The Mugging of City Neighborhoods

Madame M's post on DCBlogs, Muggin About (http://dcblogs.com/?p=625), hit a chord with me. I've been thinking about these very things a lot lately.

I think we're on the same Yahoo Group list serve. And while I've never been mugged, either, (although assaulted, yes), I have to agree with her. The common threads on the list serve: too much crime, and how to keep out new development (i.e., condos on 15th St. SE, taverns on PA Avenue SE).

Are these two issues related?

Jane Jacobs, the patron saint of all urban souls, would say yes: busy streets are safe streets. How do you make busy streets? 1. More density (i.e., more than 50 units per acre, which is what a row-house neighborhood averages) and 2. mixed uses, as in stores, cafes, print shops, offices, schools, churches, clubs, and yes, bars.

An urban neighborhood is not a suburban neighborhood and shouldn't be treated as such. A cut-off suburban neighborhood of single family homes can afford to have no commercial development because no one can get to it very easily. A city neighborhood, wedged in between other city neighborhoods, with mixes of socio-economic classes, races, cultures, and easily accessable by foot, metro, car, bus, taxi, bicycle, etc, can't afford to NOT have commercial development.

All the scariest, most unsafe areas of DC are residential neighborhoods. The lower the density, the less safe they are: east of the river, the density is lower than around RFK, there is no decent commercial development, and the crime rate is much higher. (I don't include upper-NW, which, for all intents and purposes, is suburban.)

These things are all related. My neighborhood (U Street, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant) has much the same demographic as East Capitol Hill, but is INFINITELY safer. The reason: 150 - 250 housing units per acre and tons of mixed use development.

If you don't want to have any commercial development around you, and you want to live in a house, you have two choices: live in the suburbs, or live in an unsafe city neighborhood. There are lots of quiet streets full of beautiful rowhouses in my neighborhood, but they are all within a block of the businesses on U and 17th and 18th and Florida and 14th and P and Q and R, etc., probably too close for the complainers on the Yahoo Groups list serve.

To be safer, areas like Capitol Hill East need more density and more commercial development. 15th Street SE between East Capitol and PA Ave used to have lots of businesses. Most have been turned into housing or remain boarded up. 14th Street also had businesses, most of which are gone. Neighbors should show up at ANC meetings and encourage development, not try to stop it. Worrying about the historic architectural character of a neighborhood when people are scared to walk outside to enjoy that historic character is ludicrous.

I moved from Hill East about a year and half ago partly because I realized that the anti-development attitude and the NIMBYism expressed on the list serve meant many long years of stagnation and of crime. And boredom. However, I didn't move, strangely enough, because of the crime.

DC Crime: Philly Inquirer vs. Washington Post

Why does the Philadelphia Inquirer have more insightful reporting of DC’s crime statistics than any local paper? This article from January 14 is better than anything the Post or Times or Examiner have published. It brings up points I wrote about in a post at the end of December: the economic and demographic changes taking place in DC (gentrification) helped lower the crime rate, and DC is exporting its crime problems to other local jurisdictions.

Admittedly, the Inquirer article only touches on other problems that gentrification causes: loss of affordable housing and disruption of communities, problems which the Washington Post seems to obsess over. But the article does balances its good-news story with a litany of DC’s problems: “drug trafficking, illegal firearms (in a city that bans handguns), reluctant witnesses, and a steady flow of ex-cons returning to the streets.”

The Philly piece also presents some fascinating statistics, which our hometown papers weren't able to dredge up during their coverage of the drop in the DC crime rate:

In DC, “the number of men ages 18 to 24 - those mostly likely to kill or be killed in any city - has fallen by a third in five years, according to those same estimates. This has come as Washington's overall population has grown.”

And “the District has about 80,000 more jobs than it did in 1998, the region 500,000 more.” In that same time period, Philadelphia lost 15,000 jobs.

These numbers beg some questions: where did all the young men go? Who has taken all those jobs? Near the end of the article is this paragraph, something similar I’ve never seen in any local paper:

“Even in some of the toughest neighborhoods of Washington, police say, young people now grow up knowing lots of adults who have succeeded in legitimate careers, not through drug dealing. So officials and activists can preach the value of staying in school and out of trouble without fear of sounding ridiculously out of touch.”

Is any of this true? Well, considering the Philly paper has no dogs in DC’s political fights, which are boiling over with issues of gentrification, race, class, and crime, it’s probably more or less objective and therefore trustworthy.

Maybe DC is doing better than it was when I first moved here, not just for those with money, but also for those less fortunate. Maybe some of those 500,000 new jobs went to people in our poorest neighborhoods, and Mayor Williams’ ideas of economic growth were correct. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for good news.

DC is full of “Concerned” Passers-by

Along the lines of yesterday’s post about crime, I used to have a house I was renovating in Southeast near RFK. One day, my brother and I and a couple friends were out front on the side walk eating lunch, and we had various items sitting out on a gang box in the front yard: cell phone, wallet, Pringles. Here’s the scene: four of us, filthy, covered with concrete dust and mud, swigging water and wolfing down munchos and such, with various large and heavy tools leaning haphazardly about, and this guy walking down the street says “someone left a wallet and a cell phone sitting there. You better be careful.” My brother, the 6 foot 3 inch, bearded, concrete-carrying, 20 oz. hammer swinging broad shouldered carpenter, says back to him “why, you going to steal them?”

The man wasn’t sure what to so say to this, as the four of us stood there staring at him. “No, no, but this neighborhood ain’t so good.” He walked on.

Why do people make comments like this? To make others feel uncomfortable? Maybe they think they really are being helpful, but I think it’s because it crossed this guys mind to steal the wallet and cell phone. And he would have, except for the four guys with easy access to picks and shovels and sawzalls standing close by.

It’s the same as the people who are always suspicious of other people’s motives. We all know these kinds of people (at work mostly, because who would choose to be friends with them?) The person who resents someone who just got a raise and assumes she got it for sleeping with the boss, or the person who locks his modular-cubicle-fake-office door when he goes home each night, just in case. These people assume the worst about everyone, I suspect because they assume the worst about themselves as well. Given the chance, they’d sleep with the boss to get ahead, or root through other people’s offices after hours. Either that, or they’ve had too many random people make foreboding comments to them.

Overdue Thanks!

I’m long over-due in my thanks to Arjewtino for plugging my fledgling blog (say that sentence a few times and see if it still makes sense. No alcohol required (NAR)...). Also, thanks to DCBlogs, who picked up my piece about the DC street cleaning holiday and made me feel famous for a while.

DC Crime Rate

The murder rate in DC is the lowest it’s been in years. And, in a time when the violent crime rate all across the country is going up, the crime rate for all crimes in DC is going down. This is a good thing, but the plunging crime rate isn’t all about better policing, as Chief Ramsey claims. That’s part of it. However, the population MPD is policing is different than it was 15 years ago. The economy of the city has changed and grown, creating more opportunities. It’s a complicated scenario. It’s no coincidence that the crime rate in places like Prince George’s County is going up at the same time it’s going down in DC. Policing and condo conversions don’t solve the problems caused by entrenched poverty. A problem moved is not a problem solved. It’s just that DC tax payers don’t have to pay for as much of the burden anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about the change. But it saddens me that as a country and as a city we don’t do more to empower people of all walks of life to make their lives better. Why not use a version of “microlending” here in this country? Basically, microlending is lending small amounts of money to small business people, or people who want to start businesses, enough to give them that little bit extra that could mean the difference between success and failure. Why do all economic revitalization projects in DC have to involve huge amounts of cash and real estate and take years to realize? A small loan and perhaps some business support could help the guy who hauled away junk from my place old place on Capitol Hill buy another truck so he can hire more people; a small loan could help a woman open that coffee shop she’s always wanted to open. If microlending can help India, why on earth can’t we do it here?