Take a look at US cities ranked by violent crime rate--you'll find Los Angeles waaaaay down the list. Some neighborhoods are a little scary (and the metro area as a whole is slightly higher up the list), but mostly it's a pretty safe place we've got here. So why are Angelenos so terrified?? Startup Nextdoor (whose business model seems to be mostly based on scaring people into joining its neighborhood-based social network) commissioned a poll in the 10 biggest metro areas to see how safe residents felt. Only 29 percent of LA residents feel "very safe" in their neighborhoods, compared to, for instance, 33 percent in much-more-dangerous Atlanta or the charmingly upbeat 48 percent in somewhat-dangerous Philly. Even 39 percent of New Yorkers feel "very safe" (New York is also actually pretty safe). LA feels less "very safe" than every other city except for Houston (23 percent), which is also actually somewhat dangerous. Nationally, 48 percent of people feel "very safe" in their neighborhoods. The survey was weighted to be proportional to actual age/sex/race/education/etc. makeup, but--now that we've given you a hard time about it--they only surveyed 207 Angelenos, so this isn't super statistically significant as a gauge of what percentage of Angeleno actually feel safe; it is, however, still useful as a comparison between cities. Philly is, however you slice it, way braver than LA. And confidential to those 37 people in LA who feel neither "very safe" nor "somewhat safe": calm down, you'll very probably be fine.
· Nextdoor [Official Site]
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