Nonresidential Crime Attractors and Generators Elevate Perceived Neighborhood Crime and Incivilities

Abstract

Recent studies have produced conflicting findings about the impacts of local nonresidential land uses on perceived incivilities. This study advances work in this area by developing a land-use perspective theoretically grounded in Brantingham and Brantingham's geometry of crime model in environmental criminology. That focus directs attention to specific classes of land uses and suggests relevance of land uses beyond and within respondents' neighborhoods. Extrapolating from victimization and reactions to crime, crime-generating and crime-attracting land uses are expected to increase perceived neighborhood incivilities and crime. Multilevel models using land use, crime, census, and survey data from 342 Philadelphia heads of households confirmed expected individual-level impacts. These persisted even after controlling for resident demographics and for neighborhood fabric and violent crime rates. Neighborhood status and crime were the only relevant ecological predictors, and their impacts are interpreted in light of competing perspectives on the origins of incivilities.