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Crime stats per 1000 residents from a big picture standpoint (like city-wide for instance), are pretty much completely worthless. There are entire zip codes in places like Oakland or St Louis that are as safe as Jersey City or Virginia Beach (suitable comparisons). Comparing hundreds or thousands of square miles against one another does nothing for real-life scenarios where one lives and works generally in somewhat close proximity to one another.
This is like the 60 largest cities plus some suburbs ranked by crime rate.
This is admittedly true in one sense, given in a lot of Sun Belt states wide swathes of suburbs incorporate as a single "city." The thing is, where do you draw the line? Most people would agree that Mesa, Arizona isn't a "real city" even though it has 465,000 people. But what about cities which have a CBD, but are suburban over the vast majority of their land area? Should they count?
Overall, this list is somewhat surprising to me, because I'm used to looking at lists which rank violent crime, not all crime. There's a lot of cities which rank pretty low on violent crime but high on property crime, and vice versa.
I am absolutely shocked Jersey City ranks so highly by this measure, being even safer than NYC. I knew it was improving, but I thought the Greenville area to the south was still pretty dangerous.
This is admittedly true in one sense, given in a lot of Sun Belt states wide swathes of suburbs incorporate as a single "city." The thing is, where do you draw the line? Most people would agree that Mesa, Arizona isn't a "real city" even though it has 465,000 people. But what about cities which have a CBD, but are suburban over the vast majority of their land area? Should they count?
Overall, this list is somewhat surprising to me, because I'm used to looking at lists which rank violent crime, not all crime. There's a lot of cities which rank pretty low on violent crime but high on property crime, and vice versa.
I am absolutely shocked Jersey City ranks so highly by this measure, being even safer than NYC. I knew it was improving, but I thought the Greenville area to the south was still pretty dangerous.
Ironically enough Mesa does have a small CBD as a suburb. It doesn't resemble a Bellvue or even a Southfield for that matter but it's there. The light rail runs through it and they are even experiencing "infill". It's the anchor of the east valley, and even has some "bad neighborhoods". I actually would be less averse to it being on this list, vs some of the sterile Dallas/LA suburbs.
This is admittedly true in one sense, given in a lot of Sun Belt states wide swathes of suburbs incorporate as a single "city." The thing is, where do you draw the line? Most people would agree that Mesa, Arizona isn't a "real city" even though it has 465,000 people. But what about cities which have a CBD, but are suburban over the vast majority of their land area? Should they count?
Overall, this list is somewhat surprising to me, because I'm used to looking at lists which rank violent crime, not all crime. There's a lot of cities which rank pretty low on violent crime but high on property crime, and vice versa.
I am absolutely shocked Jersey City ranks so highly by this measure, being even safer than NYC. I knew it was improving, but I thought the Greenville area to the south was still pretty dangerous.
I'm sure that most of the truly urban areas have rough areas, but like you stated, it may be a matter of overall crime within that city.
However, I agree with kyle, as there are areas within the lower ranked cities that are fine. So, looking at areas within a city is the key.
Ironically enough Mesa does have a small CBD as a suburb. It doesn't resemble a Bellvue or even a Southfield for that matter but it's there. The light rail runs through it and they are even experiencing "infill". It's the anchor of the east valley, and even has some "bad neighborhoods". I actually would be less averse to it being on this list, vs some of the sterile Dallas/LA suburbs.
I was using Mesa as the example as it's the largest city on the list which most people would agree functions as a suburb of a larger core city. It admittedly has a more built up core than say Arlington, TX, but it's not like it has much height or density - just a strip of walkable commercial storefronts, IIRC.
It's interesting how San Francisco always ranks high on these lists but is not known for crime.
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