Question from an American - what are considered the roughest areas in Britain?

[JazMerkin]

Ah right, I know where you mean, big estate. I've just moved after living for ten years up the other end of Lewisham high street near the hospital. I've lived in quite a few different places in London, I'm from Bermondsey.

I don't think you're a bullshitter, gloryfying or a fantasist mate. It's funny how we live in the same place but experience things differently. I don't really know about these youth gangs. The only dealings i've had with them was when they robbed a bar/club I was working in a few years ago (3 times). Thankfully they didn't shoot me or carve me up ().

Yeah, I found that a lot, that people who're a bit older than my generation & younger can live here without ever really seeing what we see. Although tonight was an almost comical take on that as a Yardie bouncer decided to try & mug me of my pick & mix

Are the areas described - South London, parts of Manchester, and Glasgow (is that Scotland?) - comparable to US tough? The last time I was in London I was under the impression the more destitute areas were bad in the sense there were crackheads and fistfights, but they weren't horrible. Also, in the states, most of the bad areas in the major west coast and east coast cities although not all (Youngstown, Ohio where KP is from is pretty hard from what I gather), are predominately african american or latino, are the bad areas in the UK predominately one racial group? Mixed? Russian (JOKE - like in Eastern Promises)?

Growing up in LA, I was jumped a dozen or so times, and I lived in a good area, but it was in the middle of the city. It kind of came with the territory that would happen if you know what I mean.

I think during the last comparative year, which was 2007, those 3 cities, London, Glasgow, Manchester, had roughly similar violent crime levels to somewhere just above New York, but quite a bit below LA, in terms of per capita (so that means the number of murders for every 100,000 people in the city for the simpletons among you). New York was 6, London was about 7 or so, whilst LA was 10. There was a thing in all the papers about London & Glasgow being worse than NY. So it's comparable in that sense, but it simply can't be compared with the worst of your cities like Baltimore, Detroit & St Louis in terms of violence. Those all have murder rates in the 40s.

I hear both NY & LA have improved a lot in the past decade, so it's probably more due to the crime rate falling a lot there, than the UK going up substantially. So like I said it's probably comparable with certainly New York, but not the worst of the places in the US. The only thing with not noticing it is we have far less of a boundary between different classes. Like it says above, Fenster & I live in basically the same area but have very different experiences of the level of violence. Although obviously these areas aren't on any tourist maps or any mainline tube lines, so people who come here largely don't know they exist.

In terms of how they are racially, I think Glasgow is pretty white, although jamie will know better than me, the areas in Manchester are supposed to be quite mixed, but I'm not from there so don't really know. As for this bit of South London, it is a mainly black area, but not exclusively, there's still a lot of white people & other ethnic groups around here. It doesn't seem as ghettoised as American cities appear to us, but Brixton, Peckham & Lewisham are predominantly black.

Oh & Peckham is a horrible shithole. There's a saying among people who live in some of the worst places in South London...

'At least I don't live in Peckham'

[jamiebhoy]

Yes Jaz, Glasgow is mostly white and the ehtnic mix has come traditionally from the Asian community (Pakistan,India). It does piss me off a bit when violence that has crossed over between the groups is put down to racism though.

When I was growing up it was more or lett based on territory which is pretty much it worldwide at least as far as gang violence. our estate had a fish and chip shop , the surrounding ones didn't , therefore our shop, now pisss off and don't come here , so lots of fights and full on battles over a bag of chips !!!

Ahh for the good old days