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I live in NYC, and I've never heard of anyone living like that. I've lived here for about 8 years, and I know of exactly 1 instance of somebody I personally know being affected by street crime, and that was just a phone snatching. Maybe some women carry pepper spray, but I've never noticed it. IMO, carrying pepper spray indicates that things are pretty safe because it's not very effective against much. I do know lots of people, men and women, young and old, who have no concerns at all about walking around alone late at night, even drunk. I've never heard of anybody telling people everything they're doing in case "something happens".
I'm not really sure if car break-ins are much of a problem honestly, mostly because very few people have them, and if they do, they mostly park them in expensive private parking garages. It does seem a little surprising I guess, but I would think I would have heard of it happening at least some if it was actually common.
It is fairly common for people who want to have kids to move out, but that's more because it's quite expensive to get a large enough space, not because of concerns about crime. There definitely are a lot of kids of all ages around, including in strollers and being walked around. Enough that it's reasonably common to be mildly annoyed by someone wheeling a baby stroller around in a place that seems kind of inappropriate, like inside a crowded store.
You're about 30 years too late for NYC. There still are cities like that, though.
Maybe! I've lived in or visited several big cities, and never seen or heard of things like that though. It seems more plausible to me that things might be more like what Maiq described in what I guess you could call "dead cities" - the medium-small cities that used to be thriving, but all of the industries that were there left for various reasons. Most of the decent people with good life potential also left due to the lack of good jobs long before things got bad. The resulting downward spiral leads to a pretty bad place.
But then, those places are not exactly havens of progressivism, and I don't think any blue-affiliated people are going to decide to move there, which was the point of this whole thread.
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