Don't Tell The Rest of the State

Not that most of Pennsylvania loves Pittsburgh, either, but Philly gets singled out in the popular lore as the post-apocalyptic urban hellhole where you get murdered the instant you cross the city lines (I'm really not exaggerating. A lot of people really are frightened of the city). But of course bigger cities get more attention for their crime problems simply because they're bigger. There are 5 times as many murders in Philadelphia, 5 times as many headlines, because there are 5 times the number of people.

New figures from the Pew Charitable Trusts find that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have about the same per-capita homicide rate.

When looking at which city has more murders per 100,000 residents, Pittsburgh is slightly more dangerous than Philadelphia ― but only by about 1 percentage point.

Last year, 278 people were slain in Philadelphia, a city of about 1.5 million residents. Compare that to 92 homicides in Pittsburgh, which has a population of around 300,000.