<p>So I've experienced the so-called "shady" neighborhoods around USC for two semesters. So far I've survived with most of my organs still, you know, snugly fitted in my body. I go off-campus fairly often, sometimes at late hours. I've visited Watts and Compton. I've never been mugged or shot or raped, but sometimes we do receive reports of sexual harassment or muggings. I've never felt threatened, but then again I'm a city kid. Since I'm going to UChicago next year, I just wanted to know: In comparison to USC, how much more or less dangerous are the neighborhoods around the U of C?</p>
<p>yeah same question</p>
<p>S2 has been a frequent visitor to both and considers the immediate ares surrounding the USC campus to be more challenging than the immediate area around UChicago. Aside from the typical urban dangers found in any large city, the Hyde Park area (UChicago) is relatively safe. Many faculty, students, and a current President of the United States have residences there or nearby. As one walks south from the South Campus Dorm (into the Woodlawn area), it becomes more of an issue.</p>
<p>Hyde Park itself is very spiffy – expensive, well-kept real estate, affluent residents (of many ethnicities), many used bookstores (one of the main sources of entertainment there, most others being lacking). It is physically bounded on three sides – Washington Park to the west, Jackson Park and the Midway to the south, and Lake Michigan to the east – so it’s very well defined. Beyond those boundaries, the neighborhoods are much poorer and more ethnically monolithic, except for the block or two south of the Midway that the University uses. (To the east, things are especially challenging, since the population is nonverbal, nonhuman, and requires gills to breathe.) To the north, you have decent, gentrified neighborhoods for more blocks than people generally travel on foot, except maybe on the western edge. People will run or ride bikes all the way downtown along the lake without fearing for their lives. </p>
<p>University of Chicago students generally don’t spend much time in the crummy neighborhoods near Hyde Park, because there’s nothing interesting to do there. If they see those neighborhoods, it’s from the bus, or doing a service project. </p>
<p>People can go anywhere they want, of course. When there was a horrible one-night crime spree a couple of years ago, resulting in three muggings and a graduate student getting shot, it turned out the perpetrators had driven six miles to get to Hyde Park.</p>
<p>I haven’t spent enough time around USC to really have a sense what its neighborhood is like, but it doesn’t seem anywhere near as tweedy (or Birekenstocky) as Hyde Park.</p>