Quote:
Originally Posted by thegoatman
Good points. And yeah I'm defintely cognizant of the crime in Atlanta, it's skyrocketing so much that the richest neighborhood in the city is trying to secede.
I'm glad I moved up here couples years back. Chicago has its problems, but I much prefer it to Atlanta. I could understand why a large family would prefer Atlanta, its safer (in the suburbs), warmer, the houses are bigger, and (up until recently) it was cheaper than Chicago. Also Atlanta doesn't have the gang culture that permeates the whole city like Chicago does.
I'm young, single, with no kids, so Chicago is definitely the city for me! I was super bored in Atlanta, there are no neighborhoods like Lakeview or Wicker Park in Atlanta. The nightlife is far superior here. The transit is superior...you get my point.
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Glad you are enjoying yourself here. I mean we're talking about a city of 500K to 2.7M. Size doesn't mean one place will be better than the other, but in this case maybe.
Regarding your comment about suburbs - actually Chicago is safer in the suburbs statistically. And for some things, Chicago is actually much safer than the Atlanta suburbs.
The last FBI UCR that's available for both cities to compare like this is 2018, but back then the Chicago suburbs had a per 100K murder rate of 2.93 vs. 4.63 for Atlanta suburbs. I wouldn't call that "dangerous" for the Atlanta number but it's still a bit higher than Chicago's. For that year the MSA numbers for Chicago suburbs are not available for other crime types, but..
We can even look at 2016, which had a major increase in homicides and violent crimes from the few years prior just for the city of Chicago. Even back then the Chicago suburbs had a per 100K murder rate of 2.97 vs. 5.36 for the Atlanta suburbs. In 2016, the robbery rate in the Atlanta suburbs was 118 per 100K vs. 57.8 per 100K for the Chicago suburbs. In 2016, the aggravated assault rate in the Chicago suburbs was 93.5 per 100K vs. 195.7 per 100K. Both of these violent crimes were each of double in the Atlanta suburbs than Chicago.
Atlanta suburbs might be fine and safer than the city but it's not true statistically that its suburbs are safer on average than Chicago's suburbs. Even looking at individual suburbs, you have Naperville in 2018 with a population of almost 150K with a grand total of 21 robberies for the entire year. Bolingbrook next door with 75K people had 17 robberies. Then in Atlanta you have Sandy Springs with about 110K people with 43 robberies for the year. Naperville and Bolingbrook with double the population of Sandy Springs in that year still had fewer robberies than a suburb like Sandy Springs. Alpharetta had a robbery rate that year of 23.86 per 100K vs. 14.15 per 100K for Naperville. Des Plaines and Bolingbrook were also lower than Alpharetta which is considered pretty damn safe still and these suburbs in Chicago have an even lower rate.