As a visitor to many Western Europe / rich Asia cities, this is a fair point.
Being in the business district / rich residential / fancy shopping districts, you'd be hard pressed in most of those cities to actually walk into a "bad part of town".
In NYC and a lot of US cities, things can vary from block to block. You could live in Manhattan in a $3M apartment and the nearest grocery is the same one that NYCHA residents use. I'm not saying being poor makes you do crime, but if you are someone who is in a gang and doing crime, you are more likely to live in NYCHA than in the $3M apartment.
It's pretty normal in neighborhoods like UWS, Chelsea, LES/East Village, North Brooklyn to have block to block variance like this.
My subway stop has had 2 drug/gang related murders in the last 2 years, and it's also the first stop into Brooklyn from Manhattan. You'd not expect that.
So yeah, I think we also hide the problem less in our cities than Europe.
In NYC and a lot of US cities, things can vary from block to block. You could live in Manhattan in a $3M apartment and the nearest grocery is the same one that NYCHA residents use. I'm not saying being poor makes you do crime, but if you are someone who is in a gang and doing crime, you are more likely to live in NYCHA than in the $3M apartment.
It's pretty normal in neighborhoods like UWS, Chelsea, LES/East Village, North Brooklyn to have block to block variance like this.
My subway stop has had 2 drug/gang related murders in the last 2 years, and it's also the first stop into Brooklyn from Manhattan. You'd not expect that.
So yeah, I think we also hide the problem less in our cities than Europe.