Ditch the white shoes! Minimize staring at maps on sidewalks, and if you need a bit of time to regroup dive into a cafe or kebab/taco joint. If your random track gets you to a sketchy zone, increase your speed and outward sense of purpose.
I have wandered all over a bunch of Mexican cities, and still have only ever been mugged on a hiking trail in the N. Georgia (US) mountains.
Hilarious! You must have only been in the first world then.
I moved from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one of the safest. Wandering in the latter is fun, in the former - it's Russian roulette. You have to go from A to B, as fast and carefully as possible.
fear is mostly irrational, as people are generally bad at perceiving risk objectively. statistics show that nearly all cities and neighborhoods are generally quite safe for casual visitors and residents alike. vehicular accidents are more likely than violent confrontation, for instance, yet no one bats an eye at getting into a car.
even in the rare occasion of some type of confrontation, most people want to resolve it without violence, and certainly not death. people have varying strategies for such confrontations--congeniality, causticity, evasiveness, etc.--and it's worth developing yours through practice, rather than living in fear. as alluded, most of the sketchy characters in the tenderloin are druggies, not thugs, and really don't care about you at all.
Statistics often miss a huge amount of threatening behaviour, and in many countries you just outright cannot trust the stats at all. Plus, people will take more precautions in areas that are genuinely more dangerous - if they didn't, the statistics would look much worse.
In general I think people are actually quite good at perceiving the risk present to them. That doesn't mean 'always correct' but it does mean 'has a good idea of which places are at much greater risk of turning dangerous at 2am'.
Finally, don't forget survivor bias: people who were killed or whatever in a random dangerous area simply cannot go on to report how unsafe an area or activity is. Overall your chances of a bad outcome might still be low in terms of absolute risk but being in the wrong area could easily be hundreds of times more dangerous than anywhere else you've been.
no, people are mostly terrible at perceiving actual risk vs. the imagined, because evolutionarily, it was much less harmful to get it wrong one way than the other. we humans no longer live in a world of such unpredictable mortality. and even if imprecise, statistics provide relevant information, especially on relative and general magnitude. moreover, serious crimes are the ones most likely to be reported, and therefore having more accurate stats, so survivorship bias isn't a significant factor.
humans consistently overestimate the dangers of the unknown and consistently underestimate the dangers of the known, often by orders of magnitude. we're also wired to be highly overconfident in our estimations of just about anything. your conjectures include prime examples of such mis-estimation, e.g., "much greater risk" and "hundreds of times more dangerous", implying all that avoidance behavior is justified. but death by firearm, for instance, is caused 90+% of the time by the self or familiars, yet we spend all of our time and resources worrying about strangers and extremely rare scenarios (armed robbery, home invasion, mass shootings, terrorism, etc.) rather than the common (suicide, accidental shooting, crimes of passion, etc.). mostly, we worry about the wrong things most of the time.
I accidentally walked through a Rio favela one evening. Never ran into anyone and didn’t realize it until the next day when I was looking at a map. But I believe by most accounts, that was foolish and lucky. Crime, including robbery and kidnapping, is quite common in Rio. It’s common for nice buildings to have armed guards outside them.
I’m American so I’d love to hear locals tell me how wrong/right my belief of luck/foolishness was.
I've accidentally walked through a few "bad" neighborhoods while traveling and mostly found them just fine. I think the thing is that they might be fine to travel through once or twice because the odds really aren't all that high you'll get mugged, but if you travel through there every day of your life because it's where you live, you're much more likely to at some point have witnessed or experienced first-hand the violence. So it's understandable that locals might steer you away, even if it's still not especially likely that you'll have a bad experience on the one time you pass through.
That said, I often get poor advice from wealthier residents of "dangerous" cities, because they tend to sequester themselves from the poorer parts of town and think it absurd that any traveler would want to visit or pass through. I suspect in that case there is some kind of classism or other prejudice involved that as an outsider you are immune to because you didn't grow up in the environment that produced it.
Either way, although locals can provide you with some data points, I think ultimately when you're traveling you have to make your own risk assessment based on the situation. And this is true whether you are in a city or the countryside - I think it's an awareness that most frequent travelers develop over time.
As someone who lived for a few years as an expat in Brazil, you got really lucky. I spent a lot of time on the streets, with nothing but a short, a t-shirt, and havaianas, and I speak Spanish and Portuguese, and even so I would try to avoid crossing a Rio favela as much as possible.
We are talking of a city where mobs close a highway tunnel with automatic guns, stop traffic, and rob every car stuck in the tunnel. On broad daylight. Life is not worth much, neither theirs nor yours.
Maybe before heading out, memorise a few no-go zones next time?
probably a marginal rise in risk, but not enough to warrant a complete change in behavior (i.e., actively avoiding the area). you'd need to quantify "common" and the relevant priors before you could know for sure. that's not to say it's prudent to be an idiot and flaunt your wealth or something, but that risk is relative and to act accordingly.
I think you're right, but there is also the possibility that people avoiding places and situations which feel unsafe is a factor in the low number of incidents.
that's marginal though, as people might be, at the margin, shifting the places they go, rather than not going anywhere (covid lockdowns excepted). so that might induce a marginal change in incident rates, but not anywhere near at a magnitude to warrant a change of behavior.
the biggest threat in our urban walking lives is really cars[0], and even that isn't so large that we should remain in a state of constant fear.
[0]: pollution is actually the biggest (external) threat, since it's estimated to be responsible for millions of lives lost annually worldwide, but that's regardless of urban walking, so it's beyond the scope of the argument here.
Once I was lucky enough to observe the iconic green Art Nouveau neon sign of HOTEL ESSEX in the Tenderloin when just the right letters were burnt out to spell "HOT SEX".
Hotel Essex, at the corner of Ellis St. and Larkin St., in The Tenderloin, San Francisco.
>Hotel Essex. 684 Ellis Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and seventy-two baths. Architects: Righetti and Headman. 1912.
>Though unique amid the surrounding architecture, the Art Nouveau-inspired facade of the Essex was nevertheless crafted to blend in by its designer, James Francis Dunn. The hotel’s neon blade sign is especially fine. Now owned by the Community Housing Partnership, the Essex began undergoing renovation late in 2006.
>Night-Sign---Essex
>By the end of April 2008, its renovation was complete. The paint job is unfortunately garish and unbecoming, but the new marquee and restored blade sign are spectacular, although it seems the latter may still have some electrical problems. Even so, the corner of Ellis and Larkin is utterly transformed after dark by the torrid glow of neon.
I've walked aimlessly around Boston, Chicago, Manhattan, London, Edinburgh, and probably a few others I'm forgetting.
Nice neighborhoods are nice to walk around.
Sure some cities are complete cesspools that shouldn't be walked around at all, but in general people aren't going to walk around those cities, so mentioning that doesn't add much to the conversation.
There are a lot of dismissive replies to this comment but as a woman who has tried this in "safe" but unfamiliar cities, things can get scary very quickly. Catcalls are inevitable, and only the beginning. A catcall from a passing car that has slowed to swerve towards you is terrifying. Yes, self-defense and being aware of your surroundings help, but don't exactly lend themselves to the state of mind described in this article. I am not speaking from paranoia, but from experience.
Thank you for the reminder. As a 95 kg white male who only on a few very rare occasions felt even a bit nervous walking anywhere, it is good to get a reminder that different people experience our same world very differently.
> It is not the physique / weight but the intent, which is some kind of sexual harassment at a minimum.
that seems like a weird take. Most of the time I'd think people wandering unfamiliar streets will be accosted by assholes looking for money than looking for someone to sexually harass. Even catcallers will have various motivations which might not involve intent to sexually harass (even though that's usually the effect).
Men have a lower risk of being sexually assaulted while a mugger or a scammer will happily target individuals of either sex if they think they can get away with it. Men do tend to the preferred target for someone looking to start a fight however which can make a difference depending on the area and how territorial the local thugs are.
Still, I'd feel way more comfortable as a 60kg woman who was fit and knew how to defend herself than I would as a 60kg man who had no idea how to fight and little muscle. In either case if someone assaulted me I would be targeted because I'm being perceived as weak and vulnerable, and in only one of those scenarios would I be in a position to quickly give an assailant cause to reassess and back off.
Staying aware of your surroundings and taking sensible precautions when wandering (anywhere) is good advice for anybody.
>Still, I'd feel way more comfortable as a 60kg woman who was fit and knew how to defend herself than I would as a 60kg man who had no idea how to fight and little muscle.
I imagine that just demonstrating that you're ready and able to fight would be enough to dissuade an attacker who was just looking for an easy mark, but even if they persist I'm not sure raw strength would necessarily win out over skill and stamina. I suppose it's a matter of how skilled and how athletic/healthy you are vs the person you'd be fighting. I doubt I'd find a decent answer to the question though. I'm not sure it could be researched ethically and even it could, what would a representative sample of street muggers and rapists even look like? It might need to include everything from gangbangers and strung out junkies to drunken frat boys and mentally ill homeless people.
Strength is critical in fighting. I have assumed that even an expert can't go up against people in different weight classes in fighting sports, and that basic skill is something that all sporty people have.
My original point was not about being accosted. You would be surprised how quickly someone yelling about your genitals will take you from "aimless strolling" to fight or flight, regardless of their weight or your level of fitness.
This is my first comment but I have read this site daily since I created the account in March. I felt that my experience would be a valuable addition to the thread and I am not attempting to speak for all women. I'm sorry if it came off that way and I am genuinely happy that you haven't had this experience. This site seems to be a bit of an echo chamber sometimes so I thought I'd offer a differing opinion.
I hope you keep commenting! I think your experience brought a good balance to an otherwise one-sided viewpoint.
I think a lot of people here haven't really been exposed to actual dangerous areas in the world, but even in seemingly safe areas, I know a lot of my female friends feel very unsafe walking there alone. All it takes is one drunk dude...
Thank you! I love seeing the technical posts, I'm such a nerd. I haven't had much to contribute, just absorbing. This post was different, I learned about flânerie in college, loved the concept and tried it, and got a reality check. Thought it would be worth a comment.
You're being downvoted but you're completely correct. You can't 'aimlessly stroll' without being delusional in many places. Unsafe areas exact a massive psychological toll on residents.
Eh. As a city person you’ll have developed certain instincts and as long as you follow those instincts while you wander, the probability of something happening is usually quite low.
I really miss Virtual Tourist. The site had "Off the beaten path" and "places to avoid". I was so comfortable and prepared in an unknown city on day one that other visitors would come up to me and ask for directions.
TripAvisor is the next closest thing, but it's not exactly the same.
Yes, as an American living in a city (even a safe one by American standards) almost every city I travel to is safer than default (except for some travel to places of great natural beauty like Madagascar, where I did not wander the cities).
This assumes that the sample of murders over the population is uniformly distributed. But I think it's very obvious this is not the case!
Would you please read up on the kinds and degrees of relationships between perpetrator and victim in the statistics? You will find that the vast majority of cases involve two people who already have a prior relationship, and typically a close relationship either in a social or business sense.
Random murders happen so rarely, you can be confident in the assumption that your family is safe unless you get involved with some sketchy people. But then, it's your responsibility to avoid those people, not the city's job to do that work for you.
Looking at wikipedia's list, I have walked all over Ensenada and Guadalajara w/o problems. In fact, I really enjoyed them. But I know how to walk a city and read a barrio. Mexico City is really something, FWIW.
I will say that I have felt more uncomfortable walking in certain parts of LA, NYC, Oakland, Chicago, and yes SF (I lived SOMA in early '90s, before the boom), than I have in Mexican cities. (Not minimizing the carnage, if you live outside of the nice parts, I'm sure it's hell.)
