This may be coming from a privileged position, but I don't get the "bad neighbourhood" thing (I can also run quite fast and am generally fit and healthy, so that's also a factor). I'm also based in Australia, so our idea of "bad neighbourhood" might not even be a blip on the US scale of "bad neighbourhood".
I was working in Melbourne, staying near St. Kilda, and was told by some colleagues "don't go down street X at night", so I went down street X at night, had a nice meal there, walked back, no fucking worries at all.
Next morning I heard on the news that someone had been stabbed to death on that street within half an hour of my being out and about there.
The thing is, though, if you're not out causing trouble or selling drugs or buying drugs, or a member of the various competing underworlds, then you're likely to be totally fine. The stabbing was drug related.
It's a bad neighborhood if you're part of what makes it a bad neighborhood - in this case, at least.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood in the US and this is what it meant for us: hearing gun shots every other night, experiencing drive by’s at school, frequent helicopters looking for someone, swat team locking down our neighborhood and evacuating everyone, break-ins multiple times, being threatened at knife point by a random stranger, people putting our dumpsters on fire. Lack of opportunity because everyone around us is poor and in the same situation. No sidewalks, roads in bad condition, shitty schools.
We weren’t part of the problem, we were just kids. But it’s easy to get pulled in when you grow up like that. There’s a big difference between visiting or driving through and growing up in such a place where you feel like you always had to watch your back. Because you spend more time in such a place, it increases your chances of bad things happening.
But it also meant, playing around the streets with the neighborhood kids, great food, neighbors giving each other things like food and essentials, a sort of camaraderie that we had each other’s back. Not everything was bad. However, you never feel truly safe.
Beyond “grabbing a bite to eat“ being a very different level risk than going out to physically exhaust yourself on foot daily, violent crime per capita in the us is several multiples higher than it is in Australia on average, and it’s not remotely evenly distributed. The place most commonly cited as the most dangerous in Australia is Rockhampton in Queensland and the only numbers I could find were from 10 years ago— 2 murders per 100k, and apparently that’s dropped considerably. By contrast, St. Louis Missouri has about four times as many people and their murder rate is about 68 per 100k. St. Louis has about the same number of murders per year as Australia on a whole. I am quite certain that your experience in a rough neighborhood in Australia is not representative of many of our rough neighborhoods here.
Feeling safe is just as important as actually being safe.
I think you partially addressed that already with the privilege part. I know my city has rough areas that definitely have an increased risk of getting mugged, robbed or just jumped for no reason. Knowing that is enough to keep me from going around there unless I have a reason.
Yeah, most people who say parts of a city are "too dangerous to walk around" are overblown, especially in major cities. There are a few cities with a few areas where you probably don't want to be walking around if you don't know the area and the people. But, 90% of the time it's just that it's an immigrant area and people are afraid of difference.
I was working in Melbourne, staying near St. Kilda, and was told by some colleagues "don't go down street X at night", so I went down street X at night, had a nice meal there, walked back, no fucking worries at all.
Next morning I heard on the news that someone had been stabbed to death on that street within half an hour of my being out and about there.
The thing is, though, if you're not out causing trouble or selling drugs or buying drugs, or a member of the various competing underworlds, then you're likely to be totally fine. The stabbing was drug related.
It's a bad neighborhood if you're part of what makes it a bad neighborhood - in this case, at least.