In the New York Times article, “Diagnosis: Battered but Vibrant”, Benedict Carey discusses how a neighborhood environment can shape its future as well as the life of its residents. Carey talks specifically about a series of catastrophes happened within one of Chicago’s middle class neighborhood called Chatham. When social scientists studied Chicago’s neighborhood, they predicted that Chatham should be able to remain stable during the recession; however, it turns out to be completely different from what people were expecting.
Chatham faces a series of murder, gun shooting, and other violent incident. All of these events make people lose faith in their community; they start questioning on everything. According to Carey, “Many residents began to think the unthinkable, that maybe it was time to escape the place they had done so much to build.” I agree that usually when terrifying events happened, people were usually disappointed about the community, about other people. They would think that maybe something has gone wrong with this neighborhood, and it would be no longer safe for them to live there because they didn’t want to be the next victim.
If the city is not able to maintain its order, it will certainly lose a lot of its population; which completely change the future of the city. For example, after 911 attack some New Yorkers started to doubt if New York City is a safe place to live or not. This terrorist attack makes people be more aware of what is going on with their city and with the world, and raises the question of whether they should migrate to other city This also agree with Carey’s discussion about Chatham, if most of the people ended up leaving the neighborhood, then Chatham would lose most of its potential to grow.
I do agree with Carey that “it is much more intimidating to approach troublemakers in a larger apartment building; you don’t even know where in the building they live.” However, I think small neighborhood doesn’t necessarily means to be safer than a big city. I personally feel that as long as there are a lot of people being around, it will give me a sense of security. Usually to me small town means smaller population; so when crime happens, there may not have enough people present to help.
I think that the most important factor of the neighborhood that will directly affect its future is the people. When there are economic hard time, or social disasters such as crimes, people must get united and fight to create a better future for their community. As I am reading through this article I actually have a question in my mind, Wortham’s father was saying that Cole Park was a very safe park, “but it got to where no one was controlling it”, I was wondering that whether there are 100% safe park exist, or they just seem like they are safe, but still have a high potential rate of being dangerous because sometimes there can be no one regulating the park.
