Is London too dangerous for tourists?

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Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by kamnet »

In another forum, I came across a person who made this statement.
Apr 1, 2018 16:26 from Redacted
If you have ever been in London, you know that large sections of that city are "off-limits" to tourists due to crime and violence.
Is there anybody here who can verify this statement?
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by YNM »

1. Probably no.

2. Every city has one.


Pick your choose.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Redirect Left »

The areas of london that would be deemed 'dangerous' are not the areas tourists would be visiting to begin with.

Brixton, Peckham & Harlesden for example, are fairly dangerous from a crime statistic point of view, but tourists wouldn't generally be there.

The places tourists are likely to be, are generally not too bad. Kings Cross has a bit of an issue with prostitution and organised crime. But you're not likely to see any outside of general 'touristy' hours of daylight.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by YNM »

Redirect Left wrote:Brixton, Peckham & Harlesden for example, are fairly dangerous from a crime statistic point of view, but tourists wouldn't generally be there.
What about the stations ?
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Gwyd »

I've been to lots of areas of London, including Brixton and Morden. They don't feel welcoming, but no one came up to me with a knife: people who get attacked usually have links to their attackers.
For tourists, a larger issue would be pickpocketing, but I can imagine that's more of an issue in touristy areas.
I certainly wouldn't say "large areas" are: most of the city is nice enough. All the stations I've been to feel safe and well looked after(ish). I say that having visited most of them.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Chrill »

Having visited London a couple times, I've definitely never felt more unsafe there than in any major city. It's perfectly fine, people are generally quite nice and I haven't found myself in threatening situations. Granted, like Redirect Left stated, the "no-go zones" are generally not areas likely to attract tourists anyway.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by acs121 »

I've been to London a lot of times, and even if Brixton wasn't the best place to be for me, no one seemed weird or tried to kill me with a knife or somewhat like this.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Redirect Left »

YNM wrote:
Redirect Left wrote:Brixton, Peckham & Harlesden for example, are fairly dangerous from a crime statistic point of view, but tourists wouldn't generally be there.
What about the stations ?
The rail stations for Brixton, Peckham & Harlseden?
Brixton is the Victora line south terminus point, you wouldn't get on or off here unless you'd gone to the effort of going there specifically. Of the three, its the only station underground, but its staffed and quite busy. So anything illegal is unlikely.
Harlesden is a minor station on the Bakerloo line. You'd not need get on, off or change there. There is nothing of tourist value in the area.
Peckham (Rye) is a minor mainline station, it isn't on the Underground. Again, you wouldn't need to get on or off here, due to nothing of tourist value.

In general though, all of the central London stations and destinations you're likely to be at are very busy, and there is strength in numbers, petty criminals are often pansies that won't act in busy places. Unless they're a terrorist, then you need to spread out and not stick together in a group and make an easy large target. But that is the risk we are all taking, not just in London.

The only places i'd ever consider paying more attention than normal is at Camden & Hackney. Higher crime rates there, and the crime rates roughly follow the increase in tourists in the area, suggesting they're specifically being targetted. Also don't walk around with your phone out unnecessarily, there is a common occurence of moped / scooter gangs swiping phones out from people blindly holding them, especially whilst crossing roads. Mostly happens in central and east london.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by supermop »

kamnet wrote:In another forum, I came across a person who made this statement.
Apr 1, 2018 16:26 from Redacted
If you have ever been in London, you know that large sections of that city are "off-limits" to tourists due to crime and violence.
Is there anybody here who can verify this statement?

If you're near Cincinnati Kamnet, there is probably nowhere in London near as dangerous now as Over the Rhine was 15 years ago (before it was all hip craft breweries). Whoever told you this is a troll or naïve. There is very little random violent crime there, or anywhere in the UK, and as others have said, if an area is 'off-limits' it's mostly likely because there is no interesting reason for a tourist to go there.

That said, even in the comparatively more dangerous US, violent crime is still vanishingly rare almost everywhere in major cities compared to the 70s and 80s.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Gwyd »

Well considering there have been 47 murders in the capital this year, more than in New York, I really can't agree with that.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Ameecher »

This sounds like a trump tweet.

About the only good thing BoJo has ever done is call that idiot out on it.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by YNM »

Gwyd wrote:Well considering there have been 47 murders in the capital this year, more than in New York, I really can't agree with that.
How much more ?
Redirect Left wrote:Also don't walk around with your phone out unnecessarily, there is a common occurence of moped / scooter gangs swiping phones out from people blindly holding them, especially whilst crossing roads.
What if I hold it in their faces while crossing ? XD
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By *other* scales, Trump tweets are off.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Chrill »

Gwyd wrote:Well considering there have been 47 murders in the capital this year, more than in New York, I really can't agree with that.
New York City logged a record low 290 homicides in 2017.
Source:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/201 ... -1.3729733

London logged 116 homicides in 2017, if you exclude the terrorist attacks.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -this-year

If you include those attacks, you'll add on 17 more deaths to the 116.

However, from January to March 2018 there have been more London murders than New York murders.

Now, the London Metropolitan area hosts about 14.5 million people, and the so-called "Great London" about 10 million. The city of New York has a population of close to 9 million and the entire state of New York about 19 million. I'd say the two cities come across as equally fatal, then.

EDIT: If you look at murders per 1000 people, I'd guess even Stockholm is more dangerous than these two cities. Then again, we barely have any police so there's a lot of gang violence here. Won't affect civilians (most of the time anyway) but still the numbers are rather troubling.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Redirect Left »

Chrill wrote:
EDIT: If you look at murders per 1000 people, I'd guess even Stockholm is more dangerous than these two cities. Then again, we barely have any police so there's a lot of gang violence here. Won't affect civilians (most of the time anyway) but still the numbers are rather troubling.
For some reason, I'd always thought of Sweden as a fairly crime free place!
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Chrill »

Well it is. I'm using Stockholm to point out how statistics don't paint the whole picture. There's currently a gang war of sorts between two groups of Swedish criminal organisations. The number of homicides excluding these are very low, but these two groups skew the results significantly.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by acs121 »

Chrill wrote:Well it is. I'm using Stockholm to point out how statistics don't paint the whole picture. There's currently a gang war of sorts between two groups of Swedish criminal organisations. The number of homicides excluding these are very low, but these two groups skew the results significantly.
One thing is that in Paris (just Paris, not surrounding cities) there's not much crime, but once you get to the suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, south of Yvelines or south-east of Seine-et-Marne, you have more crime. A difference is that Brixton is inside London, and the crimes you're citing are inside Stockholm. The city itself, isn't the metropolitan area, suburbs sometimes change all statistics.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Redirect Left »

acs121 wrote:A difference is that Brixton is inside London, and the crimes you're citing are inside Stockholm. The city itself, isn't the metropolitan area, suburbs sometimes change all statistics.
This is especially true of 'London.
What a lot of people do not realise, is that 'The City of London' is a very tiny portion of London, it's west of the famous meander in the River Thames, it's also only north of the Thames banks, between Whitechapel & Covent Garden, stopping short of Shoreditch to the North.

From memory, i've drawn the boundaries of 'The City of London' in red. In black is the border of Greater London. For further reference, the 'touristy' places are mostly from the green directly west of the red (Kensington & Buckingham Palaces & Gardens is the green bit there, Regents park above it), up to and slightly over the Thames meander to the east (the O2 arena is in the point directly east of the meander). Most tourists won't go much further north of the red zone, many will probably go slightly north into Shoreditch, and into Camden, above Regents Park. Southwards, I don't think people will go much further down than the bottom tip of the meander. Outside of events like Wimbledon.

Euston & Kings Cross / St Pancras stations are directly east of Regents Park, above the City of London. I believe both fall into the 'Camden' area of London. I'm not sure how many of the 'London Terminals' are in The City of London.

It is accurate to say that London has a lot of crime. However, the amount of crime that happens in places the tourists will be, is a very small part of the number you may see quoted.

I apologise to anyone who lives in London. My drawing is from rough memories. Also the first time since school geography lessons i've used the word 'meander'...
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Chrill »

acs121 wrote:
Chrill wrote:Well it is. I'm using Stockholm to point out how statistics don't paint the whole picture. There's currently a gang war of sorts between two groups of Swedish criminal organisations. The number of homicides excluding these are very low, but these two groups skew the results significantly.
One thing is that in Paris (just Paris, not surrounding cities) there's not much crime, but once you get to the suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, south of Yvelines or south-east of Seine-et-Marne, you have more crime. A difference is that Brixton is inside London, and the crimes you're citing are inside Stockholm. The city itself, isn't the metropolitan area, suburbs sometimes change all statistics.
Actually, the crimes I'm citing are in what you'd refer to as the Län (Wikipedia), which is the county surrounding Stockholm. Downtown Stockholm rarely sees any crime other than drunken fights and pickpockets.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by acs121 »

I'm not talking about downtown, but the city itself. Brixton isn't downtown London, but it is London.
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Re: Is London too dangerous for tourists?

Post by Chrill »

Right, so your definition of a city does not align with mine then :lol:

To me, the city of Stockholm is merely downtown/central Stockholm. We then have the municipality which is larger, and then there's the county which I would equate to the "Metropolitan Area"-ish. The county covers a large mass of land far north and south of Stockholm itself.
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