Its a midwest thing. I grew up in the MPLS/MKE ish region and its definitely a midwest thing based on my Army travels around the country.

Half the people in the new york metro area live in the city. There is some diversity.

A quarter of the people in the Milwaukee metro area live in the city. Almost no middle class people live in the city, as a percentage. Its all dirt poor in the slums and a couple rich folks along the lake shore areas, thats it.

In MPLS, I kid you not, less than a tenth of the people in the metro area live in the city. Nobody lives downtown but the skyscrapers and some poor people, and as you note, poor people always have amazing high crime stats, so you guess the results. Detroit is pretty much the same way although I haven't spent much time there.

Basically on the coasts, there are middle and upper class people living in cities, which NEVER happens in the midwest. "the city" is a couple soulless skyscrapers, maybe a public uni, and invariably a giant crime filled slum. In the midwest all the cultural and entertainment stuff happens like a quarter mile away from the city or more, in one of the burbs.

If you see a skyscraper, on the coasts its probably a fun place to be, and in the midwest its always the opposite, if you can see a skyscraper, run...

There are two cultural / social effects that really confuse discussions between midwesterners and coasties.

1) Our cities are cultural wastelands with nothing to do except bar hop with fake ID carrying college students. All the cultural stuff happens in the burbs, music, art, parks, most festivals (makerfaire, etc), almost all our sports teams except basketball, all the bars that aren't entirely full of kids with fake IDs or need bullet proof vests to enter, all the good restaurants, all the good or upscale or specialty stores, none of that stuff is downtown in the midwest. My impression of the coasts is ALL the burbs have on the coasts is houses, if you want to buy a pop-tart or a bottle of pepsi you need to drive into the coastal city to shop, etc. So "new urbanism" and all that confuses the hell out of midwesterners. So the coasties say if I move downtown I'll have vibrant cultural activities but there's nothing to do downtown and any time I want to do something I'd have to jump in a car and drive out to the burbs.

This also confuses coasties who get imported. So they think our downtown is like Manhattan but a little smaller, and are mystified that its possibly the most boring four square miles of office buildings on the planet, and tell everyone there's nothing to do in Milwaukee but get drunk, get drugs, and get shot at... but drive out to the burbs, like maybe Brookfield, and we have concerts in the park every summer weekend, and symphony and other music in the amphitheater maybe every other weekend, at multiple sites, and festivals and fairs and street parties and parks and great shopping and great food stores and ... But you gotta drive out to the burbs to have any fun, cities are dead.

The imports have a really rough time, property developers have made these million dollar condos for california people to move into because "all the fun is downtown" back home and condos are supposed to cost a million bucks. But it doesn't work that way in the midwest, so the get all depressed / freaked out that there's nothing to do outside their million dollar downtown condo but get drunk, get drugs, get robbed, or get shot. Could buy a great house in a great school district in a great lifestyle area for a quarter mil, but no, the imports all get a million dollar downtown condo and complain there's nothing to do but get drunk.

In the midwest the cities are empty and soul-less, whereas I'm told on the coasts its the burbs that are empty and soul-less. This confuses the heck out of everyone when coasties and midwesterners talk to each other.

2) On the coasts if someone says they're from NY its over 50% odds they are literally living at a postal address in NYC. In contrast, in the midwest, most people you meet are not from the closest downtown office building city but they WILL say they are. 90% of the people who claim to live in Minneapolis do NOT live in MPLS but in a burb in the greater metro area. I tell people I'm from Milwaukee and people who know MKE feel sad for me and the coasties humorously think I grew up in an office building or in the north side slums, but I actually grew up three burbs to the west (about 15 miles?) in something of a paradise.

Some girls I dated a long time ago were "from Minneapolis" or "from Detroit" but what that really means in midwestern speak is they lived in a burb and the closest skyscraper was maybe 2 miles away in Detroit, for example.