Do all commercial land uses deteriorate neighborhood safety?: Examining the relationship between commercial land-use mix and residential burglary
Introduction
Research in environmental criminology has provided extensive empirical evidence showing that commercial facilities are significantly associated with crime (Block and Block, 1995, Brantingham and Brantingham, 1995, Kinney et al., 2008, Kitchen, 2005, Loukaitou-Sideris et al., 2000, Schneider and Kitchen, 2007). Criminologists often claim that neighborhoods with a higher proportion of commercial land uses are likely to be more vulnerable to crime because commercial facilities attract outsiders to the neighborhood, thereby increasing its exposure to potential offenders (Hayslett-McCall, 2002). In the fields of urban planning, transportation, and public health, however, strong policy support for “mixed-use” neighborhoods has been initiated to improve urban sustainability, reduce traffic, and prevent chronic disease by promoting physical activities (Cozens, 2015, Duncan et al., 2010, Park et al., 2013, Soltani and Hoseini, 2014). Advocates of mixed-use neighborhoods claim that combining residential uses with commercial uses can make neighborhoods safer (Calthrope and Fulton, 2001, Duany et al., 2001, Jacobs, 1961) because urban activities promoted by the diversity of land use can enhance natural surveillance, discouraging criminal activity (Cozens, 2008, Jacobs, 1961, Subbaiyan and Tadepalli, 2012).
Such theoretical contradictions make it difficult to reach a conclusive agreement regarding the effect of land-use mix on crime. This study attempts to investigate the relationship between commercial land-use mix and residential crime, focusing on the five commercial land-use types (i.e., offices, retail stores, shopping centers, restaurants, and grocery stores) most commonly found in residential neighborhoods in Seattle. Because previous research investigating the relationships between crime and commercial establishments narrowly examined potentially harmful facilities, such as casinos, bars/taverns, and alcohol outlets, the need for investigating the effects of other various land uses on crime has been raised (Groff & Lockwood, 2014). It is hypothesized in this study that different facilities may have varying effects on crime and that not all commercial businesses may negatively affect neighborhood safety. By analyzing incidents of residential burglary, which has been reported as one of the most common types of offense influenced by the built environment (DeFrances and Titus, 1993, Yang, 2006), this study seeks to propose implications for land-use strategies to improve neighborhood safety. To identify an accurate spatial distribution of crime, the measure of crime density based on a standardized spatial unit of analysis is used in the analysis. In addition, a spatial regression model is employed to reduce the potential problems that may result from the spatial autocorrelation of crime data.
Section snippets
Land-use mix and crime
The link between land use and crime has been extensively researched in the field of environmental criminology. The research has focused on their relationship from three broad perspectives – the routine activity theory, crime pattern theory, and territoriality theory. The routine activity theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979) asserts that daily activities (e.g., dining, working, and shopping) in which people engage assign potential offenders and targets in close proximity differently, and thus the level
Study area
This study was conducted based on the crime data of Seattle in 2010. The population of Seattle was approximately .6 million according to the 2010 Census. It has the largest population among the cities in King County and the broader Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metro Area, and it is the 23rd most populous city in the U.S. (Seattle Department of Planning and Development). The land area of Seattle is 53,113 acres, and it remains mostly single-family residential use (49%) followed by parks and open
Bivariate analysis
As a preliminary analysis, the bivariate correlations between crime and land-use mix variables were estimated (Table 4). The ratios of grocery store area, restaurants, and office areas to the residential area in the neighborhood showed negative correlations with the residential burglary density, but the coefficients were not statistically significant at the .1 level. The ratios of retail store and shopping center areas to the residential area in the neighborhood were positively related to the
Discussion
The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of the two opposing theoretical assumptions regarding the effects of commercial land-use mix on neighborhood safety. This study attempted to address the methodological limitations of prior research in examining the effect of neighborhood land-use mix on crime. First, the use of micro-level objective crime data combined with an area-standardized unit of analysis made it possible to reduce the potential bias of spatial crime
Conclusion
In the field of environmental criminology, mixing commercial and residential land use has been considered to escalate the risk of crime. The crime pattern theory, for instance, assumes that some proportion of people are criminally motivated (Groff & Lockwood, 2014), and because neighborhoods with commercial facilities tend to draw more people than those without such establishments, it has been believed that these places have an increased likelihood of becoming an activity space of a potential
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by 2016 Hongik University Research Fund.
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