JJxvi said:
I went to Google Maps, and dropped a the street view in a random place and viola, I got crumbling buildings, one visible broken window immediately, graffiti on buildings, and a street scape that looks like virtually every dense city core I've ever been to in the United States.
Being a tourist gives you an unrealistic impression of pretty much every place, especially those places that cultivate their appearance carefully.
That's certainly true to a degree, but usually I travel to the more exotic places with a group of around 30-40 and within that there are 3 of us close friends that go off on our own on these trips at night. No guard rails. We've Ubered at will all over Cairo, Moscow, St Petersburg, Zagreb, Cologne, Paris, etc. and sure, every city has good and bad areas, but the bottom line is that the public spaces are dramatically different in some cities vs the west. Train and bus stations, city squares, subways, government districts etc, I never felt any discomfort in many of those cities like I do in downtown Dallas at night. I can't imagine Chicago or Philadelphia or others here.