Disorder or Disorganization: Which Moderates Street Walkability’s Relationship to Neighborhood Safety?

• In Event: Communities and Place: Community Deprivation, Investment, and Change

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis placed on the walkability of U.S. cities, with multiple cities investing in public transit options and designing pedestrian-friendly streets. Some hypothesize that, with more walkable neighborhoods, there will be more "eyes on the street," thereby making it harder for motivated offenders to commit crimes. Others, however, maintain that walkability also pushes offenders and victims to converge more often, resulting in greater opportunities for criminal acts to take place. This study analyzes whether neighborhood disorder or disorganization conditions street walkability’s relationship to the spatial patterning of five different crime types, predicting the spatial distribution of crime across Boston neighborhood block groups from 2017 through 2019. Given that the outcomes are count variables of the number of crimes, negative binomial regression models are estimated. Three crime models are estimated, the first model testing the average effects of walkability on crime and the second and third models examining moderating effects of neighborhood disorder/disorganization on the walkability–crime relationship. Boston is uniquely suited to examining the role of neighborhood context in the walkability–crime relationship, given the city's high level of walkability, providing urban planners with a better theoretical understanding of crime in public spaces.

Authors

• Christopher Contreras, University of Massachusetts Boston

• John Patrick Moylan, Northeastern University