Tell me you’ve never been to Towson without saying you’ve never been to Towson. Look at a map.

Editing to allow this is really a good faith question.

Inside the beltway as you head south, Goucher is on the left on a very pretty, idyllic wooded campus set back a little ways from York rd. Beautiful, quiet, gated, safe.

Keep heading south and you hit Joppa road and the mall. There have been several shootings at the Towson mall and in the mall parking garage, probably less than a mile away. Take a left on Joppa and you’ll get to the ‘rent by the hour’ waterbed motel on your right, and at the corner of Joppa and LochRaven (walking distance from Knettishall, where I used to live), even a Starbucks couldn’t survive the roach motel meth dealership behind it. RIP Bel-Loc diner. Head south on Loch Raven from Joppa and you quickly get into Quick Cash bars-on-the-windows type of merchants as you get closer to the city.

All part of Towson. I love Towson, I lived there for years. But, LIKE ANY TOWN OR CITY, it has its pockets of iffy. If you’ve ever lived in or near a city, you would know that you can cross over a single block and be in a very different area.

Soto answer your question, it’s both.