It is and well balanced too, but, and there is always a but

I think the author has viewed the city through slightly rose tinted spectacles.
Yes the worst areas are those with a high proportion of public housing, but the street crime is fairly endemic even in the more touristy areas like the Vieux Port, the basilica and around St Charles station and the gun violence knows no boundaries.
We have two separate and distinctly different Police forces here in France, the Police Municipale who are employed and run by the Mairie and the Gendarmerie, who are a Federal Force administered by the Interior Ministry. There was a survey recently which showed that Marseille has called on the Gendarmerie to reinforce the Police Municipale more times than any other French city apart from Paris in recent years. Toulon just along the coast has similar problems but is much smaller (about the same size as Norwich) whereas Marseille equates in size to Manchester, so the scale is that much larger.
The writer is not correct about it being a cruise ship destination. Its a large embarkation / disembarkation port for cruise ships, but they don't generally call there during cruises.

Posted By: Kirrie, Aug 22, 12:42:50