What area of the southside of Chicago? The great majority of the southside of Chicago is great and fine to visit too, albeit there wont be much to see or do. It's highly residential.
I live in a highly residential area too. A favourite walk of mine is up the coast from Seaburn to South Shields. Sometimes I need to cut the walk short and so I head up from the coast and search for a bus route. This can take me through miles of residential neighbourhoods. So yes, I do know how this works. There's plenty to see and do.
Another time when we all still lived in a little house overlooking Lloyd Park in a highly residential area of Walthamstow (at the top right on the London Underground map) one of my kids, the autistic one who has a quirky sense of humour and was at that time in their late teens, thought it would be fun to be able to tell people that we lived within walking distance of Kew Gardens, which is near the bottom left of the London Underground map. So they walked all the way there, through Clapton, Hackney, Finsbury Park, Camden, Paddington, Notting Hill and so on to Chiswick and finally across the river to Kew. It took 5 or 6 hours, and then the tired teenager hopped on the tube and came home. There are some of London's roughest residential areas on the way. But London at its worst isn't that rough.
And so we could always tell people that we lived within walking distance of the famous Botanical Gardens.
We're like that. We walk for pleasure. Is this an unknown pastime in Illinois?
Because Chicago is a big city. If you don't live there, you don't just "go for an evening stroll" through Englewood because it physically does not make any sense to do that.
And if you're visiting a relative, you sure as hell know not to be out too late in the area.
If you don't know shit about the city, refrain from asking stupid ass leading questions with dog whistle language, please.
So you wouldn't advise my autistic kid to take a stroll around Englewood? Okay. As I said earlier, I can really see why people don't want to count it when assessing whether America is safe
I honestly think you are being willfully obtuse here. The people you keep responding to are not saying what you think they are saying. America is huge. There is obviously a problem with gun violence in places here. Many posters here with left-leaning politics are in favor of gun control and social safety nets to help the impoverished. I don't think anyone here denies that there are dangerous areas inside/near major cities. I live just outside of St. Louis and the crime rate inside the city proper is constantly in contention for the worst in the country.
If your position is simply "the mere existence of dangerous areas in your country impacts the reputation of the country as a whole" then ok. There's nothing to argue here. I won't debate the point. If you're just visiting the country and not providing specifics on what you plan to do and your question is "will I be safe" I guess the correct answer is "what are you going to be doing here?" For most visitors, however, the answer is going to be "I'm staying in a tourist-y area." Like if you're flying into St. Louis and staying downtown for a couple of days and your itinerary is "I want to see the Arch, go to a Cardinals game, go on a brewery tour, maybe hit the zoo," then my honest advice is you'll be perfectly fine. This is all very safe stuff. If your plan is to go to a night game, get blind drunk at the nearest bar, then meander aimlessly around town after hours I'd caution against this plan and note the crime rates of the city.
The typical visitor in a tourist-friendly area is going to be very safe statistically speaking. Again, that's not to try to say that there aren't issues with violence here. I'm not trying to be patriotic in telling you that one's trip to Las Vegas, San Diego, downtown Chicago, etc. have a near 100% chance of not ending up shot or beaten. This is just genuine relaying of facts to someone who is considering visiting the country. If your point is "what if they're going somewhere less safe?" then OK. They'll be less safe there.
It really does sound as if a lot of people want to talk about areas where nobody with any sense goes, but are scared of using language that might give the wrong impression or feed a false narrative. Fair enough, but at the end of the day you can't arbitrarily discount a dangerous area when assessing whether the country is dangerous. Why is this so difficult to communicate? I must be really poor at this.
Because it has nothing to do with what the person in the beginning of this thread intended to derail the thread with. The OP of a completely different topic literally asked about how safe things were as a tourist, and as a tourist visiting, for example, Chicago, you're not going to fucking Englewood. You're going to the loop, you're going to Gold Coast, Wicker Park, River North, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, maaaaaybe Fulton.
Why make these assumptions? When a friend tells me they're visiting London I don't start compiling a list of places I assume they'll go to. It's also a huge city, though I'm not sure how the geographical extent compares to that of Chicago. But go where you like. There are bits I don't care for but that's mainly because I find the constant drone of traffic near to a main road rather upsetting.
