No. of Recommendations: 2
No, not really. As I noted elsewhere, I lived in Manhattan in the early 90's. Cities have never been, and never will be, crime-free Edens free of problems. To borrow your formulation, the correct amount of crime in any city is zero - but that doesn't mean that any amount of crime more than zero results in an "urban hellscape" (any more than it would result in a "rural hellscape," since those areas have non-zero crime as well). Which is why you can't buy an apartment in these urban areas at 1990's-era prices. Because they're massively successful economic engines with huge demand for living there. Go rent Alphabet City and see whether you'd rather live in mid-1980's East Village in NYC or today's.
I grew up in St. Louis in the 70s/80s. We used to have mob hits, car bombings and all kinds of things.
The point is this: Most of that stuff got cleaned up.
And then - in the span of 6 months in Seattle's case - a lot of that good work was flushed down the toilet. It doesn't take much to ruin a city.
When folks say "urban hellscape" they're referring to the steep decline experienced by a lot of blue cities in the wake of George Floyd.
