A Possible Cause of the Great Crime Rise: Urban Renewal’s Contribution to the Crime Rise of 1964-75

• In Event: Communities and Place: Reconsidering the Political Economy of Places

Abstract

Considerable attention has been directed at the great crime drop in the 1990s, but far less attention has been directed at the equally dramatic rise in crime in the 1960s and 70s. We offer a possible major contributor to this rise: the destruction of thousands of places in large urban centers. During the late 1950s, federal funding dramatically increased local transformations in highway construction and removal of housing for low-income, very often African American, families. Urban renewal could have caused this crime rise through at least two mechanisms: disrupting neighborhoods’ social fabrics and by destroying the economic viability of places, destabilizing control from place manager. We examine this important historical event and offer possible explanations using homicide data and urban renewal grant data from the time in question.

Authors

• Jaime R. Argueta, University of Cincinnati

• John E. Eck, University of Cincinnati

• Francis Cullen, University of Cincinnati