>The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!"
A cousin was visiting us in our nice suburb. We had a slow, not-busy road we walked on when we lived there, and we'd wave to anyone; neighbors, vehicles, etc. Our cousin was sort of uncomfortable, and asked "do you know all these people?" I explained that we knew some of them but were just being polite and friendly. She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
I don't think this occurred to her at the time, but that means she lives in a pretty awful place. Why exactly would it be _dangerous_ to wave at someone in a friendly way? There's only one answer to that question; because you live around violent or unstable people.
Before anyone says I'm just privileged, I've lived in rough areas before, and I can't fathom why anyone would put up with that sort of daily violence, noise and general degradation of quality of life if they otherwise didn't have to. We ultimately ended up moving out of the city just like you said because the crime was getting worse year by year. Do you want some drunk kid blasting his bass right outside your house at 11pm on a weeknight? (for hours, no less) And if you go and try to get him to turn it down there's a significant chance you'll be met with violence? Or people harassing your wife if she's ever "foolish" enough to walk down the street without you? Or to need to explain to your wife "hey, we can't walk through that group of kids, I can't really defend you against more than two attackers." All of these were regular issues for us. Home invasions on our block started ramping up, we knew people who were attacked, shot, killed, just while walking home.
To your point, this wasn't academic. It can be quite the 3rd rail to try to explain _why_ the violence in the city is bad, what is the cause and what is the solution. But when we're talking about my family's safety, I just don't care. I'm not going to live like that, and would have done almost anything to get my family out of that sort of situation. I really can't even fathom people who would write these things off. "Sure, my wife might be murdered and abused in a home invasion, but there are really cool walk-able restaurants!" It's pathological.
> She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
I was born and raised in urban environments.
Let me translate this for rural (or fake rural aka suburbia) minded folks:
In cities people don't wave except to people they actually know/have seen several times because...
It's gauche, awkward, weird.
There are just too many people in cities and nobody can pretend their city is just one big village. People just go on with their lives and don't wave 1 million times per day. Waving is reserved to actual acquaintances.
In this specific case, it was most likely a bad neighborhood or someone with a heightened sense of fear due to reasons that cannot be clarified without knowing the person directly.
Sure, when you compare a "nice suburb" to a "rough area" of the city you'll come to such conclusions. But if the city you lived in is anything like mine, that disorder you experienced is likely highly localized to those "rough areas". Given this, it might be more helpful to compare a "nice suburb" to a "nice area" in a city.
I'm glad you chose the experience of taking a walk as your original example because it was instrumental in helping me to decide that I wanted to raise my family in the city.
COVID offered an opportunity for my young family to spend a month in the suburbs and the thing that sticks with me now after all these years later is how much I hated taking our then 1 year-old for a walk as compared to the city. In the suburbs we walked past the same houses on the same sidewalk-lacking streets barely seeing anyone else. If we wanted anything beyond that it required loading our toddler into the car.
Compare this to a nice area of the city where the density allows for a vast array of possible destinations and plenty of folks to smile or wave at on the way. Walks these days could be to the local park on a Saturday morning for the farmers market, or to the local Italian Ice spot because the weather hasn't gotten too cold yet. While it's still possible to have those experiences in the suburbs, it's hard to be as spontaneous when you've got to consider things like car seats and parking.
> (Boston) .... Why exactly would it be _dangerous_ to wave at someone in a friendly way?
It's not dangerous at all to do this. It's just considered odd & borderline impolite to do that. It's hard to explain to an outsider, but you see it brought up a ton on places like r/boston. The stereotype is that people in the northeast are "kind but not nice". By and large we don't engage in frivolity like greeting random people when walking around.
This is also true of the tube in London - if you talk to a stranger on the morning commute you may as well have peed in their backpack - the response is about the same.
And it can make sense. A lot of people are packed in small space and commuting. Not exactly an uplifting part of the day. I can understand it's considered polite to try to keep quiet.
What's funny is where I live now in Italy (outside of the big tourists areas) is the exact opposite. Any line or idle time you have with random people will become a conversation. It's almost weird to not have a conversation.
People in New England are generally not at all polite but very kind.
Like if you waved at someone they'd give you the bird but if you dropped your groceries someone would help you pick them up.
I live in a rough area. The kind of problems it brings are far, far, far more manageable than the kind of problems that trying to exist in a "nice" area where some large fraction of people will hate me for how I live and have no real problems so they'll focus on me. Nobody gives a shit what you do in the hood. If you don't make part of your living doing some sort of business outside the law the violence will probably never visit you. That said, despite violence being not great, property crime generally is quite low here compared to even much nicer areas in other corners of the country so that takes a lot of the inconvenience off IMO.
>She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
This is the most hilarious thing I've read on this site. Your cousin might get some weird looks waving to random people, but why would they feel unsafe? I have never known more of my neighbors than in Boston, and I've lived all over the U.S.
I think the mistake you're making is assuming the entirety of all cities are rough areas. There are plenty of rough suburbs you don't want to live in either.
> She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
I don't really understand this. It's well known people in the NE don't simply wave at everyone. I grew up in the south so it's odd to me to not ask any person I interact with how their day is going, but I've never seen it as some safety issue. Just different culturally.
> Do you want some drunk kid blasting his bass right outside your house at 11pm on a weeknight? (for hours, no less)
I'm not sure if this is alluding to race, so I'll ignore that part, but kids are going to be kids. Suburbs, city, doesn't matter - if you have teenagers around you'll have things like this. When we lived in a suburb my wife always complained about the kids doing this and I would always chuckle because at one point I was one of those kids ;)
I live in Seattle and we wave to our neighbors every day. We also have block parties with big cookouts, kids running up and down the streets and sidewalks playing with each other after school, and I get to enjoy a highly walkable lifestyle. My son's normal is multiple parks within a few blocks, walking to a small grocery store to pickup ingredients to make dinner, and having multiple friends he can walk to and visit throughout the day.
are you my neighbor? Sounds like where I am, but with only one small corner market in walking distance. There used to be a bigger grocery/deli until about 5 years ago. Now it feels like we're in a bit of a donut hole within Seattle.
The semi rural and rural US south is, in many places, much more dangerous based on crime statistics. Stranger danger is also much less of a factor than is perceived.
Maybe. But I know that many blue cities also play games with crime metrics and what gets classified as what. Not to mention the utter lack of prosecution and consequences trains citizens to stop reporting, leading to the data changing in misleading ways.
> But I know that many blue cities also play games with crime metrics
How do you *know* this?
You've fallen for right wing propaganda. Crime has continuously fallen since the 70's. Individual areas of cities might get worse (there's a cyclical nature to newly built up, desirable areas aging and becoming low-income as other areas get rebuilt), but it is an indisputable fact that you are less likely to be violently attacked today than just about any other point in living history.
And the difference in crime rates in urban and rural areas is grossly overblown. Looking at California numbers, a city-slicker has about a .9% chance of becoming a victim of violent crime, and hick has about a .6% chance. That's a small reduction to a small probability. For context, if your risk tolerance hasn't forced you to cut out meat and alcohol from your diet to avoid cancer, you're miscalculating risk if you think you should flee the cities to avoid violence.