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To wildly speculate, NYC is much more walkable and has better public transit than SF. This puts the people more in touch with each other and increases the feeling of community, and also makes it harder to smash a car window when no one is looking.

Or maybe NYC is just bigger and the crime happens further away from where you personally live? The feeling of safety is so subjective.

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Could be a contributing factor. As for me I live downtown in Manhattan in a 'nice' neighborhood (though in downtown they're nearly all nice). The equivalent in SF is the opposite.

One thing could be that there are real neighborhoods where people live in the denser parts of the city. Our public schools (in Manhattan) are extremely good, so families do actually live there. AFAIK folks generally leave SF once they have kids.

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