse killings, etc. Mexico had 18,398 gun homicides in 2011, for comparison, Holland, 60, US, 11,068.
- briandear 10y agoThe gun homicide rate in the US is 4.5. The US has roughly 110 guns per 100,000 people and 4.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people. Mexico has over 20 gun homicides per 100,000 people and about 18 guns per 100,000 people. Canada has 2 gun murders per 100,000 people and 31 guns per 100,000 people. Mexico: each gun is responsible for 1.11 murders US: each gun is responsible for .04 murders Canada: each gun is responsible for .07 murders. Interestingly, the Bahamas has 30 gun murders per 100,000 and about 4 guns per 100,000. That's 7.5 murders per gun. France has 2.8 gun murders per 100k and 31 guns per 100,000. Which makes each gun responsible for .09 murders -- slightly higher than both the US and Canada, despite far stricter laws. The U.K. Has .23 gun murders and 6.6 guns -- so .35 murders per gun. Sweden has 1.47 murders per 100k with 31.6 guns for a rate of .047 murders per gun. Nicaragua has 4.68 murders with 7.7 guns -- each gun is part of 1.65 murders. Jamaica: 31 murders/8 guns. Denmark: 1.28/12 guns Israel: 2.09/7.3 guns Brazil: 21.2/8 guns Australia: .93/21.7 guns My point: gun ownership does not correlate to gun murder rates -- in fact one could make a case that increased gun ownership could actually reduce gun murder rates. Despite having more guns per capita than most countries, the overall US murder rate ranks 108 out of 218, with Honduras topping the list (incidentally Honduras has 67 murders and 6.2 guns per 100,000)