Category: News

To take stock of the neighborhood effects of drug activity, we combined theoretical insights from the drugs and crime and communities and place literatures in examining the longitudinal relationship between drug activity and crime rates at more spatially and temporally precise levels of granularity, with blocks as the spatial units and months as the temporal…Continue Reading Lab publication on Drug Activity and Crime Rates

This study explored the dynamic nature of neighborhoods using a relatively novel approach and data source. By using a nonparametric holistic approach of neighborhood change based on latent class analysis (LCA), we have explored how changes in the socio-demographic characteristics of residents, as well as home improvement and refinance activity by residents, are related to…Continue Reading Lab publication on Latent Classes of Neighborhood Change, and Consequences for Crime in Southern California Neighborhoods

This study introduces filtering theory from housing economics to criminology and measures the age of housing as a proxy for deterioration and physical disorder. Using data for Los Angeles County in 2009 to 2011, negative binomial regression models are estimated and find that street segments with older housing have higher levels of all six crime…Continue Reading Lab publication studying relationship between housing age or housing types and crime

Whereas existing research typically treats the variability in residents’ reports of collective efficacy and neighboring as measurement error, we consider such variability as of substantive interest in itself. This variability may indicate disagreement among residents with implications for the neighborhood collectivity. We propose using a general measure of social distance based on several social dimensions…Continue Reading Lab publication studying neighborhood social distance and disagreement in assessing collective efficacy