Arkady
President
Meaningful comparisons among cities are difficult, because of the way borders are drawn. The tendency is for older, eastern, and coastal cities to have official borders drawn tightly around an urban core, while younger, western, and inland cities have wider borders that include non-urban areas. This means a comparison between two seemingly cities, in terms of population, may actually be comparing a big city to a small city plus a lot of surrounding areas.
For example, Boston and Oklahoma City have similar populations, if you rely on official borders. In Boston, you could walk from the city's center to its border in under an hour, yet across those borders it would look like a continuation of the same big city, just with a name change (e.g., Cambridge). Oklahoma City covers a footprint well over 12 times the size of Boston. It would take you three or four hours to walk from the city center to the official border, by which time you'd have passed through the suburbs and might find yourself in rural farmland. So, when you compare stats of official Boston to official OK City, you're really comparing a very big urban core, on one hand, to a small city plus its surrounding suburbs and exurbs, on the other.
That same issue pops up repeatedly. Newark, New Jersey and Anchorage, Alaska each have a little under 300,000 residents, but Newark has a land area of 24 square miles, while Anchorage has one of 1700 square miles. Again, any comparison would be between a huge inner city, on the one hand, and, on the other, a mixed area consisting of a small city, some suburbs, and vast stretches of rural settlement. Anchorage includes land so rural that the "city" is home to around 400 bears and its very own glacier.
So, how can one do a meaningful statistical comparison between, say, DC (land area of 61 miles), and Houston (land area 634 square miles)? Fortunately the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports have a solution. They report based on metropolitan statistical areas. MSAs ignore the official boundaries of a city and instead draw the line based on actual settlement patterns. Generally, this means lumping multiple smaller cities together, sometimes across state lines, into a single MSA. It's closer to what you'd see as the city if you looked down from a satellite without knowing where the artificial borders are. So, for example, Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS are treated as a single unit.
Using that standard, here are all the MSAs with populations over two million, from lowest murder rate to highest:
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH M.S.A. 2.1
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI M.S.A. 2.2
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA M.S.A. 2.4
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA M.S.A. 2.9
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA M.S.A. 3.4
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN M.S.A. 3.5
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV M.S.A. 3.6
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA M.S.A. 3.8
Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA M.S.A. 3.8
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO M.S.A. 3.9
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL M.S.A. 3.9
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX M.S.A. 4.1
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA M.S.A. 4.1
Pittsburgh, PA M.S.A. 4.2
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA M.S.A. 5
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL M.S.A. 5
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX M.S.A. 5.1
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ M.S.A. 5.3
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX M.S.A. 5.7
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA M.S.A. 6.1
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL M.S.A. 6.3
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA M.S.A. 6.5
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI M.S.A. 7.1
St. Louis, MO-IL M.S.A. 7.3
Kansas City, MO-KS M.S.A. 7.7
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD M.S.A. 8.6
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD M.S.A. 9.5
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI M.S.A. 10.9
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/u...rime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/6tabledatadecpdf
There are still big differences there between the best and the worst (you're over five times as likely to be murdered in the Detroit MSA than the Boston MSA). But, clearly that's much smaller than the difference between the worst and best of the big cities, where one may be twenty times worse than another due mostly to how borders are drawn.
For example, Boston and Oklahoma City have similar populations, if you rely on official borders. In Boston, you could walk from the city's center to its border in under an hour, yet across those borders it would look like a continuation of the same big city, just with a name change (e.g., Cambridge). Oklahoma City covers a footprint well over 12 times the size of Boston. It would take you three or four hours to walk from the city center to the official border, by which time you'd have passed through the suburbs and might find yourself in rural farmland. So, when you compare stats of official Boston to official OK City, you're really comparing a very big urban core, on one hand, to a small city plus its surrounding suburbs and exurbs, on the other.
That same issue pops up repeatedly. Newark, New Jersey and Anchorage, Alaska each have a little under 300,000 residents, but Newark has a land area of 24 square miles, while Anchorage has one of 1700 square miles. Again, any comparison would be between a huge inner city, on the one hand, and, on the other, a mixed area consisting of a small city, some suburbs, and vast stretches of rural settlement. Anchorage includes land so rural that the "city" is home to around 400 bears and its very own glacier.
So, how can one do a meaningful statistical comparison between, say, DC (land area of 61 miles), and Houston (land area 634 square miles)? Fortunately the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports have a solution. They report based on metropolitan statistical areas. MSAs ignore the official boundaries of a city and instead draw the line based on actual settlement patterns. Generally, this means lumping multiple smaller cities together, sometimes across state lines, into a single MSA. It's closer to what you'd see as the city if you looked down from a satellite without knowing where the artificial borders are. So, for example, Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS are treated as a single unit.
Using that standard, here are all the MSAs with populations over two million, from lowest murder rate to highest:
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH M.S.A. 2.1
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI M.S.A. 2.2
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA M.S.A. 2.4
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA M.S.A. 2.9
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA M.S.A. 3.4
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN M.S.A. 3.5
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV M.S.A. 3.6
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA M.S.A. 3.8
Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA M.S.A. 3.8
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO M.S.A. 3.9
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL M.S.A. 3.9
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX M.S.A. 4.1
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA M.S.A. 4.1
Pittsburgh, PA M.S.A. 4.2
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA M.S.A. 5
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL M.S.A. 5
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX M.S.A. 5.1
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ M.S.A. 5.3
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX M.S.A. 5.7
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA M.S.A. 6.1
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL M.S.A. 6.3
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA M.S.A. 6.5
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI M.S.A. 7.1
St. Louis, MO-IL M.S.A. 7.3
Kansas City, MO-KS M.S.A. 7.7
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD M.S.A. 8.6
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD M.S.A. 9.5
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI M.S.A. 10.9
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/u...rime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/6tabledatadecpdf
There are still big differences there between the best and the worst (you're over five times as likely to be murdered in the Detroit MSA than the Boston MSA). But, clearly that's much smaller than the difference between the worst and best of the big cities, where one may be twenty times worse than another due mostly to how borders are drawn.
