St Louis not on the "list" (St. Louis, Ballwin: crimes, live in)

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by T. Damon

I agree- every city has some sketchy parts- some are downright dangerous- but they are typically very known and easily avoided.

From what I hear about St. Louis (primarily from friends who relocated) tells of a very cool and vibrant city with amazing architecture- especially in the core- and they never have felt threatened or experienced any crime first hand. I totally want to visit the city again (only have as a kid)- seems like it has some great qualities to me.

That is correct. I have never had a single issue with St Louis, never even felt threatened. You can get into some nasty areas in north stl city, but as you say, they can easily be avoided and most of the city is totally fine. It’s not like Baltimore where you have to seriously watch your back no matter what part of the city you are in and even the good areas are not all that great.

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by kcmo

That is correct. I have never had a single issue with St Louis, never even felt threatened. You can get into some nasty areas in north stl city, but as you say, they can easily be avoided and most of the city is totally fine. It’s not like Baltimore where you have to seriously watch your back no matter what part of the city you are in and even the good areas are not all that great.

Surprisingly it is the somewhat the same in San Francisco vs. Oakland. SF is a beautiful city with amazing neighborhoods and streets and dirty, absolutely dangerous areas butting right up next to each other, make a wrong turn for a block or two and you could be in trouble, (also like New Orleans), in Oakland the good and bad areas are better defined and separated, very easy to stay in one and avoid the other.

Oakland is another city that gets a bad rap that actually is a very cool, vibrant city with similar to St. Louis, great historic (for California), friendly, funky neighborhoods with classic architecture in the hills.

[aragx6]

^I haven't been out there, but was surprised when a west coast friend told me just that same thing about Oakland. Given the good I've heard I'd like to see it. I mean, I love travelling, so you can't name too many places I dont want to go. I've actually never been to California at all, which is a real travesty.

[kcmo]

I have always liked Oakland, it has a nice downtown core.

Does it have that negative reputation locally (bay area)?

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by kcmo

I have always liked Oakland, it has a nice downtown core.

Does it have that negative reputation locally (bay area)?

Folks in "The City" (SF) unfortunately can be a bit provincial despite their loud proclamations otherwise. Many of my friends in SF don't really venture into Oakland much, describing it as unsafe and too scruffy (conveniently ignoring their scruffy, stinky, dangerous neighborhoods) where as the folks in Oakland are much more realistic in their perceptions, knowing that their city just like SF has some really sweet areas and some really bad areas, it's just easier too avoid the bad areas in Oakland.

I'm not from the Bay area but I imagine it would also translate to those on the peninsula having similar attitudes to those in SF, where as those in the East Bay having a little more real world experience and not blanketing one city or area with a sweeping generalization.

[Chicago76]

Originally Posted by topospace

I'm not saying that comparing metros is invalid. What I am saying that using MSA can introduce bias in some of the same ways that just comparing cities does. Take a look at how MSA's are defined and some of the actual MSA's for similarly sized cities (based on population). They can (and do) vary wildly in geographical area, population clusters, socioeconomic clusters, etc. These things can skew an analysis.

I agree that any analysis can be skewed somewhat. For example, certain MSAs are in very confined spaces with a considerable amount of urban space, some surburban space, and next to no rural space. A place like Baltimore for example. The thing is, metro crime rates as a whole aren't skewed that much. Even MSAs where more of the population are in suburban and rural environments doesn't change things that much, strictly because the urban/suburban/rural breakdown of population across MSAs of similar total population doesn't vary significantly.

That urban/suburban/rural breakdown in cities is monumentally variable. If all of the central corridor and S. City of STL (other than downtown) seceded from the city, he violent crime rate of the remaining area (downtown + north city) would resemble that of a Mexican metro today. But nothing would really be any different.

Any distortion to true crime rates in MSAs will likely be overshadowed by two other things:

1) the rate of reported crime to actual crime in each region, and
2) the extrapolation methods the FBI uses to arrive at metro crime rates, because not all police jurisdictions report. In some MSAs, it's close to 100%, but in others, it might be 60%.

[BoomBoxing]

It's somewhat ironic that the same political divisions and suburban sprawl that prop up St. Louis as most dangerous in the CQ ranking likely contribute to a very low crime ranking when measured as a metro area. In the criteria used by Forbes here it can be assumed that smaller metros with a significant high crime urban core with a smaller suburban area (Memphis) would come out as most dangerous. This measure is just as spurious as the CQ measure.

But what irks me the most about each of these crime rankings isn't that it makes certain cities look more dangerous (though I hate that too). It's that it makes cities with higher crime look ridiculously safe. Like Chicago76 says, if we just arbitrarily added in south county to the crime rankings does that make St. Louis any more or less safe?

Which brings me to two main points. Either that measuring an entire city/metro and ranking them as "dangerous" or not is a stupid endeavor because as we all know, crime is largely a neighborhood issue. The other point is that if one really wanted to measure city to city crime rankings, more detailed analysis has to be done before these stories are published. Most importantly, they need to control for urban areas versus suburban areas. They could use the census's definition of 1000/sq mile, or they could use a higher number threshold. They could do this by census track. Take the entire chunk of each metro that meets their criteria and compare them against other cities. Perhaps an example of the area of St. Louis to be measured (this is out of date, I know) would look like this:

[Chicago76]

Originally Posted by BoomBoxing

The other point is that if one really wanted to measure city to city crime rankings, more detailed analysis has to be done before these stories are published. Most importantly, they need to control for urban areas versus suburban areas. They could use the census's definition of 1000/sq mile, or they could use a higher number threshold. They could do this by census track. Take the entire chunk of each metro that meets their criteria and compare them against other cities. Perhaps an example of the area of St. Louis to be measured (this is out of date, I know) would look like this:

I agree that the more granular you go, the better the comparison. The problem with ensity boundaries is that they generally don't coincide with police jurisdiction boundaries, thus making it impossible to tally crimes.

[billiken]

Originally Posted by aragx6

You were definitely told right!

I always thought St. Louis' absence from this list was telling: 25. Chicago, Ill.

St Louis is on that list--#14 highlights part of downtown west

[rmc01]

Originally Posted by kcmo

That is correct. I have never had a single issue with St Louis, never even felt threatened. You can get into some nasty areas in north stl city, but as you say, they can easily be avoided and most of the city is totally fine. It’s not like Baltimore where you have to seriously watch your back no matter what part of the city you are in and even the good areas are not all that great.

I was struck by this when I moved from Baltimore to St. Louis about a year ago. I've heard people say St. Louis is "block by block" but that really doesn't appear to be the case to me, at least to the extent that this is true of Baltimore. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the city yet.

I generally agree with your sentiment of Baltimore as well (though it makes me cringe to say it, as I love that town). I never felt like I needed to watch my back in Canton, Brewers Hill, Locust Pt, etc., though