Crime and Land Use

Summary

For most of the 20th century, explanations of crime have mainly focused on people, though it has long been well known that certain places are more crime-prone than others. Some of the earliest sociological explanations of crime identified areas that were more likely to experience crime over a long period of time. From the Chicago School work in the early 20th century to the present, the constellation of land uses in an area has been thought to shape patterns of crime. A wide variety of land uses have been posited to influence crime, including taverns, schools, businesses, and “mixed” land uses, among many others. With the development of sophisticated geographic analysis tools, places have become much more prominent in the study of crime. Although there have been advances in our understanding of how land use and crime are related, additional work remains to clarify the specific mechanisms by which land use affects crime. Moreover, more research is needed to explore which configurations of land use affect specific crimes.