Unfortunately if you don't want to live in an environment like the one this person helped build, it seems necessary to be either extremely rich or comfortable with high crime rates, or willing to leave the country entirely.
Here's a simple study that discusses a lot of that: http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professi...
Personally, I found it pretty easy to live in two different college towns (less than 100k pop), not own a car, and enjoy relatively walkable areas. Then I moved to TN for work and got laughs in the interview when I asked about public transportation. I imagine the suburban reflex kicks in strongly for some people once they have a kid or two.
I've never been able to ascertain wether the insistence that suburbs are much safer comes from not understanding the actual risk, or something more sinister (racism - probably unintentional).
If I have a kid in good school, I can spend all that time and effort by something else. As a consequence, good school makes my kid to gain that something else and both of us to have less stressful life. I'm going to be involved too, but we will be both doing something we enjoy or something that adds bonuses on top on what school should be teaching.
That parental involvement can be both difficult and uncomfortable or pleasurable and easy. Which one it is going to be depends a lot on school choice.
I'd add a caveat that many of the side effects of crimes are area dependent--a gunshot will disturb and affect the psychological wellbeing of far more people in very dense areas. That's why many people end up with an overstated impression on how common crime in cities is.
Though I think even per capita, most cities have it worse than the suburbs...
For an example, if you're on a block there's 100% going to be a robbery in the next 5 minutes, if there are also 200 other people on that block, then you still only have a 0.5% chance of being robbed.
Essentially, because so many crimes only involve a single (or relatively few) victim(s), your odds of being involved need to account for how many other people are around you, and not just the odds that it will happen in the same area as you.
Your measure of "per unit area" doesn't account for the fact most people aren't going to be involved with the crime (eg, robbed), but will all be in the same impacted area.
So, essentially, it over-calculates how likely you actually are to be the victim of a crime. Per unit area is only useful if you want to know how close you're likely to be to a crime being committed, and not how likely you are to be the victim.
>...Your measure of "per unit area" doesn't account for the fact most people aren't going to be involved with the crime (eg, robbed), but will all be in the same impacted area.
I think those assumptions are where I disagree. a) I care about (not) being near crime, and b) crime doesn't randomly sample across the set of all people, but makes me have to avoid certain times, places, and activities.
I would rather be around more crime, but victim to less of it. Your analysis trades the potential for being a victim more often to be around less total crime, which is why I think it's somewhat suspect. Perhaps that really is a trade you're willing to make, but I'm dubious.
> crime doesn't randomly sample across the set of all people, but makes me have to avoid certain times, places, and activities
Again, per capita measure is more important for figuring out if you should avoid an area than the crimes per area metric. (Also left out of this discussion is the distribution of offenses committed, which is paramount I'd argue.)
An example from where I live: there's higher crime per unit area at 9pm (it varies by time) at the mall downtown than the gas station/bowling alley/billiards room complex where the gang members loiter in the south end of town. (I looked up police numbers, because you made me curious.) But I know which one I'd rather be at based on the distribution of types of crimes and the per capita numbers. Hint: it's not the gas station.
This is a good example of higher numbers of people hiding a lower rate of victimization per person: there are literally hundreds of times more people downtown than at the gas station, so a marginally higher crime per area rate means I'm actually less likely to be involved in a crime. (Given how little of the mall you can see at once, I likely wouldn't even know it happened.)
So let me ask you: what is it you think that the crime per area figure gives you that crime per capita doesn't?
E.g. NYC (Dense - http://www.city-data.com/city/New-York-New-York.html) vs. Houston (Sprawl - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Houston-Texas.html)