zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
If people want to live in cities and want to have a car-free lifestyle, then more power to you.

Cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable and increasingly violent. I think that we are past “peak metro” and that the absolute refusal of many people to return to office work is going to result in an acceleration of out-migration from cities. This in turn will exacerbate other urban problems as the revenue base dries up and low wage employees become ever more difficult to find in urban areas.

>>efitz+Hv1
Do you have any data to support the claim that cities are becoming more violent? That’s a common trope that is generally debunked by police statistics.

>>bertil+Jw1
San Fransisco crime increased 5% last year. [1]

NYC crime increased 22% last year. [2]

Chicago crime increased 41% last year. [3]

[1] https://missionlocal.org/2023/01/explore-how-crime-changed-i...

[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00071/nypd-citywide-crim...

[3] https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-crime-spikes-in-2022-...

**

That said, the OP said "violent" and technically the increase was almost entirely non-violent crimes (e.g. theft).

>>pauldd+zy1
Also important to note that "last year" includes the tail end of the pandemic where crime as a whole fell due to lockdowns. SF and NYC fall far below other, less dense, cities in the US such as Cleveland Ohio, Lansing Michigan, Rockford Illinois, and Anchorage Alaska in violent crime rates. Granted, Chicago is in the top 20 in violent crime, though, if I had to guess those statistics are driven by crime that occurs outside the "urban core".

Perception certainly matters -- perceptions of SF BART and MUNI probably are not helping ridership -- but the narrative that San Francisco has become an urban hellscape is not borne out by the data nor by my personal anecdotal experience.

>>jjxw+yB1
You can't report a lot of crimes online (assault, Residential Burglaries, Robbery Incidents, Stolen Vehicles, stolen Electric Bicycles) and the police will tell you it's pointless to report minor ones in SF

If a homeless guy punches you in SF, would you really bother to walk to a police station and wait in line and waste a ton of time for literally nothing to happen?

>>google+EK1
I don't think you can report some of those crimes online in other cities either. Houston (https://www.houstontx.gov/police/online_report.htm) doesn't let you report violent crime nor stolen vehicles. Miami (https://www.miami-police.org/incident_reporting.html) doesn't allow violent crime to be reported either. Smaller cities like the city I grew up nearby like Rogers, Arkansas don't even allow you to file a report online at all.

I don't have time to do a comprehensive survey of how other cities operate online crime reporting, but I'm assuming in good faith that the implication here is that San Francisco's violent crime statistics are under reported if you can't report online. It seems to me that many other cities don't allow you to report online either.

Open to having a good faith discussion on if crime stats in SF are deflated due to underreporting. My guess would be that the base rate of actual people getting assaulted by a homeless guy is pretty low - curious if you have any anecdotal evidence or data to the contrary.