Criminogenic Tourism Gentrification

• In Event: Communities and Place: Hotspots, Environmental Features, Tourism, and Crime

Abstract

This paper develops and applies the concept of criminogenic tourism gentrification to examine the spatial distribution of crime events in a touristic neighborhood, using a case study of the French Quarter neighborhood in New Orleans. The paper has two goals. First, the paper explains how tourist investment and intersecting commercial land-uses produce a spatiotemporal convergence of potential offenders and victims and thereby generate multiple opportunities for crime to occur. Second, the paper illustrates the ways in which the peculiar characteristics of a residential neighborhood can become a crime generator and crime attractor simultaneously. The paper eschews an either/or distinction between crime generators and crime attractors and develops a both/and conception to explore how the density of people, proximity of people, and interactions between people can be major factors that influence crime opportunities at particular places. Overall, the paper builds on contemporary criminological perspectives on place-crime connections to offer novel insights into the empirical and theoretical linkages among tourism, gentrification, and crime.

Author

• Kevin Fox Gotham, Tulane University