Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The most dangerous area I've been to was North Philly and West Baltimore (got lost trying to get back on 95). As far the NYC projects debate, well there are some that are good and some that are bad, but I do agree that in almost every other city in the country, "good" and "projects" are never used in the same sentence. Any low-income housing development is going to have a high crime rate, period.
Wow at your blatant grouping of black and hispanic males as criminals. If you think they're the only criminals in American projects then you haven't been to California...
This is an understatement. Asians are much less ghettoized, as a whole, in cities on the East Coast, Mid-West and Down South. Why? Because California is the lowest entry point for many impoverished Asians from the third world; many hailing from uber-violent war-torn nations. Many of the worst, most violent and impoverished areas of CA cities from Long Beach to Fresno to San Francisco to Oakland are majority Asian. For example, the infamous Tenderloin in SF has a large Asian population. Mind you that the crime rate in the TL is as much 30 times higher than crime rate of SF as a whole. Many of the most notorious blocks in the Murder Dubs (formally known as the Rancho San Antonio district) in Oakland are over 50%+ Asian in residency.
In no certain order...
Illerton Village Projects across from Legion Field (Birmingham)
Orange Mound Tennessee (Memphis)
Rockefeller Park after dark (Cleveland Oh)
East 99&St Clair (Cleveland)
Mexico City
Several spots in Mia.
Although nothing bad happened besides a dude opening his trench coat and trying to sale me drugs, I felt VERY uncomfortable at the St. Louis bus station. I know that sounds crazy, but go there and you will see.
New Orleans. Urban males roaming around knocking cell phones out of women's hands and running off with them. A lot of crime goes unreported there but its the murder Capitol of the country.
I lived in Phoenix from 2005-2012 (moving out at the end of the year) and thought it was pretty dangerous. There was a murder everyday in the news. Whats expecially scary is that so many crimes in AZ are horrendous in nature. Example.....someone recently set five people on fire and then dismembered their parts!! AZ is the epitome of lunacy (I think its the desert heat and dryness). Phoenix is definately the Wild West.
I was in a minor car accident outside a gas station in Markham, Illinois, back around 2002. Markham is a south side suburb of Chicago, is about 10% White, and at that time literally had the highest crime rate of any city of any size in the USA (about 2600, nearly 10x the US average). The black guy who hit my car, was highly apologetic, admitted fault, and showed me his license and insurance card. It turned out that my damage only cost me about $100 to repair, so I never even charged it against his insurance. I can only imagine what his insurance rates are like in that zip code, even without a claim history.
So that was my experience in the most crime ridden dangerous place I've been. For reasons unfathomable, Markham's crime rate since then has fallen to pretty close to the national average. I guess being #1 gets some attention at City Hall.
The scariest-looking place Ive ever seen was Okeechobee, Florida, where every business had steel grilles over the windows including the motel. It looked so dicey, I didn't even stay there. But I looked up the crime rate there, and it is about the same as the town I live in now, and was lower than the peaceful North Florida town I was living in at the time. Camden, Alabama has a really scary look to it, too.
In 1968, when Detroit was burning, I had to fill up with gas at an inner-city Detroit gas station at about 2 a-m coming out of the tunnel from Canada, but it was routine and unremarkable.
Last edited by CowanStern; 06-05-2012 at 04:20 PM..
From my experience, all ghettos are more or less the same. They are neglected places populated primarily by low-income minorities; not necessarily just Blacks. California ghettos often look "nicer" because the mild weather in California does not result in the same wear and tear as it does on the East Coast and Midwest. California is also much younger than cities back east, like Baltimore, which is ancient by American standards. Some cities have more hoods than others (i.e. Detroit, Oakland, Baltimore etc.). But all ghettos struggle with the same problems of social disorganization, open drug dealing, homicides, gang activity, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty ect. Cohesively, ghettos often have an over-abundance of liquor stores and or convenience stores/corner stores that sell alcohol.
I was born in a ghetto area of San Francisco known as Lakeview. Although San Francisco does not have the national reputation of being a dangerous or ghetto city, SF definitely has many ghetto and rough areas. SF's ghetto areas are not advertised because San Francisco is the premier tourist city in North America and quite possibly, this side of the world. SF often ranks above NYC in being the number one tourist destination in America, so SF's ghetto areas are not talked about in the media at any length. My old neighborhood of Lakeview had the highest crime rates in the entire city when I was a kid in the early 90's. It was a very violent place to say the least. A huge percentage of the entire city's homicides were centered around a few Lakeview blocks in the late 80's through the early to mid 90's. When I was a kid, I knew Lakeview was bad. We couldn't walk down the street back then because it belonged to gang bangers, drug dealers, thugs, drug addicts and wild pitbulls. Y'know standard ghetto stuff. I never saw anything too crazy as a kid because we didn't have the freedom to explore the neighborhood. It was very literally a Boyz 'N The Hood type of existence of living in a seemingly quiet suburban-esque California environment with palm trees, single family homes and garages populated primarily by Black folks in a big city that was actually tremendously dangerous.
The mentality of people living in the ghetto is what makes it a dangerous place to be, not the visual blight. From growing up in a California ghetto but living on the East Coast right outside of the notorious ghetto city of Baltimore, I can accurately confirm this. Lakeview, San Francisco was just as bad as any hood in America. I hate to post a song on this side of the forum, especially one I have posted before, but Rap music definitely was the voice of the ghetto in the 90's. Especially in this case of raw independent Hip Hop that was sold hand-to-hand like crack cocaine without the aid of mainstream record labels or Walmart, Radio One, Clear Channel, BET or MTV. Ironically, this song was the launching board that jump started Rap mogul Master P's career which was the basis of New Orleans artists like Lil Wayne coming into mainstream prominence. Songs like this effectively evoke the extreme fear, desperation, violence and hopelessness people in my old neighborhood lived with on a daily basis.
Last edited by goldenchild08; 06-05-2012 at 05:28 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
