I've lived in the metro area my whole life, but I moved to Pittsburgh proper in early 2017. I've lived in Lower Lawrenceville, Allegheny Center/North Side, East Carnegie, the Strip District, and South Side. I've been warned about every one of those neighborhoods at some point by people claiming they were dangerous, yet I've never had any real issues at all.

Someone recently just said, "I'm surprised you didn't get shot" when I mentioned that I had owned a house in East Carnegie and sold it a year ago. I owned there for 3 years and didn't experience any violence whatsoever. If you would have told me it had a reputation for being dangerous, I wouldn't have had any idea what you were talking about. Lot of dickhead contractors, plumbers, and real estate agents trying to take advantage of me but no regular people shooting at me or anything. Point being, people need to lay off the local news channels.

I lived in the Strip all of last year and just moved to South Side flats this past week. I've been car free and walking and biking around the golden triangle regularly and consistently for over a year now and haven't felt unsafe one time. If I went by the local news and Facebook comments, I would think I was living in a dangerous warzone of criminal activity. 99.9% of the time, it's quiet other than the car traffic. I was literally walking through downtown with my dog last year when I was stopped by college students doing a survey. They asked what I thought it was like living in/around downtown. I was like "It's quiet". They were like, "Really? That's a surprising answer. Do you wanna elaborate?". I said, "Look around. It's Saturday afternoon, the weather is nice, and we're the only people on Penn Avenue in downtown right now. Is this not quiet to you?" They seemed so surprised I didn't say it was loud and dangerous or something.