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Durham has higher crime but also much better restaurants than other cities and towns in this region. You take the good with the bad.
I've heard people say that most of the violent crime in Durham is "criminal on criminal" and there's a low risk of being a victim as long as you avoid certain areas and don't act like an ass if you do find yourself in them.
If I were in my twenties and a recent grad, I'd definitely consider living in Durham. If I had school-aged kids? I'd stick to some other counties.
I've been to the City of Chicago twice. I watch the national news daily, and based on that reporting, I'll never go back because gun shots are flying around 24 hours a day everywhere in the city.
Grain of salt, indeed.
The Chicagoland area is incredibly diverse. On the south end there are literally 30+ shootings every weekend and on the north end are homes like Michael Jordan's sprawling estate. Then of course there's everything in-between. There are sections of the I94/294 where I would rather run out of gas and call AAA than take my chances getting off the freeway.
I just assume these threads are started by someone trying to start trouble at this point.
I'm starting to assume the same, NM posts. It's becoming a waste of time to try to disabuse new posters of the generally incorrect info they've gleaned about Durham --in this case from a moronic YouTube video. OP, if you're not from around here, and have never been, come visit Durham and see what you think of it for yourself.
Durham regularly makes those lists of top places for college grads to move to. I really would not take the opinion of someone who has been to Durham twice with a grain of salt or anything. I really like Durham and have lived next door to it for decades. It does have its share of crime but so do many other cities. It’s a really vibrant city.
Yes you’re correct,
I was wrong to say that Durham has a great job market, major universities in the area, massive hospitals, and relatively area based crime.
You have to live next door to a city for decades to gain that type of information. For all I know, Durham has an awful job market, no universities (because Duke, UNC, and NC State clearly don’t exist, right?), and no hospitals within 50 miles.
I also said there were many great areas in Durham. Clearly that’s not true because once again, I haven’t lived next door to Durham for decades like some people.
I said N. Roxboro st area was very rough - definitely not true as that is one of the most vibrant areas in this vibrant city that I clearly must not know anything about. Highest per capita zip code in the state is around Duke’s Hospital, right? Because I definitely said that was a relatively spotty area but clearly that must not be true as I haven’t lived next door to Durham for decades.
Point is, you’ll find everything I said to be objectively true while your statement was normative.
Being a great place to find work has nothing to do with the crime rate, and is mostly related to the job market and cost of living, which I repeatedly put emphasis on. Those same lists probably also show DC as being one of the best job markets in the country for recent grads, while I love DC, I recognize the obnoxious local government and extremely high crime rates in certain areas.
Durham’s crime rate would not personally stop me from living there, however other things regarding the city most definitely would. It’s not a bad city by any means, and it’s recent growth in many ways proves that.
The Chicagoland area is incredibly diverse. On the south end there are literally 30+ shootings every weekend and on the north end are homes like Michael Jordan's sprawling estate. Then of course there's everything in-between. There are sections of the I94/294 where I would rather run out of gas and call AAA than take my chances getting off the freeway.
There is an area around NCCU and east Durham you might not want to live in/venture to at night, but the rest of the city is safe and really nice. I lived in South Durham and never felt unsafe either there or downtown or on the western side near Duke. In fact, my wife and I currently live in midtown Raleigh but I work in Durham and she just got a job in downtown Durham...so we are probably about to move there ourselves.
Raleigh has sketchy areas too. That ABC store off Appliance Ct...that has me feeling more unsafe than I ever felt in Durham, haha.
Well he does own a car dealership in Durham....but otherwise MJ is obviously more tied to Chapel Hill
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