| ▲ | roenxi 14 days ago |
| You're not really saying anything there. It is a city. There are buildings. How are you judging how affluent an area is by walking through it? |
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| ▲ | badlibrarian 14 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| How deeply your asshole puckers at dusk when you hear a loud noise is one sign. Artists, musicians, survivors of trauma are clued into such things. Also parents with children, merchants carrying sacks of cash to the bank. You know, humans. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 14 days ago | parent [-] | | That is crime, not affluence. Poor people aren't automatically criminals. | | |
| ▲ | badlibrarian 14 days ago | parent [-] | | It is called "street smarts" for a reason and there are many aspects to it. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 14 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but I'm going to put it to you that on encountering poor people the proper response isn't for your asshole to pucker and then to start reliving old traumas. That seems like a pretty wild response. It is a reasonable response to high-crime areas, and it is unusual for the wealthiest parts of a city to be high-crime areas. But an area being less affluent doesn't make an area high-crime. | | |
| ▲ | badlibrarian 13 days ago | parent [-] | | There's a reason your original post is a very light shade of gray. If you want to continue pumping words into the ether I suggest you typeset them in TeX and submit to arxiv. A paper entitled "Walking around an area doesn't give you any information about the area" may help you find people who can commission a study. Perhaps with you as the subject. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 13 days ago | parent [-] | | Those studies have been done, although not by me. People are really, really bad at working out how affluent other people are by inspection. That is one of the reasons I brought the topic up - the research I've seen suggests this sort of "I looked at it and it seemed ok" approach is very misleading. What people actually look at aren't things that indicate affluence. If you look at the other comments you can see people are actually keying off how much of a sense of community and civic pride there is in an area, as well as commercial activity. Which is going to probably distinguish between upper and lower class - even that isn't certain - but that isn't actually relevant to the topic because there is always going to be an upper and lower class. It isn't going to get a great read on how affluent they are at any given moment. > There's a reason your original post is a very light shade of gray. In an academic sense, yes. But no-one knows what it is - some people might be in your shoes where they read "affluent", misinterpreted it and had a fear response. Or they might have other opinions as some of the other comments lay out. Or there could have been other reasons. One of the philosophical underpinnings of HN is that downvotes don't contain a lot of information and are a poor tool for promoting discussion - it is a wonderfully mature approach to moderation. | | |
| ▲ | badlibrarian 13 days ago | parent [-] | | But it's not really discussion if one person is rambling incoherently and everyone else is rolling their eyes trying to be polite. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 13 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't think everyone is trying to be polite, I've developed a distinct impression that you're trying to be hurtful. Which, I might add, appears to be a response to running out of substantive points. You'll notice my response to the thread going long was more arguments. It keeps the discussion more respectful when people only push on when they have arguments to make. Not the only option, but insinuation specifically is a weak long term strategy. As are insults, for that matter. |
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| ▲ | vel0city 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There's a lot of ways to get at least a surface level understanding of the general affluence of an area. How well upkept are the buildings? Are they clean and well maintained or are they dingy and broken with overgrowth? Are there a lot of open shops around? Do people seem to be buying things? What kind of clothes are the people wearing? Does it seem like many people are homeless? How is the state of the transit (both public and private?) Do people feel the need to have bars on their windows and security stationed around to prevent theft, or do storefronts feel safe enough to even have merchandise sitting out? Are people eating in restaurants? Are those expensive or cheap restaurants? Do people seem to be comfortable spending a night out on the town, going to bars and shows or are the streets empty because people can't afford outside entertainment? |
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| ▲ | roenxi 14 days ago | parent [-] | | You're describing a scene that I have seen in a fairly un-affluent country (namy, Thailand back in the day) that looked fairly affluent (central Bangkok, the place was thriving). There were a lot of beggers, I grant you. But homelessness beggars are famously common in some of the most affluent places in the world, like San Francisco. It is probably more linked to outdoor min & max temperatures than anything else. You can find relative class status of an area by the number of beggars, I grant you that. But you aren't going to get a bead on the actual affluence of the high-class people. Are they thousandairs or billionairs? All we really know is they aren't beggars. |
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| ▲ | FirmwareBurner 14 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >How are you judging how affluent an area is by walking through it? Probably seeing a lot of new/upper segment cars and well maintained houses. |
