Conservatives use the word "urban" as a dog whistle for "minorities," probably most often black people.

But anyways, as to your point, even if an urban area has a higher crime rate, it's inevitable because of the density. If you take the same number of people and cram them more closely together, there will always be more crime because the people interact with each other more often. More chances for crime usually results in more crime.

But the conservative mindset is also completely wrong about what to do about it. People usually commit crimes for a reason. Like you steal something because you cannot afford to buy it. Conservatives want to stop crime not by looking at the reasons people commit crimes and looking for ways to solve those issues, but by trying to scare people into not committing crimes. But that doesn't work.

A couple of years ago, we were coming home from visiting my in-laws in Florida and I sat next to a woman on the plane who found out we were “going home” to SF and wanted to talk my ear off about everything that’s scary there. First of all, I didn’t want to talk to you anyway, lady, I just want to read my book. But since you asked, no, I don’t know what you mean when you are talking about how dangerous it is. I played it as simply confused about what she was talking about, and eventually she got confused at my response and left me alone. I wasn’t going to be successful convincing her; I knew that. But playing it that way was non-confrontational and still seemed to have the desired effect, which was to put a chink in the armor of her misinformed opinions.

I’ll never forget my first trip out to North Lawndale for work. So many people acted like I was headed into Fallujah or something.

In reality though, it was just another neighborhood with regular people trying to get by.