Urban Parks, Risky Facilities, and Crime: An Open Data Analysis of Built Environments

• In Event: WG-PLACE 2: Research on crime, place and time

Abstract

There is an extensive interdisciplinary literature on the relationship between urban parks and crime, but limited understanding of why certain parks become “risky facilities”. These parks are considered crime hot spots and capture a disproportionate amount of crime compared to other parks. This study integrates ecological perspectives to conduct a spatiotemporal analysis of crimes reported to the police during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use open data sources to systematically observe the environmental context and physical site features of 110 parks in a mid-sized city. The five parks with the most calls for service accounted for 26.3% of the total calls for service and 27.0% of total incident reports across the city from 2020 to 2022. These parks averaged 307.8 total calls for service and 31.2 total incident reports over the observation period. We estimated random effects negative binomial regression models to determine the effect of built environment variables on four different crime categories (i.e. total, violent, property, and order). Our findings suggest specific site features of parks (e.g., parking and playgrounds) have a cumulative impact on crime. Both physical and social environmental variables influence why some parks become risky facilities with higher levels of crime compared to other locations. We also observed linear parks have an increased risk of crime events possibly due to these locations connecting divergent parts of cities. There are several implications of this research for place-based criminological theory and crime prevention strategies. As cities across the world continue to implement greening initiatives and embrace climate-resilient urban planning, further research is necessary to assess the implications of these policies on public safety.

Authors

• M. Dylan Spencer, Georgia Southern University

• Cory Schnell, University of South Carolina