The Durable Myth of Urban Hellholes

[TheParser]

You're right about Buckhead, Atlantans are now selling and moving out. There are isolated instances of North side murders in Chicago from people who don't live there, but the spillover effect is what worries many people. My sister lives right next to the Inner Harbor Baltimore where row houses are expensive enough that gangbangers cant afford to be there. Her neighborhood is safe, but it's also all white in a city that is unsafe once you leave that neighborhood.

How sad that there is only one safe neighborhood in Baltimore (if I understood the post correctly).

I really, really, really wish that liberals would be a little more humble and admit that they, too, would not live in "unsafe" neighborhoods.

Sadly, many of those liberals are so quick to attach the R-word to anyone else who is loath to move into "unsafe" neighborhoods.

 

[Esdraelon]

Republicans continue to push the myth of urban hellholes, but is it really worse than flyover country? Republicans always appeal to the Red Staters with promises of more jobs, more jobs, and more jobs, and consistently fail to deliver, proving they really are not trying.


Over the weekend J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and now a Trumpist candidate for U.S. senator in Ohio, tweeted that he was planning a visit to New York, which he has heard is “disgusting and violent.” Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School who currently works as a venture capitalist, surely knows better. But he presumably hopes that Republican voters don’t.

But why do so many Americans still believe that our major cities are hellholes of crime and depravity? Why do so many politicians still believe that they can run on the supposed contrast between urban evil and small-town virtue when many social indicators look worse in the heartland than in the big coastal metropolitan areas?

To be sure, there was a national surge in homicides — although not in overall crime — during the pandemic, for reasons that remain unclear. But New York is still safer than it was a decade ago, vastly safer than it was 30 years ago, and, for what it’s worth, considerably safer than, say, Columbus, Ohio.

And if you wanted to single out some region as being in crisis, New York is hardly the place you’d choose. Our biggest social problems are in the “eastern heartland,” an arc running from Louisiana to Michigan. This is where an alarmingly large number of men in their prime working years don’t have jobs and where “deaths of despair” — that is, deaths from alcohol, suicide and drug overdoses — are running high.

Opinion | The Durable Myth of Urban Hellholes (Published 2021)

Why are politicians still contrasting rural virtue with urban vice?

www.nytimes.com

The appeal to me of rural areas isn't more work, it's vastly fewer smug, know-it-all, liberoidal asswipes like you.

And the clear lanes of fire you can pre-sight for...

 

[Esdraelon]

Republicans continue to push the myth of urban hellholes, but is it really worse than flyover country? Republicans always appeal to the Red Staters with promises of more jobs, more jobs, and more jobs, and consistently fail to deliver, proving they really are not trying.


Over the weekend J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and now a Trumpist candidate for U.S. senator in Ohio, tweeted that he was planning a visit to New York, which he has heard is “disgusting and violent.” Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School who currently works as a venture capitalist, surely knows better. But he presumably hopes that Republican voters don’t.

But why do so many Americans still believe that our major cities are hellholes of crime and depravity? Why do so many politicians still believe that they can run on the supposed contrast between urban evil and small-town virtue when many social indicators look worse in the heartland than in the big coastal metropolitan areas?

To be sure, there was a national surge in homicides — although not in overall crime — during the pandemic, for reasons that remain unclear. But New York is still safer than it was a decade ago, vastly safer than it was 30 years ago, and, for what it’s worth, considerably safer than, say, Columbus, Ohio.

And if you wanted to single out some region as being in crisis, New York is hardly the place you’d choose. Our biggest social problems are in the “eastern heartland,” an arc running from Louisiana to Michigan. This is where an alarmingly large number of men in their prime working years don’t have jobs and where “deaths of despair” — that is, deaths from alcohol, suicide and drug overdoses — are running high.

Opinion | The Durable Myth of Urban Hellholes (Published 2021)

Why are politicians still contrasting rural virtue with urban vice?

www.nytimes.com

Wingers also like to deny there was ever any systematic racism yet these so-called 'urban hell holes' were the result of red lining by banks and other financial institutions. Neighborhoods that were not red lined flourished with upscale homes and schools and shopping venues while those that were red lined decayed. Remember when minorities were practically banned from moving into white neighborhoods...wingers conveniently don't.

Yeah, but that was a very long time ago. The problem in those neighborhoods today is the willingness of that community to continue voting for a party that is giving them just enough to survive while stirring hate against everyone else in the country.