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Rational Urbanism
Home » Rational Urbanism » The Facts Don’t Enter Into It

The Facts Don’t Enter Into It

No, the facts don’t enter into it.

Read these comments:

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These comments came as a result of a man from a neighboring community, not Springfield, shooting his estranged wife in that neighboring community and, in an apparent display of remorse, deciding to bring her to the region’s best emergency-trauma center which happens to be located in Springfield. Having done that he sat in his car outside the hospital and threatened to take his own life with the same gun he had used to wound his wife. Neither individual involved in the incident was from Springfield, the attack took place in another municipality, and Springfield’s only role was providing the medical facility which provided care for the victim, and the police who attempted to control and manage the aftermath outside the hospital.

What is particularly irksome is that this comes at a time where Springfield is actually experiencing a purple patch at least as far as murders are concerned. I am familiar with the relationship between probability and relatively small numbers in the compilation of statistics, so far be it from me to claim that the fact that the city has gone nearly two months into the new year without a murder is definitive proof of an overall decline in violence, but when the reverse is true and the city experiences a burst of violence resulting in multiple deaths in a short period of time, people desirous to show Springfield in the poorest possible light are full throated in their misguided analysis. At this moment Springfield is one of only two major cities in New England to have not had a single murder in 2014.

Worcester, Providence, New Haven, and Hartford have each had at least one murder in 2014, and Boston has had ten. If Springfield were to have three murders in the next week that would still leave Boston with a higher per capita rate than the City of Homes, and each of the other cities save Worcester is smaller in population. What amazes me is how untouchable Boston is, how invulnerable the sheen of that city is to its urban violence. If the current rate of homicides in Boston were equaled by Springfield it would be unprecedented, and would certainly be used by the city’s critics, once again, to pronounce the city’s final, long awaited demise.

If only Springfield’s schools, sports teams, universities, cultural institutions, and commercial enterprises were as Teflon coated as those of Beantown.

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