Gawker and Lists
CQ Press’ crime rankings are out, and St. Louis came out on top (in the bad way). Just as an aside, New York came in at 269. So everyone, stop thinking New York is big and bad and dangerous!
But Max Read at Gawker thinks this is a bad way to think about cities:
And honestly? A lot of the top 25 are pretty okay places! (Except for Washington, D.C., which is a horrible, horrible city.) Even Camden has a pretty nice aquarium. I mean: Ranking cities based on their crime rates is a pretty depressing and frankly sort of irresponsible way to think about cities, and crime, and urban living, and so forth! But let’s not let that stop us from making lists, which, as we all know, is the best thing about being human.
I see, and can get behind, the point that judging cities based solely on their violent crime rates is a pretty bad idea. But it is a pretty important aspect of judging the livability of a place. If I’m trying to decide on a place to live, the probability of my being stabbed on the street is something I’m going to consider, and rightfully so. In the case of some cities (New Orleans or my hometown of Buffalo), other factors will outweigh a high crime rate.
The CQ Press lists don’t claim to be a full account of the what it is like to live in different cities. It is only an account of which cities are dangerous, which are not, and which lie somewhere in between. Everyone would agree that New Orleans is a great and vibrant city despite its high crime rate, and CQ Press isn’t trying to challenge that.
Unlike other lists, which try to translate objective statistics into some kind of subjective measurement (see this ranking of the nation’s “worst” cities in which to live), CQ is just taking objective data and organizing it for us. “Dangerousness” can be described pretty objectively, and looking at crime stats is the way to do it.
I can’t see a reason why providing the public with as much information as possible is destructive. Also, Gawker is pretty fond of list-making itself. See here, here, and here.
