I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase in the number of homeless and the number of publicly intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells, smashing the first and second floor windows regularly, pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly. All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on my street.
> I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically.
This is a joke, right? Like, either you live in a small town not large enough to have distinct neighbourhoods, or you are so isolated as to not see the abject poverty that many live here. Take Toronto, for example. Right on Mt. Pleasant Rd. and St. Clair you have Rosedale, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in all of Canada. If you walk down a street there, you won't find a person making less than $100K. You'll have perfectly maintained roads, bike lanes, and very good private schools (like Upper Canada College), where every kid there pays $50K a year. Go down Mt. Pleasant until it becomes Jarvis St., and continue going down until you hit Dundas St., where the average person makes minimum wage and can barely afford their apartment. And that's just a 2km difference!
Ask anyone whether they would rather live in Forest Hill (again, Toronto) or on Jane and Finch, and you'll get the same answer any time. For Montreal, ask anyone whether they would live in Westmount, or in Sainte-Marie, and again, you'll get the same answer. There absolutely are "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods in Canada, and in some cases, they're just as bad as in the United States (speaking from experience here).
You are forgetting that it's a 10 minute walk from Forest Hill to one of Toronto's poorest communities. They are part of the same community geographically. Same with Jane/Finch -- within walking distance of very wealthy detached suburban homes. It's even more jutted up against each other south of Bloor/Yonge, with some of the wealthiest high-rise condos directly against some of the poorest public housing and tent cities. I am not denying the existence of the divide -- it's very real and very stark -- I am however fascinated that it occurs on the same block. It's not a different part of town. It's the same geographic area sliced differently. That the two worlds are so separate, when literally next to each other, is what I was trying to point out.
Oh goodness... you can't be serious? Have you been to vancouver?
As for being insulated in your upper middle class community. I mean... every country has that. my neighborhood which is a mile and a half from downtown Portland had private security during the entirety of the riots of 2020. These are far left people (which I know based on conversations with my neighbors, yard signs, and who they vocally proclaim they're voting for) and they all collectively decided to hire private companies to ensure the rif-raf doesn't get in. It's exactly like that now. In my own neighborhood, there's nothing, but if you cross the street to the 'wrong side of the tracks' so to speak, it's like an apocalypse (getting better thankfully, due to the recent increase in policing)
