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Notes -
"Urban crime" is a scoped to make all cities look bad, when the issue is of some neighborhoods in some cities.
Oakland or Baltimore are generally violent. Downtown Seattle or SOMA SF have homelessness and nonviolent property crime associated with it. I dont recommend living in these neighborhoods and I am in complete agreement on the dire need for possibly non-compassionate methods for resolving these issues. But these cities/neighborhoods are rarely the subjects of discussion.
Statistically, transit focused American cities are exceedingly safe. NYC & Boston are the nations 2 big transit cities. Both the cities and their transit corridors are quite safe. Hell, you can fall asleep late at night on the subway and wake up in East NY (murdertown).... and it's still safe inside the subway complex. As mentioned before, bad neighborhoods are ofc crime ridden. But connecting them to a common transit doesnt bring crime to your doorstep.
That being said, I'm glad that the YIMBY/Transit crowd has decoupled from the compassionate/pro-homeless crowd.
Strict enforcement of public safety is essential to getting people to use transit. The caltrain (well run) vs Bart (total mess) are great examples while being within a few miles from eachnother.
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