4 ms·

What's the difference between a city park and e.g. the hundreds of miles of trails and national forest behind my house? Somehow that manages to be crime-free d

by fizx 2y ago

What's the difference between a city park and e.g. the hundreds of miles of trails and national forest behind my house? Somehow that manages to be crime-free despite less usage. Would love a theory of how density works in your model.

bradchris 2y ago
Parkland that is not often used to capacity that has less people near it would naturally also have less crime from people within it, because there’s not many people to commit crimes nearby in the first place. E.G. Los Angeles National Forest Parkland that is not often used to capacity that has a lot of people near it would likely have more crime, because you’ve essentially created a glorified alleyway. E.G. Central Park in the 70s, when you didn’t want to be nearby it near sundown. Central Park is a good case study of this phenomenon, because it’s now one of the most heavily used parks in one of most densely populated areas in the world, and billionaires pay premiums to live next to it. That didn’t always used to be the case, and it was considered dangerous.
lovemenot 2y ago
I am not the person you asked, but it seems to me the key difference is concentration of accessible resources. If so, the areas where the trails behind your house intersect with wealthy suburban or urban areas are the areas most likely to conceal would-be robbers.
jonahx 2y ago
Some guesses: 1. A low traffic urban park still has some traffic, and criminals want reasonable waiting times. You might wait all day on a hiking trail. 2. Escape routes. Harder to make a clean getaway on a trail. Often one way out, a single trail head, and then a drive. That's another thing, you probably need a car. In an urban park you can vanish back into the city from multiple exit points. 3. Crimes of opportunity. Most muggings aren't planned out far in advance. Driving to a hiking spot and patiently waiting isn't the psychological place typical criminals are operating from. Serial killers, maybe... and sometimes those killings do happen in secluded hiking areas.
- prawn 2y ago
  I'd guess that the sort of people incidentally mugging others can't afford a car and so would generally be within walking distance of their home/haunts. Probably also not the sort to put in extra effort walking trails or chancing a long walk in case they found someone. I've travelled and hiked in the US a lot. In outdoor tourism spots away from cities, I think the main threat for opportunistic thefts would be 20-30yo foreign tourists (shoestring travelling Europeans, South Americans, etc). Cities would be completely different.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    In outdoor tourism spots, the obvious place to commit crime is not the trail but the parking lot. Near me, sometimes people report smash and grabs through car windows at trailheads.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
I'm assuming you live in a less populated area, which would also (on average) mean fewer criminals. Lower usage in high density vs lower usage in low density.
brudgers 2y ago
Typically the built environment is going to be a better place to find action for ne’er do wells looking for action. Not being seen doesn’t matter much without opportunity. To put it another way, hundreds of miles of forest trails sounds like a lot of work.
notatoad 2y ago
it's not the parent commenter's theory, it's a well established architectural and urban planning theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park but i'd assume that the main difference is that the hundreds of miles of trails and national forest behind your house doesn't have a residential tower stuck in the middle of it.
- tomatotomato37 2y ago
  Wow, some of the complexes in those pictures look a lot like the cities I create when I'm playing Workers & Resources; if I didn't know any better I would have thought they were taken in the former Soviet bloc. I wonder how they managed to make it work where the West didn't.
  - njarboe 2y ago
    Soviet bloc told people where to live. Didn't work in the long run as the USSR collapse eventually.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Western academia got pumped chock full of former soviet bloc professionals after the walls fell so a generation of urban planners and other professionals spent their education hearing a fair bit about that kind of construction and planning.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Details matter and the Soviet examples must have got some details right that matter. The question for the reader is then what? (one answer already given is Soviets didn't give residents a choice - I have no idea if this is right or not)
    - notatoad 2y ago
      the fact that they kept building them doesn't really mean it worked any better. the answer might be that it had all the same problems, they just cared less about solving those problems. the problem with towers in the park is isolation from services - in a society where services are more scarce to begin with, that's going to be less of a difference than other forms of planning. but afaik the difference between "commieblocks" and towers in the park is that there was a lot less park per commieblock. you had more buildings clustered tighter together than the prototypical western towers in the park development.
Aurornis 2y ago
It takes preparation, resources, a vehicle, travel to the trailhead, motivation, effort, and miles of walking to get into trails in a national forest. Potential victims on a trail aren’t carrying many valuables because they’re out hiking. A city park is within walking distance, requires no vehicle to get to, can be visited on a whim, and potential victims are more likely carrying valuables (jewelry, electronics, nice handbags). Criminals can visit the park, commit a crime, and disappear back into the dense city on a whim, without planning or preparing. Most crimes in this context are crimes of convenience. Hiking long trails is not convenient.
- dv_dt 2y ago
  If criminals can get there why not the non-skyscraper city residents? And why would criminals displace them?
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    A lot of towers in the park are located in places where the park is actually private property, so they are built to discourage through traffic or visitors that might help to keep it safe. The other thing is that people visit their local, convenient parks unless there is a really good reason to travel far for one; and if everyone has their tower in a park, then why would they go to anyone else’s?
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> potential victims are more likely carrying valuables (jewelry, electronics, nice handbags) Back when I was a daily hiker, I would have been carry seriously expensive gear. A few thousand dollars at least. Way more expensive than I would have walking around town. It would have been work to track me down in the forest though. As one of the other commenters pointed out, in a national forest the crime occurs as car clouting at the trailhead. I would leave my car unlocked, and depending on weather, a window rolled down. The parent poster must live next to a different national forest than the ones I hiked at, if you hiked at a popular trail it was completely normal to get back to the trailhead and see cars with their windows busted out.

by fizx 2y ago

bradchris 2y ago

Parkland that is not often used to capacity that has less people near it would naturally also have less crime from people within it, because there’s not many people to commit crimes nearby in the first place. E.G. Los Angeles National Forest Parkland that is not often used to capacity that has a lot of people near it would likely have more crime, because you’ve essentially created a glorified alleyway. E.G. Central Park in the 70s, when you didn’t want to be nearby it near sundown. Central Park is a good case study of this phenomenon, because it’s now one of the most heavily used parks in one of most densely populated areas in the world, and billionaires pay premiums to live next to it. That didn’t always used to be the case, and it was considered dangerous.

lovemenot 2y ago

I am not the person you asked, but it seems to me the key difference is concentration of accessible resources. If so, the areas where the trails behind your house intersect with wealthy suburban or urban areas are the areas most likely to conceal would-be robbers.

jonahx 2y ago

Some guesses: 1. A low traffic urban park still has some traffic, and criminals want reasonable waiting times. You might wait all day on a hiking trail. 2. Escape routes. Harder to make a clean getaway on a trail. Often one way out, a single trail head, and then a drive. That's another thing, you probably need a car. In an urban park you can vanish back into the city from multiple exit points. 3. Crimes of opportunity. Most muggings aren't planned out far in advance. Driving to a hiking spot and patiently waiting isn't the psychological place typical criminals are operating from. Serial killers, maybe... and sometimes those killings do happen in secluded hiking areas.

prawn 2y ago
I'd guess that the sort of people incidentally mugging others can't afford a car and so would generally be within walking distance of their home/haunts. Probably also not the sort to put in extra effort walking trails or chancing a long walk in case they found someone. I've travelled and hiked in the US a lot. In outdoor tourism spots away from cities, I think the main threat for opportunistic thefts would be 20-30yo foreign tourists (shoestring travelling Europeans, South Americans, etc). Cities would be completely different.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  In outdoor tourism spots, the obvious place to commit crime is not the trail but the parking lot. Near me, sometimes people report smash and grabs through car windows at trailheads.

xboxnolifes 2y ago

I'm assuming you live in a less populated area, which would also (on average) mean fewer criminals. Lower usage in high density vs lower usage in low density.

brudgers 2y ago

Typically the built environment is going to be a better place to find action for ne’er do wells looking for action. Not being seen doesn’t matter much without opportunity. To put it another way, hundreds of miles of forest trails sounds like a lot of work.

notatoad 2y ago

it's not the parent commenter's theory, it's a well established architectural and urban planning theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park but i'd assume that the main difference is that the hundreds of miles of trails and national forest behind your house doesn't have a residential tower stuck in the middle of it.

tomatotomato37 2y ago
Wow, some of the complexes in those pictures look a lot like the cities I create when I'm playing Workers & Resources; if I didn't know any better I would have thought they were taken in the former Soviet bloc. I wonder how they managed to make it work where the West didn't.
- njarboe 2y ago
  Soviet bloc told people where to live. Didn't work in the long run as the USSR collapse eventually.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Western academia got pumped chock full of former soviet bloc professionals after the walls fell so a generation of urban planners and other professionals spent their education hearing a fair bit about that kind of construction and planning.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Details matter and the Soviet examples must have got some details right that matter. The question for the reader is then what? (one answer already given is Soviets didn't give residents a choice - I have no idea if this is right or not)
  - notatoad 2y ago
    the fact that they kept building them doesn't really mean it worked any better. the answer might be that it had all the same problems, they just cared less about solving those problems. the problem with towers in the park is isolation from services - in a society where services are more scarce to begin with, that's going to be less of a difference than other forms of planning. but afaik the difference between "commieblocks" and towers in the park is that there was a lot less park per commieblock. you had more buildings clustered tighter together than the prototypical western towers in the park development.

Aurornis 2y ago

It takes preparation, resources, a vehicle, travel to the trailhead, motivation, effort, and miles of walking to get into trails in a national forest. Potential victims on a trail aren’t carrying many valuables because they’re out hiking. A city park is within walking distance, requires no vehicle to get to, can be visited on a whim, and potential victims are more likely carrying valuables (jewelry, electronics, nice handbags). Criminals can visit the park, commit a crime, and disappear back into the dense city on a whim, without planning or preparing. Most crimes in this context are crimes of convenience. Hiking long trails is not convenient.

dv_dt 2y ago
If criminals can get there why not the non-skyscraper city residents? And why would criminals displace them?
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  A lot of towers in the park are located in places where the park is actually private property, so they are built to discourage through traffic or visitors that might help to keep it safe. The other thing is that people visit their local, convenient parks unless there is a really good reason to travel far for one; and if everyone has their tower in a park, then why would they go to anyone else’s?
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> potential victims are more likely carrying valuables (jewelry, electronics, nice handbags) Back when I was a daily hiker, I would have been carry seriously expensive gear. A few thousand dollars at least. Way more expensive than I would have walking around town. It would have been work to track me down in the forest though. As one of the other commenters pointed out, in a national forest the crime occurs as car clouting at the trailhead. I would leave my car unlocked, and depending on weather, a window rolled down. The parent poster must live next to a different national forest than the ones I hiked at, if you hiked at a popular trail it was completely normal to get back to the trailhead and see cars with their windows busted out.