What effect did the rise of crime have on the cities?
ELIOTT CURRIE: I think that the rise in crime in the late 1960s really transformed the cities. And if you’re old enough to think back at how cities looked before the late 1960s you can realize that some things, which we now take for granted, were not even imagined as part of our natural way of urban life before the mid to late 1960s. For example, the President’s Crime Commission back in the late 1960s wrote that if we weren’t careful we would become a nation where there were fortified cities and where you had to be accompanied by policemen if you went downtown, and where there would be apartment buildings with elaborate security systems. There would be security systems in your parking garage. Well, of course there are. And everyone who lives today in the cities takes these for granted. But in the early ’60s you didn’t. People changed their behavior as well. They changed it quite dramatically. When I was a kid you could walk around in the cities. I grew up in Chicago. It was a little bi
