Neighborhood Change and Crime in the Modern Metropolis

Abstract

Few empirical studies of crime have treated neighborhoods as dynamic entities, by examining how processes of growth, change, and decline affect neighborhood rates of crime. From a small yet burgeoning collection of dynamic research related to population migration—including population loss, gentrification, development and demolition of public housing, home ownership and home foreclosure, and immigration—we know that neighborhood change, even when it leads to socioeconomic improvements, tends to have a destabilizing influence that results in increases in crime in the short term. This occurs, in part, because residential turnover undermines informal social control. There is evidence across a variety of neighborhood changes, including population loss from central cities and gentrification, that population migration is a cause and consequence of crime. However, too few studies pay adequate attention to how methodological choices affect inferences about the effects of neighborhoods on crime, and not much is known about the relationship between neighborhood change and crime, especially regarding causal mechanisms. Longitudinal data on neighborhood social and cultural processes and population migration are needed to advance our understanding of neighborhood change and crime.

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