[Excerpt] Mark Abraham, executive director of DataHaven in New Haven, said tens of thousands of people visit New Haven every day and 28,000 more commute here to work. Also, despite having 80,000 jobs within its borders, many New Haven residents go elsewhere for jobs, as others stream in. New Haven also had a 5 percent increase in population between 2000 and 2010.
Abraham wrote that the best way to define a municipality is "the place where, by standard methodology, the majority of people live, work and shop." Strictly comparing cities by municipal boundaries, which vary greatly in land mass, is "absurd," he said.
The city statistics in CQ Press and in the 24/7 Wall Street blog, which last summer ranked New Haven 4th in its "most dangerous city" list, compare 20-square-mile New Haven with 132-square-mile Atlanta, Ga., 159-square-mile Wichita, Kan., and Jacksonville, Fla., which encompasses 767 square miles of land.
A better model is comparing crimes in metropolitan areas, Abraham and Rosenfeld agree, although Rosenfeld said all his other objections remain, including the differences in the number of crimes reported and a lack of information to inform people of safety risks.
According to the CQ Press metropolitan calculation, New Haven jumps to 184th place on the list up from 394th, while Detroit and Flint remain on the bottom.
