Once people who could not afford living in the suburbs can, they often also escape filthy cities.
In addition, you have unsafe cities like Sao Paulo and you have safe cities like Santiago or Buenos Aires. You have unsafe cities like Davao (although Duterte cleaned up some crime) and you have safe cities like Seoul or Tokyo. It's not due to color. Some cities are safe, others aren't and people who have the means to do so escape them.
LA has many hispanics who have migrated out to the suburbs... are they bad for doing so?
Lots of LatAm cities also have big suburbs and gated communities... are they "bad" for wanting to escape crime?
Was this directed at me? The two comments above me both referenced race. I didn’t inject it into the conversation, I was reacting to it being injected.
I don't see where they say this.
> "there are too many poor brown folks in the city"
This comes off as projection.
> What specifically do you think needs to change for that to be true?
They listed several things.
I literally quoted them saying this. Here it is again "just make the city centres safe, clean, friendly places so that people who are "middle class, suburban, and white" want to live there".
>This comes off as projection.
I don't understand what you think I am projecting. I'm afraid of poor brown people? I don't want white people in the city? For the record, I am a white person who has lived in the middle of various major American cities most of my life. I'm not going to argue with you if you cite housing costs, having a yard, privacy, calmness, or any of the numerous other advantages suburban life has over city living. But when I see someone complain that cities aren't "safe, clean, [or] friendly" for middle class white folks, I will call out what I see as a recycled dog whistle from the 1950s and 1960s.
>They listed several things.
I questioned those listed things because the implication behind them is not true. White people aren't waiting for cities to become safe because the cities have already gotten safe.
The fact is, this person was clearly also the victim of violence and chose to move out because they, specifically, were not safe. There's nothing dog-whistle about it.
The nearest metro to me just had a city council meeting to discuss snow plow drivers complaining about being shot at while on the job, and their struggles in hiring other city workers who are being harassed. Their response was to recommend trauma counselling to those who were shot at.
Many people who are comfortable not living in a city (even if they would prefer it) move out when they realize they have to raise their kids there. If inner cities were as safe, clean and friendly as my rural community, I too might never have moved out. Instead, I realized that only one of my neighbors ever showed the slightest interest in talking to me, were frequently rude, and few people walked anywhere alone. In the years I've left, carjackings, theft and vandalism have gotten so much worse- to the point that in some formerly "safe" neighborhoods, you couldn't lock your car door when parking on the street because if thieves couldn't open the handle, they'd just smash a window to get in.
Life isn't perfect out in the country, but there is literally nothing about living in a big city that is attractive enough to make me want to go back to that.
Cry "dogwhistle" all you want, but skin color has nothing to do with this story.
Then don’t mention the skin color in the first place. I wouldn’t have replied if the two comments above me didn’t paint this as a racial issue by specifically mentioning this was an issue for middle class white people and not just middle class people.
That commenter was actually quoting part of the comment above him…
> The communities that hand-wring the most about predators and risks to children tend to be middle class, suburban, and white
However, yeah, the neighborhoods in US downtowns where I've lived do not feel safe, despite staying in fairly high end accommodations. Crazy people walking around screaming, fighting, harassing people, banging on cars, using drugs laying in the middle of the sidewalk. I would never recommend that a woman, for instance, live in those locations. It's absolutely ridiculous, and it's even more ridiculous for you to try to cast it as a racial issue.
The number of people responding like this is really telling. The first comment in this chain mentioned this was a problem for white people. The person that responded repeated the comment about white people. Then I respond and say brown people only for multiple to accuse me of unnecessarily injecting race. It just shows the number of people who view white as the default. It is only "a racial issue" once brown people are mentioned.
I stand by what I said.