My first visit to Austin, TX

[jordanmills]

No really it's nice to see a new perspective on it. I go several times a year so I'm colored.

 

[Rios]

I know it's not a ward but I spent the better part of a decade knocking on doors in Acres Homes. From time to time, my former employer had me walking down alleyways in Brooklyn (before the gentrification) and Detroit, occasionally in the middle of the night. I lived in the Gulfton Ghetto when it actually was a ghetto; listening to your next-door neighbor get knifed to death, five feet away on the other side of the sheetrock, is the sort of thing that alters your perspective on the desirability of a neighborhood.

While I tend to have a higher tolerance for "rough" than most folks, I think comfort levels are extremely personalized to the individual, a result of their experience. If someone thinks Austin is particularly bad, that is valid for them. I probably wouldn't agree but to each his own.

Some neighborhoods in SoCal don't look "rough". They can be relatively safe on one block and have a almost constant police presence on another block.