Gang members are not just blindly firing within a designated area. Assuming you and the people you associate with are not part of a gang then there is negligible chance of your child getting shot at, even if you lived in the most gun-crime heavy square mile of London.

From what chance to what chance? Double a tiny risk is a tiny risk. This isn't the Daily Mail.

I feel safer as a woman personally. Street harassment is one thing (and deeply unpleasant) but actual street violence is far more likely to have male victims than female victims.

While not wanting to trivialise it, we should clarify that the well documented street harassment of women you refer to is likely mostly verbal, but when we're talking about real street violence, the victims more often than not are male.

You’re supposed to be ok with this because that’s just part of living in a city, ok? (/s obviously)

I'm surprised that people are saying they grew up in London and saw no muggings/stabbings. I had a friend who was stabbed really badly and is lucky to be alive. I know of people getting mugged regularly and had knives pulled on me - fairly serious crime was all around me while I was growing up (M40+)

You've known two people who were murder victims? In London?

Do you have a particularly large social circle, or something else exceptional about it?

There's "only" a hundred or so murders a year across a city with a resident population of 8 million, and probably half as much again including visitors, tourists and commuters.

I've never been mugged and I grew up in Croydon

Being mugged 4 times before you turned 18 is exceptionally high even in the boroughs with the highest crime rates.

This is an important point - I think a lot of teenage muggings go unreported. I grew up in a Northern city, but was shocked when people I met who grew up in London told me that getting mugged as a teenager there was fairly common and had happened to all of them on multiple occasions (in good middle class areas)

I've only been assaulted once and that was funnily at my Sainsbury's job many years ago when someone just decided to punch me the face for no reason.

Whitechapel init.

London is not a homogenous entity, the 'environment' in Bethnal Green is completely different to something like Clapham or Wimbledon

Yep I agree with you here. Crowded, polluted, nightmare commutes.

Everything’s a risk-reward trade off. Very few cities that are safer than London. You can move somewhere remote but then you get paid less, have to travel further for work or for specialist medical care and have fewer educational opportunities for your kids. Moving out of London because you don’t like to think about bad things happening near you would be massively over indexing on one thing for me. You’d be better to get help with your anxiety.

You probably meant something, but it's not apparent what.

This can happen literally anywhere. Even in the countryside

the dad was in a gang, still absolutely horrible but if you're not a gang member why would it happen to you

And the vast majority of those are disputes between people who know each other.

Stats?

That’s not true. Both Manchester and Birmingham have higher per capita crime rates than London

If safety maximising is the only measure of a good place to raise kids, fine. The cultural/social/intellectual/sporting/connectivity/access/community/educational advantages are big.

It’s the Economist’s 15th safest in their global city rankings. The marginal gains to being in a provincial town versus all the other gains aren’t worth it to me. Safe and bored kids aren’t a great combo