Tim O’Reilly is pondering why the Italian people have such different energy use patterns than the US (they don’t have lighting everywhere to declare that streets are safe, etc.) I wonder what (if any effect) that the US media obsession with crime plays into this? The whole actual crime rates are going down and perceived crime is increasing.
It would be interesting to see how similar patterns of children roaming might be across countries – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=462091&in_page_id=1770
- as I would guess that would also show a correlation with high crime rates.