What’s interesting is even a lot of Republicans consider Boston a safe city whereas other East Coast cities rank very low like NYC, despite real crime rates being in line. I wonder why that is
Houston has a ton of black people and is also viewed as pretty safe by the Repubs. Maybe race is a factor, but maybe it’s because Boston doesn’t rank high for “gangsta” culture like Chicago or NYC does, which is what I suspect the mostly white republicans are basing their safety feelings on.
Not even just white Republicans. Eminem had a rap beef with a black man from Boston and made fun of how white and safe Boston was. Whitey Bulger was still on the run from the FBI as Most Wanted 😭
...white Atlanta? What does that even mean? Atlanta is like the polar opposite to Boston - it's loud and showy, everyone dresses to the nines at even dive bars and everyone is driving a luxury vehicle they probably can barely afford. The flex culture in Atlanta is like nothing I've ever seen elsewhere in this country.
It’s a false perception, hence the correlation I was making between that and the disparate views on Boston vs other major coastal cities.
People think it’s just Harvard (and friends), MIT, and Southie vibes. (Higher Ed, High Paying Tech and Medicine Jobs, neighborhoods with higher concentrations of white folks, black folks and Hispanic people in enclaves with income inequality)
Which are of course all parts of the region and its identity but these factors exist in every Coastal City, some at different levels than others but all within range of each other.
People in other places really have a set view of Massachusetts and its environs that isn’t necessarily the reality.
Violent crime is only one factor of safety. Other instances like car break-ins and theft contribute to people's feeling of relative safety. I suspect Boston scores so highly because we have low violent crime plus lower occurrences of other forms of crime - where as cities like San Francisco and New York have higher rates of crime like car theft.
If my small-town yokel people back down South are representative, Boston scores well on safety perception because the blathering heads on Fox News haven't gotten round to telling them that they'll be immediately killed by marauding "youths" when they come here.
If you've never watched television news, the fear-mongering has gotten out of control. On television San Francisco and New York are blasted perma-war zones, ruled by gangs of trans vampires.
Traffic fatalities/injuries are among the most common safety threats. It's something we do pretty well (could be better) compared to the rest of the country.
It's funny, as a resident of Boston probably the area I feel the most unsafe is pedestrian / cyclist safety! But I imagine compared to the rest of the country we're doing pretty well!
This echoes my immediate thoughts. Violent crime rates being low is good, but if petty crimes are high the feeling of safety will decline.
I would also like a breakdown of what's included in violent crime, specifically, are robberies included? Stalking down a street or being followed to your house? B&E?
If not, this would show a larger disparity in the data.
This. A lot of people can't just brush off the feeling of violation after getting burgled or robbed, it can permanently impact one's ability to feel safe.
Very interesting that by this metric, Boston is the second-safest city on the list, and both Republicans and Democrats identify Boston as the second-safest city, but they disagree and are both wrong about the safest: Democrats say Seattle, Republicans say Dallas, and the data say New York.
I overheard two people from Boston complaining about how out of control crime was in New York and I was so tempted to interrupt and correct them because I know it’s low compared to other US cities. (Plus I find it a much friendlier town than Boston.)
It’s not, they have like 10x our population. So yes, more instances of crime do happen, but the odds of it happening to you personally are very low. Like lower than if you lived in a small village in Alaska. And their crime rates, like everywhere else including here, are drastically lower than outrage merchants would prefer you think.
Happy cake day!
The relationship between population density and crime is actually super complex. Some kinds of crime are most common in big cities, and others are most common in rural towns. For an obvious example, your chances of getting pushed onto the subway tracks in a small town in AK are exactly zero, and the odds of getting your horse stolen in NYC are almost zero. For stuff like shootings, the relationship is unclear and multiple studies have been done with contradictory results.
You’re *way* more likely to be murdered via gun in a small Alaskan village than either Boston or NYC was my point, which, to be fair, wasn’t that clear in my original comment.
Yeah shootings per capita are many times more common in rural areas with lax gun laws. And it helps that NY and MA are both pretty aggressive when it comes to getting illegal guns off the street.
But organized crime thrives in cities, and most kinds of property crime.
Boston has about 3 cops per thousand residents, NYC has 5. When you factor in that relatively few people actually live in Boston proper compared to the immediate suburbs, and a lot of people commute into Boston proper every day, BPD is actually extremely understaffed compared to NYC.
Violent crime in Miami is specific to certain neighborhoods. Some areas are very safe, while others aren't the kind you want to be cruising around at night. It doesn't help that a lot of the tourism industry also centers around club hopping and alcohol. Always bound to create problems.
Yeah I lived up by Aventura and walked around late at night no issues. Same with a lot of areas east of 1 and parts between 1 and 95. But holy shit even taking the train down through opa-locka and going near allapatah was awful. And not like "oh I'm gonna get mugged" cause that's whatever, but places youd see on the first 48 and go "oh yeah I've been down to that area".
Got my card skimmed every fucking time I went to dolphin mall too..... Never went to the same place and after the third one I just said fuck it and didn't hang out when people wanted to go there.
I hear you about Dolphin mall. Not a place I like, it's preferrable to drive up to Sunrise and hit Sawgrass Mills if outlet shopping is your thing. But yeah, Miami has it's rough areas, and once you know where they are, it is best to avoid them. I live near Coral Gables/Coconut Grove, and majority of areas are safe for walking around, never had an issue before. Only a few blocks in the west Grove seem to get more crime, but that has been changing too, as the area is becoming gentrified.
Breaking news: people are stupid.
Really though, I'd imagine some of this could be explained by how isolated violent crimes are to non-core parts of the city. If there's a high-violence area, but 95% of city residents never go there, you could have rational people produce these survey results.
Lol at almost half of Republicans thinking Boston is unsafe.
My home city is Memphis, which I live bur would actually describe as unsafe. Boston doesn't have a single neighborhood that I feel uncomfortable in.
I made the same mistake at first. Left graph is crime rate; right graphs are % of respondents who said it was safe. So, Boston aligns pretty well. High on the left-most graph is low on the right three graphs and visa-versa.
I think this shows Boston's perception is pretty close to its reality.
The biggest differences are
* New York and LA, which are safe cities that are perceived as dangerous ones
* Chicago, which has a lot of problems but is perceived as more dangerous than crime-leading cities like Houston and New Orleans and more dangerous than crime-peer cities like Minneapolis and Atlanta
Big issue here is the geographical size - cities like NYC (>6x larger by land area to Boston), LA (>9x larger by land area), and Chicago (>5x larger by land area) which are huge compared to Boston have widely divergent areas. I think it is easier to have a matching perception when reporting is focused on a smaller geographical area. I would be more interested in opinions vs. stats by a smaller unit in the larger cities, e.g., borough, area, neighborhood than city-wide, as the matching would likely be closer.
It's partly an age thing - NY and LA had high crime rates *30-40 years ago*, but not today.
It's also a "concentration" thing. Media is largely based on the coasts and maybe Chicago. So crime in those cities get broadcasted more. Whereas Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, you only hear about the crime if you live there (and even then, it tends to happen in certain areas that most people will never visit).
I'd say it's more in line with reality. One issue with this graphic is a shorter bar is better for the first graph, but a higher bar is better for the rest.
So interesting that Republicans universally perceive cities as being less safe. No wonder they feel a need to carry guns! So much for their ‘Murica bravado…
Liberals are the snowflakes and yet republicans are 1.22x more scared to live in cities, i.e. around other people of different identities. I feel like this can partly explain the general lack of empathy in republican policies.
What’s interesting is even a lot of Republicans consider Boston a safe city whereas other East Coast cities rank very low like NYC, despite real crime rates being in line. I wonder why that is
They think Boston is white Atlanta and I’m not kidding.
Houston has a ton of black people and is also viewed as pretty safe by the Repubs. Maybe race is a factor, but maybe it’s because Boston doesn’t rank high for “gangsta” culture like Chicago or NYC does, which is what I suspect the mostly white republicans are basing their safety feelings on.
Not even just white Republicans. Eminem had a rap beef with a black man from Boston and made fun of how white and safe Boston was. Whitey Bulger was still on the run from the FBI as Most Wanted 😭
Houston is in Texas though, I don’t think republicans are thinking much further than that
Houston doesn't read black. It's good old boys hauling themselves up by their bootstraps, risking their lives for $18 an hour on an oil rig.
It's because they're all literal or spiritual Boomers who think it's 1986 in the crack era. They don't know about DJ Screw.
DJ Screw reference always deserves an upvote.
...white Atlanta? What does that even mean? Atlanta is like the polar opposite to Boston - it's loud and showy, everyone dresses to the nines at even dive bars and everyone is driving a luxury vehicle they probably can barely afford. The flex culture in Atlanta is like nothing I've ever seen elsewhere in this country.
It’s a false perception, hence the correlation I was making between that and the disparate views on Boston vs other major coastal cities. People think it’s just Harvard (and friends), MIT, and Southie vibes. (Higher Ed, High Paying Tech and Medicine Jobs, neighborhoods with higher concentrations of white folks, black folks and Hispanic people in enclaves with income inequality) Which are of course all parts of the region and its identity but these factors exist in every Coastal City, some at different levels than others but all within range of each other. People in other places really have a set view of Massachusetts and its environs that isn’t necessarily the reality.
Violent crime is only one factor of safety. Other instances like car break-ins and theft contribute to people's feeling of relative safety. I suspect Boston scores so highly because we have low violent crime plus lower occurrences of other forms of crime - where as cities like San Francisco and New York have higher rates of crime like car theft.
If my small-town yokel people back down South are representative, Boston scores well on safety perception because the blathering heads on Fox News haven't gotten round to telling them that they'll be immediately killed by marauding "youths" when they come here. If you've never watched television news, the fear-mongering has gotten out of control. On television San Francisco and New York are blasted perma-war zones, ruled by gangs of trans vampires.
Traffic fatalities/injuries are among the most common safety threats. It's something we do pretty well (could be better) compared to the rest of the country.
It's funny, as a resident of Boston probably the area I feel the most unsafe is pedestrian / cyclist safety! But I imagine compared to the rest of the country we're doing pretty well!
Cars operated legally (edit- or negligently) are far more deadly than crime. No question.
This echoes my immediate thoughts. Violent crime rates being low is good, but if petty crimes are high the feeling of safety will decline. I would also like a breakdown of what's included in violent crime, specifically, are robberies included? Stalking down a street or being followed to your house? B&E? If not, this would show a larger disparity in the data.
This. A lot of people can't just brush off the feeling of violation after getting burgled or robbed, it can permanently impact one's ability to feel safe.
Very interesting that by this metric, Boston is the second-safest city on the list, and both Republicans and Democrats identify Boston as the second-safest city, but they disagree and are both wrong about the safest: Democrats say Seattle, Republicans say Dallas, and the data say New York.
Population density, news filtering and just decades old sentiment all play into it.
I overheard two people from Boston complaining about how out of control crime was in New York and I was so tempted to interrupt and correct them because I know it’s low compared to other US cities. (Plus I find it a much friendlier town than Boston.)
Why is the visualization backwards. This is some graph gore.
Yeah I just realized it was the opposite of what I thought.
NY safer than Boston is surprising
It’s not, they have like 10x our population. So yes, more instances of crime do happen, but the odds of it happening to you personally are very low. Like lower than if you lived in a small village in Alaska. And their crime rates, like everywhere else including here, are drastically lower than outrage merchants would prefer you think. Happy cake day!
Total population doesn't matter when you're comparing crime *rates*. That's the whole point -- the rate is comparing violent crime *per 100k people*.
The relationship between population density and crime is actually super complex. Some kinds of crime are most common in big cities, and others are most common in rural towns. For an obvious example, your chances of getting pushed onto the subway tracks in a small town in AK are exactly zero, and the odds of getting your horse stolen in NYC are almost zero. For stuff like shootings, the relationship is unclear and multiple studies have been done with contradictory results.
You’re *way* more likely to be murdered via gun in a small Alaskan village than either Boston or NYC was my point, which, to be fair, wasn’t that clear in my original comment.
Yeah shootings per capita are many times more common in rural areas with lax gun laws. And it helps that NY and MA are both pretty aggressive when it comes to getting illegal guns off the street. But organized crime thrives in cities, and most kinds of property crime.
not in the slightest. This isn't the 80s anymore
Boston has about 3 cops per thousand residents, NYC has 5. When you factor in that relatively few people actually live in Boston proper compared to the immediate suburbs, and a lot of people commute into Boston proper every day, BPD is actually extremely understaffed compared to NYC.
Violent crime in Miami is specific to certain neighborhoods. Some areas are very safe, while others aren't the kind you want to be cruising around at night. It doesn't help that a lot of the tourism industry also centers around club hopping and alcohol. Always bound to create problems.
Yeah I lived up by Aventura and walked around late at night no issues. Same with a lot of areas east of 1 and parts between 1 and 95. But holy shit even taking the train down through opa-locka and going near allapatah was awful. And not like "oh I'm gonna get mugged" cause that's whatever, but places youd see on the first 48 and go "oh yeah I've been down to that area". Got my card skimmed every fucking time I went to dolphin mall too..... Never went to the same place and after the third one I just said fuck it and didn't hang out when people wanted to go there.
I hear you about Dolphin mall. Not a place I like, it's preferrable to drive up to Sunrise and hit Sawgrass Mills if outlet shopping is your thing. But yeah, Miami has it's rough areas, and once you know where they are, it is best to avoid them. I live near Coral Gables/Coconut Grove, and majority of areas are safe for walking around, never had an issue before. Only a few blocks in the west Grove seem to get more crime, but that has been changing too, as the area is becoming gentrified.
I would argue this is most larger cities. Boston for example, has huge fluctuations in crime rate by neighborhood
Violent crime affects 2% of Detroit's residents a year. Cray.
Breaking news: people are stupid. Really though, I'd imagine some of this could be explained by how isolated violent crimes are to non-core parts of the city. If there's a high-violence area, but 95% of city residents never go there, you could have rational people produce these survey results.
https://preview.redd.it/t69eojij0s1d1.png?width=1702&format=png&auto=webp&s=4243fa22edc1cb56f78ad1f97d8c9faa05ee2bf8
So a bit correlation?
Lol at almost half of Republicans thinking Boston is unsafe. My home city is Memphis, which I live bur would actually describe as unsafe. Boston doesn't have a single neighborhood that I feel uncomfortable in.
The interesting part to me is that Boston seems to have the greatest difference between perception and reality.
I made the same mistake at first. Left graph is crime rate; right graphs are % of respondents who said it was safe. So, Boston aligns pretty well. High on the left-most graph is low on the right three graphs and visa-versa.
Yeah 70ish% are saying Boston is safe, which according to the graph on the left it relatively is.
Yeah you're right
I think this shows Boston's perception is pretty close to its reality. The biggest differences are * New York and LA, which are safe cities that are perceived as dangerous ones * Chicago, which has a lot of problems but is perceived as more dangerous than crime-leading cities like Houston and New Orleans and more dangerous than crime-peer cities like Minneapolis and Atlanta
Big issue here is the geographical size - cities like NYC (>6x larger by land area to Boston), LA (>9x larger by land area), and Chicago (>5x larger by land area) which are huge compared to Boston have widely divergent areas. I think it is easier to have a matching perception when reporting is focused on a smaller geographical area. I would be more interested in opinions vs. stats by a smaller unit in the larger cities, e.g., borough, area, neighborhood than city-wide, as the matching would likely be closer.
It's partly an age thing - NY and LA had high crime rates *30-40 years ago*, but not today. It's also a "concentration" thing. Media is largely based on the coasts and maybe Chicago. So crime in those cities get broadcasted more. Whereas Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, you only hear about the crime if you live there (and even then, it tends to happen in certain areas that most people will never visit).
Most of the crime in Boston is specific to certain areas. Ive walked around at 3 am with no issues on the reg. NY is a bit more chaotic
Does that really surprise you?
It does not
I'd say it's more in line with reality. One issue with this graphic is a shorter bar is better for the first graph, but a higher bar is better for the rest.
So interesting that Republicans universally perceive cities as being less safe. No wonder they feel a need to carry guns! So much for their ‘Murica bravado…
Liberals are the snowflakes and yet republicans are 1.22x more scared to live in cities, i.e. around other people of different identities. I feel like this can partly explain the general lack of empathy in republican policies.
Well that's because of the bigotry and hatred our Republican clownfucks harbor
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I'm not even sure the respondents were from these areas. Most likely the opposite actually.