4 ms·

Five Points was once the worst neighborhood in the United States. It was razed and replaced with Columbus Park. Now its a safe center of the community in Manhat

by ipnon 4y ago

Five Points was once the worst neighborhood in the United States. It was razed and replaced with Columbus Park. Now its a safe center of the community in Manhattan's Chinatown. Gangs in Chicago were concentrated into a few high-rises owned by the public housing administration until the 1990s. The buildings were razed in an effort to curtail the rampant crime within them. The unintended consequence was that the once unified gangs were displaced throughout the broader Chicagoland area, and were able to grow immensely without the constraint of their former static, well-monitored domiciles. This effect of housing displacement leading to increases in both the frequency and geographic distribution in crime has been documented in other cities like Atlanta.

jeffbee 4y ago
Surely you are not arguing that crime increased in frequency in Chicago (or any other American city) after 1990, because the statistics all indicate the opposite. Violent crime had fallen by half from 1990 rates by 2000, and now stands at less than 1/3rd the 1990 rate. Some fairly famous research indicates that homicide in Chicago is still highly concentrated, in real geographic distance and in social graph distance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910040/pdf/AJPH.2013.301441.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910040/pdf/AJP...
- bombcar 4y ago
  If there are ten thousand homeless people in a city confined to one area, and it is reduced to 5k but spread all over the city, the people will see it as an increase.
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    None of that makes jeffbee wrong. If I perceive something incorrectly. That's my problem. Not really jeffbee's. Who's only crime is stating facts. We have to temper emotional reactions to the statements of people who are fact driven.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      I've been firmly assured by people who spread information that is not true that perception is the real reality, and that people's concerns are more important than mere statistics. Turns out Glenn Beck-ism's final form is postmodernism.
- bluedino 4y ago
  "Violent crime" might be 1/3rd the 1990 rate but the number of murders are only about 100 lower than back then. The amount has really climbed up in the last decade.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    This seems to give the murder rate even less connection to zoning decisions made in the 1980s.
  - zo1 4y ago
    One thing we may not be seeing or considering in those facts: How much of that reduction umis due to people altering their own behavior. E.g. Not walking as much, or avoiding bad parts of town, moving to suburbs, expecting police to be tough on crime.
hackernewds 4y ago
Which side of the argument are you espousing? the New York example seems to contradict the Chicagoan. it's funny the Chicago example seems to present the same case of why you shouldn't disturb a cockroach infestation that is centralized
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  To be fair, the same thing could also have happened in NYC. The poster only said that the razed areas were "better". They never said anything about, say, The Bronx being "better". I think the point they were making is largely irrelevant given the numerous differences between the two examples. Time. Commercial pressures. Etc. But they certainly seem similar in the manner that s/he describes.
- ipnon 4y ago
  I'm trying to imply (apparently without affect) that "broken windows" policing only works sometimes.
pessimizer 4y ago
> the once unified gangs were displaced throughout the broader Chicagoland area, and were able to grow immensely without the constraint of their former static, well-monitored domiciles. This is not what happened. Firstly, just to get this out of the way, this period in Chicago was a time of gang fragmentation, not growth or consolidation. There was a rise in violence associated with it, but that was because people who had been warehoused in the west side high rises moved to the south side, where there were already established gangs and relationships between them. This led to conflict in the same way that the New Orleans floods led to conflict in Houston, because New Orleans people were tough and Houston people were tough, so when New Orleans people were moved to Houston, things happened. Chicago is dangerous because it is an absurdly segregated city containing massive pockets of poverty with no public services, jobs or grocery stores, complete disinvestment from public schools, and a outsized fine and fee schedule. Upper-middle class whites in Chicago are paranoid about it for good reason, the same reason any wealthy person trying to have some bohemian city experience at the edges of a favela would be afraid.

by ipnon 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago

Surely you are not arguing that crime increased in frequency in Chicago (or any other American city) after 1990, because the statistics all indicate the opposite. Violent crime had fallen by half from 1990 rates by 2000, and now stands at less than 1/3rd the 1990 rate. Some fairly famous research indicates that homicide in Chicago is still highly concentrated, in real geographic distance and in social graph distance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910040/pdf/AJPH.2013.301441.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910040/pdf/AJP...

bombcar 4y ago
If there are ten thousand homeless people in a city confined to one area, and it is reduced to 5k but spread all over the city, the people will see it as an increase.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  None of that makes jeffbee wrong. If I perceive something incorrectly. That's my problem. Not really jeffbee's. Who's only crime is stating facts. We have to temper emotional reactions to the statements of people who are fact driven.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I've been firmly assured by people who spread information that is not true that perception is the real reality, and that people's concerns are more important than mere statistics. Turns out Glenn Beck-ism's final form is postmodernism.
bluedino 4y ago
"Violent crime" might be 1/3rd the 1990 rate but the number of murders are only about 100 lower than back then. The amount has really climbed up in the last decade.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  This seems to give the murder rate even less connection to zoning decisions made in the 1980s.
- zo1 4y ago
  One thing we may not be seeing or considering in those facts: How much of that reduction umis due to people altering their own behavior. E.g. Not walking as much, or avoiding bad parts of town, moving to suburbs, expecting police to be tough on crime.

hackernewds 4y ago

Which side of the argument are you espousing? the New York example seems to contradict the Chicagoan. it's funny the Chicago example seems to present the same case of why you shouldn't disturb a cockroach infestation that is centralized

bilbo0s 4y ago
To be fair, the same thing could also have happened in NYC. The poster only said that the razed areas were "better". They never said anything about, say, The Bronx being "better". I think the point they were making is largely irrelevant given the numerous differences between the two examples. Time. Commercial pressures. Etc. But they certainly seem similar in the manner that s/he describes.
ipnon 4y ago
I'm trying to imply (apparently without affect) that "broken windows" policing only works sometimes.

pessimizer 4y ago

> the once unified gangs were displaced throughout the broader Chicagoland area, and were able to grow immensely without the constraint of their former static, well-monitored domiciles. This is not what happened. Firstly, just to get this out of the way, this period in Chicago was a time of gang fragmentation, not growth or consolidation. There was a rise in violence associated with it, but that was because people who had been warehoused in the west side high rises moved to the south side, where there were already established gangs and relationships between them. This led to conflict in the same way that the New Orleans floods led to conflict in Houston, because New Orleans people were tough and Houston people were tough, so when New Orleans people were moved to Houston, things happened. Chicago is dangerous because it is an absurdly segregated city containing massive pockets of poverty with no public services, jobs or grocery stores, complete disinvestment from public schools, and a outsized fine and fee schedule. Upper-middle class whites in Chicago are paranoid about it for good reason, the same reason any wealthy person trying to have some bohemian city experience at the edges of a favela would be afraid.