Skip to main content

dc - Why do people choose to stay in Starling City/Star City?


Starling City in Arrow hasn't had a very good track record over the last couple of years (spoilers from the show):



  • A pretty poor economy overall


  • Open conflict between multiple gangs

  • A wide-spread drug epidemic with Vertigo

  • Many high-profile events being violently disrupted by various villains

  • Various attacks by meta-humans that the police cannot stop

  • "The Undertaking", an artificially generated Earthquake that killed hundreds

  • Slade's Mirakuru-enahnced soldiers attacking indiscriminately and the mayor delaying calling in the National Guard

  • City-wide attacks from HIVE and Damien Darhk's Ghosts

  • The violent deaths of the last two mayoral candidates, plus the following mayoral candidate stepping down after her daughter's life was threatened

  • The (presumed) violent deaths of two CEOs (one who was a mayoral candidate) from the city's largest business

  • And at various points, a green-clothed vigilante who resorts to killing those who get in his way (sometimes while being framed)



This seems like an incredibly unsafe place to live with all that (including several National Guard-level emergencies). And yet there are a surprising number of people who still live there, and the board members of Queen Consolidated/Palmer Technologies don't consider moving their headquarters.


With all the tragedy that has befallen the city, why do so many people choose to stay?



Answer



This is really a social question, rather than a just comic/TV question! Why do people stay in cities riddled by gang violence, or those which are economically void?


Often times, those who must stay are those most adversely affected by the issues plaguing the city: the poor. People of low income lack the resources to relocate. Acquiring jobs, transportation and housing can be incredibly difficult for those with little to no money to their name.


A good real-world example is Detroit, whose populated has halved in the last 40 years (and from peak population to current population, the exodus is even more apparent). The remaining population is of a demographic statistically more likely to be in poverty. The government of the city doesn't have the resources to help people leave, and they'd more likely be interested in trying to get new people to come in.


Looking at Detroit's decline, we see just how long it takes people to leave a dying city, even when there are many other viable cities in the country, or even each state. It takes decades! Perhaps people would hasten their departure in the face of extreme terrorism, but even New York City's population continued to grow after the terrorist events of 9/11.


We do know that people are leaving Starling City. When Ray Palmer appears to make a pitch to take over Queen Industries. In the Season 3 episode, "The Calm", he says this:




The Arrow just took down another one of the city's most wanted, and there's no denying that the city's crime rate has plummeted in the past five months.


But so has its unemployment rate and its population.
We have experienced two terrorist attacks in as many years.
Starling City is dying, and a prison full of criminals-- Take another off the board.



Unfortunately, we're not given any hard stats on what number of people are living or what amount are staying/moving in.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more