"But Chicago's crime was never distributed evenly across the city, and the decline hasn't been, either. In and around downtown, and on the North Side, neighborhoods with moderate numbers of homicides became some of the safest urban areas in the country. A million people in Chicago, the global poster child for first-world urban violence, now live in neighborhoods that together have the same homicide rate as New York City, the “safest big city in America.”
Meanwhile, much of the rest of Chicago has seen much more modest declines, or stagnation. In the case of two police districts on the South Side, the homicide problem has actually gotten worse. In the early 1990s, the most dangerous third of the city saw about six times more murders than the safest third. Over the last several years, the most dangerous third has seen between twelve and 16 times more homicides."
