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Crime and land use in Pittsburgh: A micro-size grid-cell analysis of the influence of land-uses on area crime

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Abstract

Though substantial amount of research of routine activities/opportunity theory investigated the relationship between land use and crime, very few studies considered various types of land uses at the micro-scale of area. Using 2013 crime data geocoded on the 500-ft2 grid cells overlaid on Pittsburgh, results from multivariate regression models show that certain types of facility such as retail shops, schools and bus stops increase the number of crimes at grid cells. Further results show that, net of the socioeconomic factors, the number of crimes in a grid cell varies both by facility and crime type. However, potential guardianship and target suitability of the facility are not found to have significant influence on the number of crimes in grid cells. Attention to various types of land uses across the city is required to help effective allocation of social control resources against crime.

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Notes

  1. In addition to Table 4, we provide the standardized coefficients of betas for Models 7 through 9 in Appendix B.

  2. There is a possibility that the number of employees can be a proxy for either size of store or volume of customers. Though there is no perfect rule to use this proxy as a unique measure of guardianship, we follow what Felson and Cohen (1980) and Sherman et al (1989) found and established in their previous literature: the number of persons in a household is positively associated with the level of guardianship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA

    SooHyun O & YongJei Lee

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  1. SooHyun O
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  2. YongJei Lee
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Correspondence to YongJei Lee.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table A1

Table A1 Standardized coefficients of betas linking the relationships between the number of crimes and facilities
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Appendix B

Table B1

Table B1 Standardized coefficients of betas linking the relationships between the number of crimes and retail shops
Full size table

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O, S., Lee, Y. Crime and land use in Pittsburgh: A micro-size grid-cell analysis of the influence of land-uses on area crime. Crime Prev Community Saf 18, 204–227 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2016.9

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