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I've met people like this in Reno (they won't go near the downtown, at least). Haven't seen it in Seattle yet.
I’m surprised to hear that about Reno, but in general this is a much less common phenomenon in the Western US. San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Denver, even central Los Angeles - suburbanites aren’t scared to go into these cities at all. There are usually certain neighborhoods people may try to avoid but they typically make up a very small portion of the city overall. Larger swaths of secondary cities like Oakland, Tacoma, or Aurora are often more likely to be avoided than the main cities.
Amazingly, though increasingly less so, in the almost 30 years I have lived in San Diego there have always been suburbanites who to this day shudder a bit at the mere thought of crossing I8 (the East/west freeway just north of downtown. Which is just freaking hilarious, the city, especially downtown, is exceedingly safe as in the safest big city in the country. We on the other hand breath a sigh of relief when we cruise on back into the compact downtown lights at night which we live just on its edge coming back from our sleepy, mostly boring and often having higher crime rates suburbs of our friend’s homes. And I (jokingly) exclaim “why would you ever go up there?!” meaning north of the 8. Haha
Having experienced and thoroughly enjoyed the downtowns of Baltimore, Philly, KC, Chicago, St. Louis etc., it would always be the smaller outlying cities that I would generally be wary of. It would similarly be a rare event that I would deign to be in just about any those ‘burbs unless I were pity visiting a particular friend. I am glad that there are all these scaredy-cats in the ‘burbs who don’t bore us with their presence in the cities, they are much better with the urbanites that inhabit them and the city junkies like myself who embrace them.
I’m surprised to hear that about Reno, but in general this is a much less common phenomenon in the Western US. San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Denver, even central Los Angeles - suburbanites aren’t scared to go into these cities at all. There are usually certain neighborhoods people may try to avoid but they typically make up a very small portion of the city overall. Larger swaths of secondary cities like Oakland, Tacoma, or Aurora are often more likely to be avoided than the main cities.
Well, Reno hasn't yet gotten the way a lot of coastal cities have where the central city is really desirable and expensive and the far-out suburbs are where poorer people and minorities live. I think the gaudy casinos downtown and abundant supply of developable land at the fringes will probably keep it this way for at least the next couple decades.
The downtown area is still seen by people living in the suburban areas as largely trashy and filled with homeless people, drug addicts, creepy weirdos, and petty crime.
The gap is much wider. The median household income is in the $30k-$39k range for the cities like Lawrence, Springfield, New Bedford, and Fall River. The adjacent suburb typically has at least double the household income. Springfield-Longmeadow is more than triple. Lawrence-Andover is quadruple.
Harrisburg, PA area. Many people who live outside of the city, especially if they are in Cumberland County (aka West shore) across the Susquehanna river from Harrisburg, think it is all ghetto and avoid it. Not all of the city is like that. I miss the Passage to India restaurant I used to eat at sometimes when I lived in the area. The food was good and the people working there were nice.
The gap is much wider. The median household income is in the $30k-$39k range for the cities like Lawrence, Springfield, New Bedford, and Fall River. The adjacent suburb typically has at least double the household income. Springfield-Longmeadow is more than triple. Lawrence-Andover is quadruple.
No I mean like people from Malden will say Medford is full of spoiled rich kids and Medford people talk like Malden is absolute garbage.
The way people from Andover talk about Tewksbury and Lowell is basically the same. I’ve heard people from Lexington talk about Winchester a “ghetto”.
Most of it is basically in jest I really don?t think anyone is really afraid of any town though.
Oh, another thread about pearl clutching suburbanites hunkering down in their neighborhoods, only venturing out to Target or Applebees or some sort of team sports get together - driving everywhere in their locked SUVs and making sure they get home before dark.
Even Detroit is somewhat nuanced in this context. Suburbanites will avoid Detroit neighborhoods like the plague, but downtown and Midtown Detroit are pretty much filled with Suburbanites that come play. Over the last 20 years the people in Oakland County have rediscovered how "cool" downtown is. The streets in Detroit's core are full of people walking around who don't match the demography of Detroit's resident base.
Agreed.
If this would have been posted as a thread 5 years ago, I would have agreed with the premise, but these days......the majority of suburbanites talk about how great Detroit is and how much they like doing things in the city. Detroit isn't the "easy choice" for this topic these days.
People still avoid the areas that haven't been cleaned up, but Detroit isn't the same city is was a few years ago. People aren't "afraid" like they were in the past. These days, it's more about avoiding unsafe areas and learning what areas are safe, instead of believing that the whole city is unsafe and avoiding the city like it's a nuclear waste dump site. There are unsafe areas in any city........so that's not particularly weird or unusual. We are in a transitional period where suburbanites are relating to the city differently than they have in the past. There's a learning curve with any transition.
You'll still find people who are firmly in the anti-Detroit (nothing good will ever happen in the city) camp, but they are becoming fewer and rarer these days.
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