3 ms·

> In practice I find most upper-middle-class-and-wealthier Americans just don't walk anywhere, especially not after dark. We're actually in the midst of an urb

by ef4 13y ago

> In practice I find most upper-middle-class-and-wealthier Americans just don't walk anywhere, especially not after dark. We're actually in the midst of an urban renaissance. Being able to walk everywhere is one of the perks of being wealthy in America. Especially among people under 40. This is why there's so much angst over "gentrification": walkable neighborhoods are being rapidly bought up by the relatively wealthy. And because America is saddled with so much terrible sprawl, there are only so many walkable neighborhoods to go around -- hence skyrocketing real estate prices. Along with gentrification comes lower crime. In fact there's no longer any overall correlation between crime and density in America. Crime in the cities (taken in aggregate) has fallen to the point where there's no longer any statistical difference between urban and suburan/rural crime rates. Lots of people don't believe that, but that's just because they hold out-of-date beliefs, which they maintain through confirmation bias.

mjn 13y ago
Where are these mythical cities where you can walk everywhere, though? I've lived most of my life in the U.S. (29 years), and I still spend about 2 months a year there (I moved abroad in 2011). But few people anywhere I've lived, or where I currently visit, will walk places, especially solo after dark (especially women, it seems). And the people who do are extremely cautious, absurdly so from a Danish perspective: the idea that a young woman aged ~20 could bike home drunk at 4am on a Saturday night by herself seems reckless to Americans, but entirely normal to Danes, because Copenhagen is safe in a way that no American city is. In the U.S. in my experience, most people are very cautious late at night in urban areas. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but it's a very noticeable cultural difference. I could be looking in the wrong places, I'll admit. I spend most of my time in the U.S. in Houston and Atlanta, where I have friends and relatives, secondarily in L.A. and S.F. Maybe those are bad choices, despite being some of the most economically booming cities in the country? I could imagine much of Manhattan is safe these days, so that's one possibility. Is there anywhere else? Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco certainly don't lend themselves to random walks at night; people tend to carefully delineate which areas they'll walk in at night, if at all. Much of NYC is still sketchy; parts of Brooklyn are safe but you have to be knowledgeable about which ones. My brother lives in the Mission in S.F., and while it is sort of safe nowadays, past midnight walking safely really depends on what street you're on, and you don't exactly just take the shortest path on Google Maps to get somewhere else in S.F., especially not if it takes you through the Tenderloin. I mean actually safe, fwiw, not just relatively safe: as in, you will definitely not be mugged, even walking solo at night. That's to me what it means to live in a safe city. A large proportion of the people I know who walk in an American city have been mugged at least once (off the top of my head, one person in Brooklyn, one in Atlanta, one in San Francisco, three in Los Angeles, one in Houston, I lost track of how many in Chicago). Whereas if you're mugged in Copenhagen, it's so rare that you'll make the newspapers— especially if you're mugged by someone carrying a gun, which will produce front-page headlines and a multi-week police investigation trying to figure out how this person could've gotten a gun. Overall, I just feel much safer here, despite being born and raised in the U.S. and feeling more "at home" in the U.S. If you mean that there exist small upper-class walkable neighborhoods in the U.S., sure: that's also true of Istanbul. But are there walkable cities?

by ef4 13y ago

mjn 13y ago

Where are these mythical cities where you can walk everywhere, though? I've lived most of my life in the U.S. (29 years), and I still spend about 2 months a year there (I moved abroad in 2011). But few people anywhere I've lived, or where I currently visit, will walk places, especially solo after dark (especially women, it seems). And the people who do are extremely cautious, absurdly so from a Danish perspective: the idea that a young woman aged ~20 could bike home drunk at 4am on a Saturday night by herself seems reckless to Americans, but entirely normal to Danes, because Copenhagen is safe in a way that no American city is. In the U.S. in my experience, most people are very cautious late at night in urban areas. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but it's a very noticeable cultural difference. I could be looking in the wrong places, I'll admit. I spend most of my time in the U.S. in Houston and Atlanta, where I have friends and relatives, secondarily in L.A. and S.F. Maybe those are bad choices, despite being some of the most economically booming cities in the country? I could imagine much of Manhattan is safe these days, so that's one possibility. Is there anywhere else? Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco certainly don't lend themselves to random walks at night; people tend to carefully delineate which areas they'll walk in at night, if at all. Much of NYC is still sketchy; parts of Brooklyn are safe but you have to be knowledgeable about which ones. My brother lives in the Mission in S.F., and while it is sort of safe nowadays, past midnight walking safely really depends on what street you're on, and you don't exactly just take the shortest path on Google Maps to get somewhere else in S.F., especially not if it takes you through the Tenderloin. I mean actually safe, fwiw, not just relatively safe: as in, you will definitely not be mugged, even walking solo at night. That's to me what it means to live in a safe city. A large proportion of the people I know who walk in an American city have been mugged at least once (off the top of my head, one person in Brooklyn, one in Atlanta, one in San Francisco, three in Los Angeles, one in Houston, I lost track of how many in Chicago). Whereas if you're mugged in Copenhagen, it's so rare that you'll make the newspapers— especially if you're mugged by someone carrying a gun, which will produce front-page headlines and a multi-week police investigation trying to figure out how this person could've gotten a gun. Overall, I just feel much safer here, despite being born and raised in the U.S. and feeling more "at home" in the U.S. If you mean that there exist small upper-class walkable neighborhoods in the U.S., sure: that's also true of Istanbul. But are there walkable cities?