Countries with no suburbs

[David S]

It boggles my mind why anyone would want to live in such awful places. It's like moving to Fallujah.

According to an online directory I found, there's a total of 3 strip clubs in the entire suburban Twin Cities area, technically 4 but one is all male. And there's a total of 14 in the Twin Cities. What the hell do people do out in that wasteland that is the suburban Twin Cities? I wonder this every time I drive through it and see lots of identical looking houses.

Is quality of life measured by the number of strip clubs?

[David S]

Murder rates are a better indicator of the relative safety of various areas in my opinion. Using FBI data for 2003 the murder rates (murders/100,000 population)  are;
Erie        3
Minneapolis  12
Detroit          40

Source http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/xl/03tbl08.xls

By that standard Minneapolis doesn't look too bad and Erie is downright peaceful. Detroit on the other hand is not such a safe place.

[David S]

Murder rates are a better indicator of the relative safety of various areas in my opinion. Using FBI data for 2003 the murder rates (murders/100,000 population)  are;
Erie        3
Minneapolis  12
Detroit          40

Source http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/xl/03tbl08.xls

By that standard Minneapolis doesn't look too bad and Erie is downright peaceful. Detroit on the other hand is not such a safe place.

*Bangs head against desk*

Did I not just explain to you that that statistic is not the case?

With regard to most crime stats yes. In high crime areas crime is underreported because people have come to realize that it does no good. Bodies on the other hand are hard to ignore. That makes homicide the best indicator. Erie is not the only place to discover that you can hide corpses. You have no monopoly on that. The Detroit river is probably full of them. The percentage of bodies discovered to homicides is probably not much different.