#but the convo was specifically about adults with autonomy and the ability to move wherever

[lukewarmbreadatamoderatepace]

Always weird seeing people talking about violent crime statistics with Baltimore as this, like... "obviously unlivably bad" standard. As this cartoonish abstraction they've made up in their head. I saw someone on here literally refer to it as "hell on earth" and like... sorry no? That's just so... lazy, incurious, reactionary. It's like, you realize that real people live there, yeah? Real people with normal lives? Who live there and think it's basically fine, or even actively like it? You understand that such people exist yes??

It's... mostly just a very affordable city with bad public transit and an abundance of vacant rowhouses, ime. I lived and worked in Baltimore for like 5 years, took public transit regularly, and it was fine.* And like, I was in some of the shittier neighborhoods because that's all I could afford, not the isolated island of rich white people** that is Johns Hopkins-- which is its whole own separate thing! Did the guy calling Baltimore "hell on earth" know the first thing about the makeup of the city, the different dynamics at play? I'm guessing not.

(My impression from living there was always that if you're not personally involving yourself in gang stuff then your risk of violence is about the same as any city, it's mostly just gangs doing violence to each other that throws off the numbers.*** Now, I'm a bit of a shut-in so my experience isn't completely unbiased but I had plenty of friends who weren't and they felt basically the same way. Like even in real cheap neighborhoods it's basically just. Fine. I wonder how often it's like that, really.

#*I am not cut out for city living (I like nature and don't like there always being other people around) so like it was BAD for me #but basically any proper city would be bad for me without a lot of specific accommodations #and 'bad infrastructure' = 'no natural spaces' was SUCH a bigger factor than abstract information about crime rates #**the way baltimore's class division is so intensely along racial lines is SO STARK and SO BAD #***I would not be surprised if the picture looked pretty different for kids growing up in those neighborhoods! #but the convo was specifically about adults with autonomy and the ability to move wherever #oh hey it's actually not that hard to bring the tags over from the drafts after all #squirmy