Its almost like poverty begets (violent) crime and reducing poverty reduces (violent) crimes.

Really I think the root is the blight. You're right about more circulator lines etc. We should at least get circulator coverage in the 2 mile radius of downtown and let MTA act more as a commuter bus service for further out areas. It also needs better headways, like some cities get bus frequencies down to 4 minutes. We could at least do sub 10.

I think on infill development though the current city building code is crippling. There are like 50 different zoning districts and are allocated on totally arbitrary per-lot boundaries. The biggest thing is to rezone areas within 2 blocks of major transit stops (which would include those high frequency circular stops, imo) to an equivalent of the current TOD-4 zone with no parking minimums. If this actually happened with expanded circulator coverage and the red line it would make a lot of the city a singular zoning code, which would be hugely helpful to attract investors to build here.