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Notes -
I don’t think these are great counterpoints as, LatAm is one of the most ethnically diverse places of the world, and it’s definitely true that people structure the cities there based on fleeing from crime.
But there may be something in what you mention about the idea of fleeing cities, in the US, city cores became the crime ridden parts, whereas in LatAm, the outskirts are typically more dangerous and the city center is more clean and well kept.
That’s probably part of it. But in my opinion, car culture is the biggest factor here. Here in the US we went all in on designing everything around the car, and it upended basic communal life in my opinion.
Probably helps that the Mexican government never wages war on the productive classes within the city and never forced the children of the middle-class into the most violent neighborhoods at bayonet point.
America had functional urban life from its founding to the 1960s... then the federal government waged literal war on it
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edit: this is why Canadian cities consitently remain intact in-spite of everything, even with modern homelessness and drug problems the middle and upper-middle class will still live in "inner suburbs" as few as 100 meters from housing projects or homeless shelters... because they can send their kids to schools, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, where their kids won't be interacting with that and anyone dealing drugs or interrupting class or comitting violence would be removed.
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