Are there any cities that don't really have really bad neighborhoods but lots of marginal, dumpy areas? (low crime, income)
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Seattle has no ghetto. The worst neighborhood is probably the Rainier Valley, which is gentrifying quite rapidly. There are low-income housing projects there, but they are laughably lux compared to the hoods in places like Baltimore or Philadelphia.
I feel like Columbus (OH) fits that description to some degree.
For example, Northland/the Morse Road corridor is a suburban style area that declined and now has a lot of section 8 apartments, sketchy motels and is home to significant Ethiopian and Somalian immigrant communities. Definitely not jarring to look at or particularly scary to drive through. lots of chain restaurants and strip mall style development and intact modest single-family homes.
Lol nah man, Columbus definitely has ghettos...the lower half of Cleveland Ave (South Linden) and East Main (Franklin Park) are probably still the worst.
Lol nah man, Columbus definitely has ghettos...the lower half of Cleveland Ave (South Linden) and East Main (Franklin Park) are probably still the worst.
I wasn't saying that Columbus has no "ghettos". Just that a significant portion of the city limits, like northland (and the suburbs of Whitehall & Reynoldsburg) fall into the "marginal/very dumpy" category.
The real "ghettos" of Columbus are South Linden, a lot of the Near East, the bottoms, Hilltop and parts of the southside.
Some New England cities might qualify. Worcester has some poor, somewhat rundown areas but not to stereotypical ghetto levels or obvious urban decay. Providence may or may not count as well, not sure. Cities like New Bedford and Fall River are rather poor but nothing really run-down or very high crime. Some smaller cities in Pennsylvania (esp NE) may count (Scranton, Allentown?) and perhaps upstate.
Boston doesn't really have run down areas but it has several sections have high violent crime, much worse than the city average. New York City today has extremely gritty areas but not really decay; but again has concentrated areas of violent crime.
I was thinking of something similar in terms of the first part of this post. In Upstate NY, small cities like Auburn, Rome, Watertown and perhaps a few others have parts that are like that, along with some pretty nice areas as well.
Minneapolis kinda qualifies. North Minneapolis is the worst area, I'm not familiar with it really, but its got a reputation, but its still better than bad areas of St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other northern cities. The Southside I would describe as "marginal and dumpy" particularly the Powderhorn area. I was staying there a week ago in this nice Victorian home. The house next to it looks like it was one beautiful but now, it looks very unkempt and there are cinderblocks all over the yard. The whole area is very crummy looking, around 2nd avenue and south of Lake Street. A bit sketchy at night but fine in the day. More marginal than terrible. If it got cleaned up more it'd look very nice.
My home city of Lansing, MI might qualify. There's a fairly high crime rate, and a lot of marginal areas, but hardly anything jumps out at me as a particularly bad area. Crime seems to be spread throughout the city.
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