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I heard that there actually once was (not sure if true anymore after gentrification) a very very dangerous ghetto block of Washington DC only a few blocks from the very safe and elegant white house. Also, I heard that the area one block from Yale is one of the most dangerous in the country.
Just wondering,
Does anyone know of:
1. Any other examples of very dangerous ghetto blocks right next to elite, safe, tourist, historical, or business areas?
2. If so, what keeps the elite, historical, or tourist block safe?
I used to live in New Haven. The bad parts of New Haven are indeed pretty bad, but I wouldn't say they are the worst in the country. They basically do start up a block away from campus to the west however. Dwight is more or less the dividing line between the mostly White/Asian blocks that Yalies live on and the mostly Black/Latino low income blocks. The dividing line is even starker between Yale and Dixwell, which is the neighborhood to the north of Yale's campus. There's basically no semi-gentrified, student-dominated blocks in that direction. A lot of this is just because there's other neighborhoods really close to Yale (East Rock, and to a lesser extent Wooster Square) where Yale students (and faculty) have tended to congregate instead.
San Francisco's Tenderloin (the city's skid row) is very close to both Union Square, the city's main shopping district, and Nob Hill, a high-end residential neighborhood. Its very easy --as I can attest from personal experience--to end up in the Tenderloin very quickly if you don't know the city well. It is not a pleasant place to be on a warm summer night.
San Francisco's Tenderloin (the city's skid row) is very close to both Union Square, the city's main shopping district, and Nob Hill, a high-end residential neighborhood. Its very easy --as I can attest from personal experience--to end up in the Tenderloin very quickly if you don't know the city well. It is not a pleasant place to be on a warm summer night.
This is the example I was thinking of. Two stops of the bus and it's completely different scene.
LA City's skid row is very similar to the Tenderloin. Big difference is LA's skid row is a massive area and the area's surrounding it are gentrifying slowly with more and more hip and chic businesses in these historic buildings which are renovating one by one.
Also the area surrounding the University of Southern California/Expo Park Museums/LA Memorial Coliseum are major tourist/sporting/university venues with many dangerous/high crime areas but feels very safe within the grounds.
Chicago's near west side is quite violent, and within blocks of the Loop business district as well as rapidly gentrifying areas. I always used the United Center (where the Bulls/Blackhawks play) as the boundary for the no-go zone.
Nothing I can think of in NYC really, except for maybe Avenue D in Alphabet City which is pretty centrally located in my opinion just by being in Lower Manhattan.
I wouldn't say it's particularly dangerous, but it's pretty ghetto still lol.
It used to be almost every major city had a dangerous hood right outside its downtown/business area, but gentrification has killed much of that. One area that probably fits your criteria is the neighborhood just west of Rutgers and University Hospital in Newark.
Perhaps the high 90s/lower 100s as the Upper East Side quickly transitions into Spanish Harlem? Like many NYC hoods, more so in the past then now. Other examples could be Clinton Hill next to Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn (see above), and even the Columbia University area with the projects of Manhattanville and Harlem nearby, though of course less drastic than in the past.
For Philadelphia, it goes pretty quickly from high end in the Museum-Parkway district to just a few blocks north into the vast North Philly ghetto. Just north/west of the University District is a close second.
But I'd give Baltimore the nod for the most drastic and severe changes. The most severe IMO is in Mount Vernon/Belvedere north of downtown, where Calvert street consists of upper-middle class professionals, but cross over the JFX (I-83) and you run into a scene out of the Wire along with the massive city Jail and the infamous mix of rowhouses which are either boarded, cemented covered, missing its windows, vacant lots, or the lone residence or two on the same block. Just Streetview the 1100 blocks of North Calvert and Barclay (2 blocks east) and you'll see what I mean (keep in mind that most of the homes on the Barclay St. block have been demolished, but the Street View images are from 2009, showing how crooked the block once looked). Bolton Hill to Madison Park/Upton is just about as dramatic to, comparing the statley rowhouses and apartments of Eutaw Place to the lower class placs of McCulloh St. and Druid Hill Avenue just two-three blocks west, with the numerous vacant and boarded home lots of Division Street just one more block west. Butcher's Hill/Patterson Park on the east side also goes downhill pretty quickly as you head north. I wouldn't call these more affluent neighborhoods elite by NYC standards, but by Baltimore standards, they are quite well-off compared to what's nearby.
Washington, DC used to be this prior to the city's gentrification and IMO the contrast was greatest between Capitol Hill and and the now-gentrified H Street Corridor to its north and Lincoln Park to its east along with near Southeast, but that's all safely separated by a river. The area east of 16th Street north of downtown used to be this to an extent, but it never got as bad as what Baltimore was in terms of decay and wasn't quite as dangerous as Southeast.
Last edited by Borntoolate85; 10-27-2016 at 05:48 AM..
The area just north of the Charleston historic district. Goes from million dollar rowhouses to complete ghetto in just a few blocks.
Also, Coconut Grove. Walked right into a ghetto just a couple blocks from the upscale shopping area in Miami.
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