ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME: THE STRUCTURE OF SHARED ROUTINE ACTIVITY LOCATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD‐LEVEL INFORMAL CONTROL CAPACITY

• Author: ANNA SMITH,BETHANY BOETTNER,CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING,CATHERINE A. CALDER
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12152
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017

ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME:

THE STRUCTURE OF SHARED ROUTINE ACTIVITY

LOCATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD-LEVEL

INFORMAL CONTROL CAPACITY∗

CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING, CATHERINE A. CALDER,

BETHANY BOETTNER, and ANNA SMITH

The Ohio State University

KEYWORDS: neighborhoods, social disorganization, ecological network, activity space,

social networks

By drawing on the work of Jacobs (1961), we hypothesize that public contact among

neighborhood residents while engaged in day-to-day routines, captured by the aggre-

gate network structure of shared local exposure, is consequential for crime. Neigh-

borhoods in which residents come into contact more extensively in the course of con-

ventional routines will exhibit higher levels of public familiarity, trust, and collective

efficacy with implications for the informal social control of crime. We employ the

concept of ecological (“eco-”) networks—networks linking households within neigh-

borhoods through shared activity locations—to formalize the notion of overlapping

routines. By using microsimulations of household travel patterns to construct cen-

sus tract-level eco-networks for Columbus, OH, we examine the hypothesis that eco-

network intensity (the probability that households tied through one location in a neigh-

borhood eco-network will also be tied through another visited location) is negatively

associated with tract-level crime rates (N=192). Fitted spatial autoregressive mod-

els offer evidence that neighborhoods with higher intensity eco-networks exhibit lower

levels of violent and property crime. In contrast, a higher prevalence of nonresident

visitors to a given tract is positively associated with property crime. The results of these

analyses hold the potential to enrich insight into the ecological processes that shape

variation in neighborhood crime.

Spatial characteristics of urban environments have been central to criminological

theory since the early Chicago School development of the social disorganization ap-

proach to understanding variation in neighborhood crime rates (Shaw and McKay, 1969

[1942]). This highly influential theoretical model is focused on the role of neighbor-

hood structural disadvantage—in particular, poverty, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, and

∗This research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (5R01DA025415), the OSU

Institute for Population Research (NICHD P2CHD058484), the W.T. Grant Foundation, and the

National Science Foundation (DMS-1209161). Thanks to Ruth Peterson and Andrew Papachristos

for helpful advice on earlier versions of the article. Thanks also to Jenny Piquette for assistance

with data management and measure construction.

Direct correspondence to Christopher R. Browning, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State

University, 238 Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil Ave Mall, Columbus, OH 43210 (e-mail: browning.

90@osu.edu).

C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12152

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 4 754–778 2017 754

ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME 755

instability of residential tenure—in reducing the capacity of neighborhoods to achieve

shared goals, including the informal social control of crime. The results of empirical

research rooted in social disorganization theory have offered robust evidence in sup-

port of the basic expectations of the theory over many decades (Kubrin and Weitzer,

2003).

Both the systemic model of community crime (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993) and,

more recently, collective efficacy theory (Sampson, 2012) have offered significant re-

finements to the original social disorganization approach, spurring a period of intensive

empirical investigation. Emphasis in the systemic model on the role of neighborhood-

based social network ties in generating informal social control capacity is intended

to focus inquiry on variation in neighbor network integration as a critical compo-

nent of crime-regulation capacity (Bellair, 1997; Bursik and Grasmick, 1993). Yet,

empirical work rooted in the systemic model has yielded equivocal results, leading

to increasing skepticism regarding the benefits of informal social networks in ur-

ban communities (Bellair and Browning, 2010; Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz, 2004;

Sampson, 2012; Wilson, 1996). Collective efficacy theory offers an important correc-

tive to the systemic model’s optimistic expectations regarding social network integration

and crime control, arguing that although network ties are associated with enhanced col-

lective efficacy, they are not a necessary condition for collective efficacy’s emergence

and, under some conditions, may impede informal social control of crime (Sampson,

2012).

We argue that networks are, indeed, important precursors to the neighborhood capac-

ity for crime control but that extant approaches have neglected the ecological processes

that shape weak forms of location-based interaction and, ultimately, norms regarding the

use of public space. We draw on the pioneering work of Jane Jacobs (1961) to develop a

theoretical approach that integrates insights from social disorganization and collective ef-

ficacy theories with a focus on routine activity patterns that promote neighborhood social

organization. Specifically, we employ the concept of ecological networks—links between

neighborhood residents through shared routine activity locations—to describe variation

in the potential for routine activity patterns to yield resident intersection in public space.

Dense networks of intersection are hypothesized to increase the likelihood of public con-

tact and familiarity and, in turn, the development of location-based trust and expectations

for prosocial action (Browning et al., 2017). Beyond expectations regarding the role of

shared routines among neighbors, we also consider the impact of nonresidential neighbor-

hood use, examining the hypothesis that the increasing presence of “outsiders” enhances

opportunity for crime and diminishes informal social control capacity, with implications

for crime rates.

To investigate these hypotheses, we employ Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission

(MORPC) microsimulations of 1999 routine travel patterns for the Columbus, OH, pop-

ulation to facilitate unbiased measurement of tract-level eco-network structural proper-

ties. We then examine associations between measures of eco-network structure and geo-

coded administrative data on crime in Columbus using the National Neighborhood Crime

Study (NNCS; Peterson and Krivo, 2000). We fit spatial autoregressive models examining

links between eco-network structure and neighborhood crime rates adjusting for a host

of potential confounders based on census, land-use, and prior crime rate data. To our

knowledge, these analyses constitute the first investigation of eco-network influences on

neighborhood crime rates.