Pathways: Examining Street Network Configurations, Structural Characteristics and Spatial Crime Patterns in Street Segme
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Pathways: Examining Street Network Configurations, Structural Characteristics and Spatial Crime Patterns in Street Segments Young‑An Kim1 · John R. Hipp2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Objectives Although theories suggest that street network configurations (pathways) are important factors for understanding the spatial patterns of crime, relatively less attention has been paid to the association between the physical configuration of the street network and the level of crime in place. Consequently, we employed the concept of betweenness centrality in the context of the street network to empirically measure the potential foot traffic passing through a given street segment. Methods We introduce a methodological refinement by accounting for the characteristics of origin and destination of each potential trip (where travelers are from and tend to go) using residential population in origins and destinations and the number of various types of business employees in destinations. Moreover, we posit that the effect of potential foot traffic into a given street segment will be moderated by certain social environmental characteristics such as socioeconomic status of place. By using data on a sample of 300,000 street segments in the Southern California region across 130 cities, we estimate a set of negative binomial regression models including the betweenness measures. Results Our results show that betweenness centrality has a curvilinear relationship with violent and property crime: At lower levels, increases in betweenness results in increased crime, yet the pattern becomes crime-reducing at higher values of the betweenness measure. We also found that the pattern is moderated by the socioeconomic status of the street segment. Conclusions The current study highlights that there is an important relationship of the physical environment in terms of the street network configuration and crime in street segments. Keywords Street network configuration · Street segment · Crime · Pathways Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1094 0-019-09428-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Young‑An Kim [email protected] 1
College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 308 Eppes Hall, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306‑1273, USA
2
Department of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Introduction Theories of criminal opportunities have argued that different physical environments create different criminal opportunities (the mixture of motivated offenders, potential victims, and presence or absence of capable guardians) and consequently, the amount of crime (Bernasco and Block 2011; Brantingham and Brantingham 1984, 1993a, b, 1995; Taylor et al. 1995; Taylor and Gottfredson 1986). Particularly, the Brantinghams specify the concept of criminal opportunities in pla
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