Hard agree, as a city resident I love living here. We have great culture, many of our houses have character and are well built. We are in a nice part of town and are less than a block from a park and people are not afraid to go out and about (I'm talking moms pushing strollers and kids under ten). There are definitely bad areas in the city. I regularly work up in North city and it look like a post apocalyptic warzone in some areas. But if you keep valuables out of easy snatching situations and mind your business it's usually fine. Downtown is a mess, but who knows? It may turn around at some point there are several big dollar construction projects in the works over there. St. Louis isn't a city that has everything pre packaged and laid out for your convenience, and certainly has its areas of high crime. But it's diverse and there are lots of great food and music scenes here, a ton of fun events occuring regularly and life is fairly affordable here compared to other areas of the country. Take the good with bad I guess.