The Atlantic: The long-held image of violent, crime-filled cities permeates popular culture. Thanks to TV shows, rap music, and a deep-seated antipathy to cities that has been apparent in some political and cultural quarters since at least the nineteenth century, countless Americans continue to perceive big cities through the lens of 40-year-old movies like Taxi Driver and The Out of Towners -- as cauldrons of crime, filth, and corruption (and magnets for immigrants, gays, Jews, intellectuals, and other "disreputable" minorities).