<p>The areas a few blocks west and north of Penn are downright scary, and even the short walk from 30th St. Station to the Penn Campus can be pretty sketchy after dark.</p>
<p>New Haven is still a deeply troubled city despite some recent improvements, though the area right around campus is fine.</p>
<p>USC is surrounded by some pretty tough neighborhoods.</p>
<p>As for the University of Chicago, I lived in Chicago for a long time. I never felt uncomfortable in the Hyde Park neighborhood where the University is located, but I wouldn’t venture out of Hyde Park; even a few blocks west or south and it gets really dicey really quickly. And Northwestern? Is this a joke? Central Evanston is pretty nice. Anyone who’s uncomfortable there should just build a bunker in an upscale gated community in some remote suburb and never venture outside, because that’s as much interaction with the world the rest of us live in as their paranoia will allow.</p>
<p>Not personally familiar with the neighborhood around Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>To compare Columbia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to the likes of Yale, Chicago, Penn, and USC is just grossly misleading. Not even close.</p>
<p>The environs at 122nd Street and Broadway are absolutely fine!!! For better or worse, Columbia has acculmulated many properties in the immediate area (a controversial state of affairs creating community resentment for many years!). Columbia’s largely positive influence arguably extends even north of 125th Street these days, and will only become greater when the “Harlem Campus project” (my definition) begins. At 122nd Street there is the Morningside Gardens apartment complex, definitely middle-class community. Sure, The General Grant Public Housing Project is just down the street but that complex has never been a big problem, at least not in the last 20 years. I’d opine that Broadway from 125th Street to 120th Street is VERY GENTRIFIED, much more so than in my days on Morningside Heights. Here’s the proof in the pudding: The Fairway Market at the West Side Highway & 127th Street, the fancy bar at 127th Street & 11th Avenue, and the pricey BBQ Joint & bar at 126th Street/11th Avenue.</p>
<p>Someone referenced Mayberry. I loved the quote from the cop on Reno 911: “Reno is just like Mayberry, except everyone is one chrystal meth, and prostitution is legal.”</p>
<p>In refererence to comments about Columbia, I’m reminded of an old George Carlin routine, about when he was growing up. He said it was hard to appear tough on the streets of New York when you had to tell people you were from a place called “Morningside Heights.” So, instead, he told everyone he was from “White Harlem” </p>
<p>(Actually, the real Harlem is now beautiful and is well worth a trip). </p>
<p>In reference to the comments about the main campus of Temple, it is fine as long as you take the normal urban precautions. Most of the activity is north-south along Broad Street, which is fine. Broad Street provides connections by subway to Center City, the Avenue of the Arts, sports stadiums and concerts. I understand Temple just built a new arts building on their main campus, after they moved it from the suburbs. A daughter of a friend goes to Temple for arts and really likes it.</p>
<p>I’m having trouble believing that Praying4Luck lives 1 block from Hopkins… talking about North Avenue and York Road? These streets are at least one mile from campus. Yes, that puts them in the same city. Yes, a person could walk from campus to either of those locations. But I wouldn’t consider them to be in the same neighborhood at all. And I think you’d have to look long and hard to find a handful of Hopkins students who have been on either street during their entire 4 years.</p>
<p>JHU’s Homewood Campus is in quite a nice area, imo. Roland Park on the north is one of the best neighborhoods in the city. Hampden on the west is a “hip” neighborhood, transitioning into that over recent years from an established working-class neighborhood.</p>
<p>If you go east or south of campus… some distance… you will find all types of neighborhoods. You will see more black faces in some of these neigbhorhoods. Does that make it “ghetto”???</p>
<p>Only if you have problems with people of other races (we call that bigotry). I often think that people who fear a neighborhood like where Hopkins is just have no experience with city life, where neighborhoods of varying socio-economic profile abut each other. A city is not “Pleasantville, USA” where everyone looks alike and thinks alike. If that’s your cup of tea, fine. But don’t think it means that a place of diversity in every way is “ghetto”.</p>
<p>No, the qualifying statements are important, because in some sense or another any college could be unsafe. The north side of JHU is quite a good area. One has to go a few blocks south of campus to get into legitimately bad areas.</p>
<p>^ Yes, the qualifying statements are telling. Nobody qualifies Harvard, or Princeton, or Caltech, or Vanderbilt, or UCLA, or Stanford with areas that are best avoided, as there are none… well, don’t go east of UCLA by .6 miles or you risk falling into the Hef’s Grotto.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor is wonderful. You can walk anywhere within the city limits day or night and feel reasonably safe. There are just no bad areas or neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Neighborhoods that are actually bad are not described as sketchy. Sketchy is amateur hour analysis. Sketchy is, “I’ve never seen anything to actually be concerned about but I did see minorities so lets stay away after dark.” A neighborhood that is actually bad you never go back to.</p>
<p>That link is misleading. The reason that Tufts and Harvard are ranked No. 1 & 2 is that they both report crimes from their towns (Medford/Somerville and Cambridge). Also, many of the crimes they report are doubles, i.e. they’re reported by both colleges. If anyone thinks Harvard is in a dangerous neighborhood, they’re probably crazy.</p>