Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterLee21
Why is it not palatable? Is Downtown LA or LA in general not safe? I hate to sound stereotypical as of now, but are there any gun shootings around town? Or small crimes like theft or burglary?
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Most of Los Angeles, as most American cities, is generally safe during the day for most people as long as you don't go looking for trouble. While crime has been decreasing nationwide, particularly in our city centers for many years after it skyrocketed in the mid/late-20th century, we still have one of the highest crime rates in the developed world, and there are still areas that I would not venture into at night (mostly areas of concentrated poverty), where most real crime takes place. Downtown Los Angeles is not the bustling, 24 hour city experience you find in, say, Manhattan, and combined with the large homeless population residing in DTLA, it's probably not the greatest idea to walk around aimlessly at night. The US has the highest gun ownership rate on earth (as far as I'm aware, if somebody has statistics to prove me wrong, please do so) so yes, there are shootings. For the most part they tend to be concentrated in the poorest parts of our cities, and random people are not usually targets. It isn't something I would worry about. Small crime does happen, but it's not common enough that most people worry about or experience it regularly. Personally, I've never been robbed, shot, or burglarized, and very few people I know (even those who live in 'dangerous' areas here in D.C.) have. All this being said, there are walkable areas in LA that are quite safe at night, as previously mentioned, it's such a vast, multi-nodal and multi-layered city that generalizations don't really work. I've found that as long as you use common sense and don't go looking for trouble, you should be fine.
The thing with public transit in the US is that it depends entirely on where you are. City centers and surrounding areas are usually well-served by transit (at least in many of our larger cities), but as you start to go into the (vast, sprawling, spread-out) suburbs, quality of service declines. Not that you'd want to take public transit in the suburbs, since oftentimes there is no (or insufficient) pedestrian infrastructure, and distances are so long it just makes more sense to drive. Los Angeles is a bit of an anomaly as the urban core itself is huge and multi-nodal with widely varying densities, so public transit quality depends on where you are and where you want to go, although it has improved over the years, and will only continue to do so. The suburbs though are the same as anywhere else, you really just need a car.
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Why didn't I notice this thread earlier, the quality of photography is excellent!
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