Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH
There is a ton of data indicating that there was an urban crime wave which peaked in the early 1990s, and since then both the absolute amount of urban crime and the relative difference between urban and suburban/exurban/rural crime has come way down.
All this explains why different generations can have such different attitudes about these issues. For people who have come of age in the last 20 years or so, their experience has been of cities just getting nicer and nicer and safer and safer. Go back decades before that, and their experience was of cities getting rougher and more dangerous.
It would be nice, of course, if people in the latter categories could recognize how things have changed--and many of them do. But as is human nature, some people cling to the impressions they first formed, and refuse to update them in light of new information.
Oh well. There is no sign of this urban crime wave coming back, so this is likely just going to be a long transition period, meaning someday virtually everyone will have only lived through the good times for cities. And that world could be an interesting contrast on many dimensions to the world of today.
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I totally get that. If you know anything about the city of Aliquippa in Beaver County you will know that it is one of the worst, most dilapidated river towns in the whole metro on par with Clairton, Mckeesport, Duquesne, etc.
In the 1970's my parents bought there first "house", a $4,000 mobile home on Spring Street in downtown Aliquippa (
https://goo.gl/maps/DBHA9s3AiqL2). They upgraded a few years later to a well built brick rowhoue on the same street. This was at the peak of industrial decline and they have nothing but bad impressions of cities and dying towns. They eventually bought a 2,500 sq ft new construction house about 10 miles from Aliquippa in the country, looking for peace and quiet and lack of crime. My dad laments paying $60,000 for a brand new tudor house saying that that was a ton of money in 1980. (Compare to a new house of the same caliber that would now cost $250,000.
I can understand that at the peak of crime and urban decay this must have felt like paradise to them. Who knows? If I saw everything they did I may have made the same decision at the time.
The ignorance is that they are still stuck in that mentality.
They do not adapt easily and all they were thinking of in their minds was the "The decline of Western Civilization". In reality they were experience the de-indstrialization trend of small towns and America as a whole.
The fact that cities are the dumping grounds of America's unwanted - Homelessness, mental illness, poverty, crime only serves to reinforce their views.
Starting in the 1980's the crack epidemic hit and crime spike from late 80's through the ealry 1980's. It decimated these towns that they had always loved. It's nearly impossible to convince them otherwise. My dad had to stop his truck one night after loading at a steel mill for a police chase and saw 2 people get shot to death by the police right in front of him at 2 in the morning in Steubenville. His own father carried a .25 cal hand gun for trips to NYC because of the well known crime there. One side of the gun is rusty from sitting in his back pocket for years while delivering to big cities. His advice was "If you were being robbed, shoot the person and throw the gun in the Hudson river and leave. These are real life stories that shaped their reality.
My other grandfather had 2 investment houses in downtown Aliquippa. He took immaculate care of them even supplying the houses fully furnished and he covered the utility bills. He said when the steel mills were booming nobody ever missed rent. But when the same people lost their jobs, he would come to the house to collect rent and on at least on occasion the renter was standing behind the door and cracked him over the head with a long metal pipe.
My parents now live in Hanover, Twp. Completely rural area. The Twp is over 40 sq miles, and they have no police twp. They contract out to other departments. There is virtually no police presence.
I tell this story not to bore you but because these reasons are the type of things that shapes peoples opinions and causes them to grow the ex-urbs in seek of a safer, quieter life. For better or worse. They thought they were making perfectly logical decisions.
As for me, their son. I am drawn to the city. The action and excitement is much more interesting to me and a big factor in that is that crime has dropped like a rock and housing prices and cost of living are very desirable to me.
For what it's worth; That is how some millenials make their way to the city.
Thanks for reading my story.
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