[jpatokal]

Juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, not poverty itself. In most American cities somebody from a poor neighborhood can walk a few blocks and mug a rich person at knifepoint, whereas in the average poor rural area, there aren't really any rich people around to rob.

[Mvandenbergh]

That's true but the vast majority of urban crime is poor on poor and takes place in the neighborhood where the victim and perpetrator both live.

[mixmax]

this is at best an anecdotal point, and seems more like something you just thought up. Is there any substance to this? Is crime in urban areas more prevalent because it is a shorter distance to walk for a potential mugger to get to a rich person he can mug?

This just doesn't seem very likely to me, but if you can back it up by numbers I'll gladly change my view.

[lutusp]

> Is crime in urban areas more prevalent because it is a shorter distance to walk for a potential mugger to get to a rich person he can mug?

This is just a correlation, possibly meaningless, but an explanation for the decline in New York City crime over the last 30 years is that poor people can't afford to live there any more. It's just an opinion, true for most such views.

> ... but if you can back it up by numbers I'll gladly change my view.

Now that would be very difficult, even with the numbers. The number of poor people living in NYC is available, and the number of poor-on-rich crimes is available (both in sharp decline), but proving a connection between them is nigh impossible.

[astrodust]

Why would that automatically lead to an increase in crime?

If you have wealthy areas, you have opportunities for less affluent people to get ahead through legitimate means. They have economic opportunities.

On the other hand an area that's entirely depressed is often infested with crime because there's no alternative to theft. The economic opportunities do not exist.