In a level of cluelessness I am not sure has ever been equaled in urban affairs commentary, we have this nugget:
Urban scholar Joel Kotkin says inevitably, the killing will spill over into the city’s core. “A lot of the Toronto establishment, if you want to put it that way,
sees itself as this hip cool thriving city doing so much better than
many American cities,” says Kotkin. Increasingly, Toronto is a domain
of the very rich and very poor, he says, as the middle class and the
jobs they create migrate to the suburbs. Violent crime is a major part
of that migration. “I mean, (crime in Toronto) hasn’t reached the level of New York in
the 1970s,” he said. “(But) people talk about crime when they talk
about Toronto now, where it was a non-issue not so long ago.”
By any meaningful standard of comparison Toronto, though more stratified than it once was, remains a city that is on another planet of economic diversity compared to US cities with a strong thriving urban middle class, a large urban working population, and much better conditions for the poor. Fortunately my colleague Kevin Stolarick who works with actual statistics and facts benchmarking North American cities puts the matter in perpsective.
Toronto’s numbers are “phenomenally wonderful” compared to equivalent
cities south of the border. The murder rate in Toronto this year will
be slightly more than three per 100,000 people. Detroit’s murder rate
in 2004 was 42, while Washington’s was 36.
Having lived in New York, Boston, DC, Pittsburgh and other US cities, I can confess Toronto is a world apart in terms of crime and violence. Several people were murdered in our neighborhood in Northwest DC. I would worry every time Rana went for a walk outside alone or with a friend in broad daylight. We locked down our house at night and put the security system on: If there was a rattle or noise in the middle of the night we jumped out of bed. In Toronto where we line a mile or so from the city core, people simply do not worry at all about violent crime. Kids – yes there are lots and lots of them from all class backgrounds in the city of Toronto – walk safely on the street and take the subway or bus unescorted to get around.
UPDATE: NYC is reporting a record low number of murders for 2007: 500.
