Is East Garfield Park between Sacramento and Kedzie a bad area? (Chicago: foreclose, crime rate)

[aragx6]

You do know that using 100,000 as a multiplier is a very common way of controlling for population differences and makes perfect sense right?

[Actual Resident]

Yeah sure I do. It's just that I think it skews the figures because EGP is less dense than many of the other neighborhoods represented by his 2006 map.

[surlycue]

Originally Posted by Actual Resident

Yeah sure I do. It's just that I think it skews the figures because EGP is less dense than many of the other neighborhoods represented by his 2006 map.

You poor thing, the fact that it's less dense makes it even worse really. 100K is the population number used by nearly all of the city's official stats. Lookout didn't just pull that out of thin air to make his point.

[Intergalactic]

[quote=Actual Resident;9120338]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

In 2006, the East Garfield Park Community Area had 12 murders, but this is for a population of only 20,881 people! That's a rate of 57.5 murders per 100,000 residents.quote]

Oh my God! Your're right! Let's see...

That's 574 murders per 1,000,000 residents!
That's 57,468 murders per 100,000,000 residents!

Oh my God! You can use a calculator!

How about this: in one year, 1 out of every 1,740 people there met their end murdered.

Put another way, if a person spend their whole life in the area, by age 71 four percent (1 in 25) of the people they knew from the neighborhood would have been murdered.

[surlycue]

^^that is terrifying.

[Actual Resident]

Maybe you're all right. Maybe I should ignore my real life experiences walking down the streets here for the last six years. Instead I should start listening to people spouting off on the internet. The louder and angrier they are, the smarter too!

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Actual Resident

Maybe you're all right. Maybe I should ignore my real life experiences walking down the streets here for the last six years. Instead I should start listening to people spouting off on the internet. The louder and angrier they are, the smarter too!

I love the completely self-absorbed view of "if nothing happens to me, then there must be nothing wrong with this neighborhood" as if all the crappy things that happen to all the other people at a frequency completely out of proportion to that of most other neighborhoods in the city, much less the nation, just don't matter. Ah well, it's someone else and not you getting murdered, shot and robbed, so who cares, right? This degree of oblivion and self-absorption must make it easier to live in a neighborhood like EGP.

The neighborhood I live in is no Naperville either. Yet I deliberately chose to live here and I like it for what it is. You seem to like your neighborhood too, and that's fine. But unlike you, I don't deny what my neighborhood is and I don't deny its problems and its limitations -- even if nothing has happened to me.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Actual Resident

The thing about your 11+k number of crimes indexed for 100k residents caught my attention. That is because EGP is not a very densly populated area. There are only around 20k residents in EGP. This means that you can divide your number roughly by five to find the actual number of crimes for 2006.

You posted a map on another thread that shows EGP in red. Here's the link (in case you need a reminder).

//www.city-data.com/forum/chica...orth-risk.html

This map is also indexed for 100k residents. EGP has 20k residents. Humboldt has +100k residents. HP is designated yellow 1500-2000. EGP is red which is 4000+. Since we don't know what that number actually is, lets use your other number: 11,479. Divide that by five and we have the actual number of crimes: 2295. Since HP has around 100k residents we don't have to adjust. So, if the map was shaded (with the same neighborhood borders) by actual number of crimes, then HP and EGP would be comparable.

We can parse the statistics all day long, but I think you might admit that using the 11k number is misleading at the very least.

How the **** is it misleading? You've heard of this thing called a "crime rate", right? It's ALWAYS done adjusted for population. Density is completely irrelevant when trying to determine your chances of being a victim of crime.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by NearWestSider

I suppose. After all, why would anyone EVER want to leave Naperville North. Especially when, from the convenience of your easy chair, you can read crime statistics on a web site and make disparaging comments on a message board?

You probably won't, but seriously should, go down there, take a look, get a full grasp of the scope, and draw your own conclusions. You live in Chicago. Its not that far, and it really is a pleasant bike ride.

I am not saying you should move your family there, nor will you find the boulevards looking like Lincoln Park.

But as an architect, you should, at the very least, be able to acknowledge that SOME people (who, I should add, probably have more of a comittment to this city than you, I, and all the snooty-toots on this message board combined) are doing some VERY important historic preservation in that part of the world. I would also hope that you would realize that characterizing these restored areas as "dangerous ghettos" is not only false, it is a trivialization of some very good and very hard work.

FYI, I've been doing the exact bike ride I recommended once a week for the last six weeks (we have a project going on nearby). My reaction was "wow, I'd heard about EGP, but didn't know THIS MUCH was going on". I was quite impressed, and extremely happy to see it, expecially when you contrast what is happening there to what is happening on Chicago and Augusta, just a little ways to the North.

Your tone is so goddamned patronizing I don't know what to say to you. You make so many assumptions that are just false. I've spent time in East Garfield Park. A good friend of mine actually has three rental properties there. I do realize that efforts have been made to gentrify or revitalize the area. But you and a few others have your head in the sand about the current reality ON THE GROUND in East Garfield Park. I'd love to see the neighborhood improve as much as anyone, but if a person is reading this wanting to know what the neighborhood is like, they need to know that it is a CRIME INFESTED HELL HOLE. And the developers who built condos there were taking a big risk--or at least the suckers, er, buyers were. Most of us posting here have been around long enough to see violent gang-ridden neighborhoods turn around in a matter of years, but the engine of the empty-nester/childless professional gentrification is running out of steam. And I don't see East Garfield Park becoming a nice, liveable neighborhood in the next decade. It just has too far to go. Pilsen is a safer bet. Hell, most of the South Side between the Loop and Hyde Park is a safer bet in my mind.

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

...And I don't see East Garfield Park becoming a nice, liveable neighborhood in the next decade. It just has too far to go. Pilsen is a safer bet. Hell, most of the South Side between the Loop and Hyde Park is a safer bet in my mind.

This should be the last word.