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I love El Distrito so much, but a murder rate three-to-four times that of Baltimore is horrifying.
Hats off to Sao Paulo, by the way. But a lot of its crime is more like burglary, theft, etc., rather than murder. It's probably much, much safer to live in Chicago or Baltimore than in Sao Paulo, despite somewhat comparable murder rates.
Homicides are down in that area too though from their very high early 90s levels. People also forget that Boston, which had 38 homicides last year, had 150 in 1990, with huge reductions in still ungentrified Roxbury and Mattapan. There's economic opportunity in these cities, as well as NY and LA, that doesn't exist in St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, etc.
I'd also say gentrification reduces homicide, but doesn't eliminate it. The zero homicide line in DC and Boston hasn't moved much in the last 25 years. North and west of Tremont St. and Huntington Ave in Boston, and west of 16th St + Downtown in DC. Columbia Heights is ground zero for DC gentrification, but it's nowhere near homicide free like Georgetown. Same as south of Washington St/South End Boston, it's not the Back Bay, and even Manhattan north of 110th St.
Also find it interesting that some of the worst homicide spots in gentrifying cities cluster so close to city limits. Hunter's Point in SF, Mattapan/Boston, SE DC near the Maryland line, Eastern Brooklyn/Queens near the Nassau County line, South LA, East Oakland near the San Leandro line. It's almost like homicide reduction pushes out from the center, and pushes up against the edges of the city. While in less gentrified cities like St. Louis and Baltimore, its more spread out over a larger area.
These are really interesting points. American cities really are being kind of Europeanized, where the urban cores are becoming hyper-bourgeois preserves of the uber-wealthy, while things become distinctly mixed as you move outwards. Think of Paris, with unimagineably privey urban living, and a suburban ring split between slums and posh subdivisions.
Politico had a story on Atlanta some years ago lamenting what's happening there. The entire metro, especially infrastructurally, was constructed to give a buffer of safety to rich whites in the (particularly northern) suburbs. No mass transit, no subsidized housing, etc. But now that urban Fulton County is gentrifying so quickly, it's pushing the poor black people into the cheaper suburbs--but without adequate housing and infrastructure to support them. A lot of people are living in forested medians in the interstate. It's horrifyingly regressive and absolutely contradicts the bizarre progressive image that Atlanta has made for itself.
But obviously similar trends are happening all over the place. I grew up in an upper-middle class Denver suburb that is now lower-middle class. My elementary school was snooty when I went there but is now Title I. Cities sometimes respond by offering a lot of programs for the poor, which is great, but then middle class buyers get stuck in the donut hole with a tax bill to help the poor and a crazy COL to help the rich and nobody to help them. The solution probably does lie in the City Data doomsday scenario-- a Bernie-esque economic transformation that blows up the size of government to aid the poor and middle class, even though it would come at a serious expense to the bourgeois urbanites who have been doing so well for so long at every else's expense.
A little out of date, but shows how in gentrifying LA, the distribution of homicide didn't change much among neighborhoods, but the rate fell dramatically across the city, with the worst spots near the southern city limits.
Philly 25
Baltimore 16
DC 9
St. Louis 8
LA 7
NYC 5
SF 2
Oakland 1
Boston 1
Philly is more than double last year's YTD total. DC, LA, and NY are about 30% lower.
Where is Baltimore relative to last year?
Also, after starting the year with sp much violence, St. Louis has apparently turned into Pleasantville.
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