Small-town Iowa girl seeks small town in Illinois (Chicago, Peoria: relocating, real estate)

[brightmidnight]

Originally Posted by Drover

Sorry, but you don't get to say "the crime rate is actually lower" by hypothetically re-drawing the borders. As it stands, St. Louis proper has a much higher crime rate than Chicago proper. PERIOD. The statistics don't lie on this issue. If we were to play your game, we could also say, "well, Chicago's crime rate would be lower if it got to annex a bunch of suburbs all around it. More than 6 million people live in the suburbs outside the city and including them in the study would greatly dilute the overall crime rate." Well, Chicago doesn't get to do that either, and hasn't done so for decades. If you want to compare crime stats for the respective metropolitan areas, fine, let's do that. Then maybe St. Louis metro's crime rate is lower than the Chicago metro's crime rate. But I doubt it; I doubt either is higher or lower than the other by more than an insignificant margin.

Additionally, your anecdotes don't equal data. What the hell does "approached threateningly" even mean? Does that mean some scary-looking colored person walked toward you? If you were "approached threateningly" without anything actually happening to you, then just how "threatening" were these approaches?

I've not only visited Chicago, but lived here for YEARS without ever having a problem beyond having some bunglick key my car. But I've had that happen twice out in the suburbs too. If your friends won't come into Chicago because of all the muggings, then they're ninnies and they need to get a grip. Millions live here without ever getting mugged.

Speaking of which...

Robberies in Chicago, 2005: 551 per 100,000
Robberies in St. Louis, 2005: 851 per 100,000

Tell me again which city you're more scared to visit?

Chicago, definitely. You look at a metro area compared to metro areas, and Chicago's rates are much higher than St. Louis'. St. Louis was affected in these rankings because of a high larceny theft rate, mostly consisting of stealing license plates.

I've been in St. Louis for YEARS without ever having anything happen. I'm not a racist and I know when I'm approached threateningly. It happened to me in London with a crazy (white) French guy, and it happened to happen to me in Chicago with a few different people.

If you don't know that statistics can lie, you've obviously never taken a stats class.

Chicago, actually, is left out of those surveys altogether (which the surveys don't tell you). Here is this that is in Chicago's Wikipedia article.

"The FBI often does not accept crime statistics submitted by the Chicago Police Department, which tallies data differently than other cities. The police record all criminal sexual assaults as opposed to only rape as with other police departments. Aggravated battery is counted along with the standard category of aggravated assault. As a result, Chicago is often omitted from studies like Morgan Quitno's annual "Safest/Most Dangerous City" survey."

So, Chicago wasn't even included in that study. Neither was New Orleans or other cities that didn't report their statistics.

Another study that looks at factors such as transient populations and things beyond a city's control sees Chicago stay virtually the same (7th to 8th) and St. Louis' rate fall from 6th to 12th.
http://www.cjgsu.net/initiatives/Hom...2003-08-03.htm

Let's limit Chicago to the 61 square miles of actual downtown Chi and we'll see how the rates stack up. Chicago gets to include outliers and St. Louis does not. I stand by what I said. In metropolitan areas, St. Louis is 129th out of 344 metropolitan areas. Let's see crime rates not spread over the five boroughs of Manhattan and let's see what happens to them in any 61 square mile area, when they can't be averaged out over any other set of people. You include University City, Clayton, Richmond Heights, and Ladue in the rankings and we'll see where St. Louis stands. If St. Louis wasn't limited by law to not annex, it would have annexed those areas long ago like any other city does.

Furthermore, the very author of the study doesn't even say it's accurate!

""I am stunned if there is a criminologist out there who will support this." Those are the words of Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno Press, and very author of the study, as reported Tuesday, Oct. 31, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, regarding his company's annual rankings of crime rates in the U.S."
http://record.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/8214.html

For a further discussion of how crime stats can be misleading check out this thread:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/north...isleading.html

[Drover]

Well, tell you what. You go ahead and continue to believe what you want and make up theoretical new boundries to support your claim if you want. Seems nothing's going to stop you, including the actual facts. This isn't what this thread is about anyway, so I'm done with this discussion.

[brightmidnight]

Stats do not equal facts. Anyone who's taken the most elementary stats class knows that they can be manipulated to show something different than the real truth.

When the author of the study says a criminologist can't trust it, numerous cities aren't reported in it, and a study that tracks transients (who are not residents of the area so don't count into the per capita population) and sees the actual crime rate decrease to a much lower rate than Chicago's because of that... and you still say that these are not facts, I've offered up all I can.

I'm done with this discussion as well. I've made my point.

[KSBN77]

wow, did you not know that St. Louis is Americas MOST DANGEROUS city? You're crazy if you think that place is safe.

[KSBN77]

http://www.morganquitno.com/safecity.htm
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/rea...t_worst/2.html
Read those and shut up. Chicago is safer

[Dolly]

The lower half of the state would have more in the way of actually small towns, those in the under 10 thousand people category. Salem Illinois is a nice clean community of 8000 with a great local cofee shop with tons of atmosphere. The only problem is, there are a definate lack of jobs there so unless you have a way of earning an income long distance, this may be a problem. That is why we left the area, even though I was born and raised there. The other issue that has become problematic for Illinois and the lower part of the state in general is that of the electric rates. AmerenIP and ComEd, are main power suppliers for the state, have just came out from under a 10 year rate freeze by the state and are making up for it. Our electric bills have doubled and tripled in some parts of Illinois. In addition to high heating bills, as well as the high gas prices, it has made it much more difficult to make ends meet here. These are all things you should check out before you make a decision to move. A charming little town might seem very appealing but the "hidden" costs of living there might make it difficult to survive

[brightmidnight]

Read my above posts on the reasoning. St. Louis is in no way America's most dangerous city. The author of the study said no criminologist would trust its reasoning, and Chicago's data wasn't submitted.

A large percentage of St. Louis' crime is apparently license plate thefts, not dangerous person-to-person crimes.

[mikea54]

Vandalia, Red Bud, Waterloo, Chester.These are small towns with alot of history. Other small and intesting towns surround these. This is the South Eastern and South Central area of Illinois. I named these towns, because of thier size, beautiful and historic homes, and life pace of good small towns. The plus is that all of these towns are within an hours drive to the big city "St. Louis". Another option, you wrote of being from a college town, would be in Southern Illinois, " Carbondale" and it's surrounding towns. Please get on the Illinois web site and research Illinois from Interstate 70 on down to Anna. Cant go wrong, and good luck in your choice.

[NannyinHE]

Johnsburg is where I grew up and it was a quiet town (5600 or so) and if you want REALLY quiet try out in DeKalb County. NIU is out there but there is a lot of land out there with farms and such outside of the campus yet still relatively close to civilization.

[rhaspen]

I would say anything east of Route 47 is not what you are looking for. I agree with some of the others, Galena is what you are looking for. I myself liked Oregon, IL. However, I was only there for a day. Good luck in finding what you are looking for. Let us know where you end up!
RH
Oswego, IL