My first piece for The New Republic is up. It expands on some homicide concentration research I did last fall, and takes a quick look at New York City and Los Angeles as well.
My first piece for The New Republic is up. It expands on some homicide concentration research I did last fall, and takes a quick look at New York City and Los Angeles as well.
Great piece and congrats and making the New Republic. The maps are even clearer this time around the the comparative inequality chart is great.
I do think it’s a bit unfair to compare Chicago’s best neighborhoods against the overall rate for NYC. Chicago is not safer or as safe as New York at any apples to apples level of comparison, but as your data shows the gap is less at the affluent end.
Thanks! And yeah, that’s a totally fair point.
From data I have looked at, the safest third of NYC (at least by murder rate) isn’t uniformly affluent. About half of the residents in those neighborhoods are in Queens, most of those aren’t affluent though not poor either. Much of it has a very high foreign born %. Some more in southern Brooklyn, which would mostly best described as working-class.
Less familar with Chicago, but from Daniel Hertz’s map, the northwest part of Chicago may be the closest equivalent (safe but not affluent nor gentrifying much). And maybe some demographic similarities. No clue about Los Angeles, but Los Angeles is a different from the other two as the city-inner suburb distinction is weak. Los Angeles County’s murder rate is roughly similar to the city itself.
Daniel, great piece. I think your research on crime inequality has been fantastic and highlights a defining feature of Midwestern Rust Belt cities (Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Buffalo have similar patterns, I believe) when compared to others around the country. Chicago happens to be the biggest and most global of the bunch, so its issues are amplified. This is important work.