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Is Boston America's safest big city? Maybe, maybe not
By adamg on Mon, 10/07/2024 - 5:35pm
GBH runs some numbers, finds we have some admirable crime stats, but that the mayor and the Economist might have, well, jumped the gun.
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For a while, the FBI numbers
For a while, the FBI numbers said that New York was the safest large city in the country. That sort of number may or may not mean anything, but it was handy to pull out when people said things like "but isn't it dangerous?" or that they didn't want to visit because it wasn't safe.
These things help advise visiting family/friends
Nothing substitutes for knowing an area. But sometimes it helps to ground our perceptions of safety to see some actual data.
I can't really think of many places in the area where I would be uncomfortable walking or cycling in daylight, and fewer where I'd be concerned about biking at night. But I've never bought into the social control messages aimed at controlling women with fear, so I know that I might be an outlier.
Having the data helps when talking to people I know traveling from other areas - I can confidently say "yes, you can walk between the hotels and businesses in the Seaport in the evening and it will probably be okay" or "taking a train to Harvard Square is fine at night".
only New York is legit competitive for safest big city
No one considers a big suburb like Mesa a "big city" regardless of its population. It is twice Boston's geography with 75% the population. Honolulu is similar geography to Boston but only 350,000 population. Boston's peers are NYC, Chicago, SF, Philly, Detroit, Miami and Atlanta. LA, Dallas, SD and Houston are enormous geographies so you'd have to trim out much of the suburban components to make a comparison. And Boston would handily outpace them on safety.
Big City
Boston’s status as a “big city“ seems to change, depending on the narrative.
Is Boston a big city?
Is Boston a big city?
By population? Yes.
650K people alone - but closer to a million within the space that most cities would have annexed long ago (think Boston and all it touches).
Population density is pretty high for a US city, too - Boston is #6 and Cambridge is #5.
Consider how many people are within rapid transit area and I think it qualifies.
Officially, Boston ranks #25 for population within city limits alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
I looked it up last week
It was 694K in 2019.
“Major?” Yes. “Big?” No.
A big city? On paper…maybe…in somebody’s book, but no one should mistake Boston for an actual big city. Boston is a great big medium-sized city, but there are too many physical constraints to prevent Boston becoming a big city. As population grows and reaches a certain point, the pain grows logarithmically (irrespective of housing) until movement and functioning is impossible. (Unless we resort to more bridges, tunnels and elevated roadways.)
Mesa as a comparison?
Nothing against Mesa, but let’s be clear, it’s a suburb of Phoenix.
Incorporate eastern Middlesex County and there’s Mesa. Give Boston the geography of Mesa and we’ve got the lowest murder rate in the nation (probably)
Mesa was Boston's top competitor...
...in a midyear Major Cities Chiefs Report that Mayor Wu cited to back up her "safest major city" claim. That's why we talked about it so much early on.
In the FBI's 2023 data, the lowest murder rates were: Honolulu, San Diego, Virginia Beach, Arlington (TX), New York City, Colorado Springs, El Paso, and Mesa. Huge range of populations and urban geographies.
FBI data are a huge pain to work with, but here are a couple of searchable, customizable sites that might be of interest:
https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-mid-year-2024-update/ (scroll down for a cool dashboard)
https://realtimecrimeindex.com/