Reducing crime by shaping the built environment with zoning: an empirical study of Los Angeles.

• Author: Anderson, James M.
• Position: Introduction through II. Existing Research on the Relationship Between Land Use, The Built Environment, and Crime, p. 699-727

The idea of using law to change the built environment in ways that reduce opportunities to commit crimes has a long history. Unfortunately, this idea has received relatively little attention in the legal academy and only limited rigorous empirical scrutiny. In this Article, we review the considerable literature on the relationship between zoning, the built environment, and crime. We then report the results of two empirical studies on these relationships. First, we conducted a study of the effect of zoning on crime using 205 blocks selected in eight different relatively high crime neighborhoods in Los Angeles that have similar demographic characteristics but different forms of zoned land use. We find that mixed commercial- and residential-zoned areas are associated with lower crime than are commercial-only zoned areas. Second, we matched neighborhoods undergoing zoning changes between 2006 and 2010 with neighborhoods that underwent no zoning changes during this period but had similar preexisting crime trajectories between 1994 and 2005. The primary zoning change in these neighborhoods was to convert parcels to residential uses. We find that neighborhoods in which there was a zoning change experienced a significant decline in crime. Our results suggest that mixing residential-only zoning into commercial blocks may be a promising means of reducing crime.

INTRODUCTION I. BACKGROUND ON LAND USE LAW, THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT, AND CRIME A. The Development of Land Use and Planning Law B. History of Land Use Regulation in Los Angeles II. EXISTING RESEARCH ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LAND USE, THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT, AND CRIME A. Land Use B. Natural Surveillance C. Target-Hardening D. Territoriality and Permeability E. Physical Disorder F. Crime Attractors/Reducers G. Density H. Limits to Existing Research III. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF LAND USE LAW ON THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND CRIME A. Sample Construction B. Data 1. Land Use Data 2. Crime Data 3. Built Environment Data C. Results 1. The Association Between Zoning Classifications and Crime 2. The Association Between Zoning Homogeneity and Crime 3. The Association Between Zoning and the Built Environment 4. The Built Environment as a Mediator for the Association Between Land Use and Crime IV. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF ZONING CHANGES ON CRIME A. Data B. Results V. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS CONCLUSION It is likewise commanded that the highways from market towns to other market towns be widened where there are woods or hedges or ditches, so that there be no ditch, underwood or bushes where one could hide with evil intent within two hundred feet of the road on one side or the other side.... And if perchance there is a park near the highway, it will behove the lord of the park to reduce his park until there is a verge two hundred foot wide at the side of the highway, as aforesaid, or to make a wall, ditch or hedge that malefactors cannot get over or get back over to do evil.

--King Edward I, Statute of Winchester, 1285 (1)

INTRODUCTION

Policymakers have long sought to use law to shape the physical environment to reduce crime. Such efforts date at least as far back as the Statute of Winchester in 1285, in which King Edward I required the widening of highways and removal of bushes that provided cover to robbers. (2) More recently, legal academics have proposed that land use law should be used by policymakers to reduce crime (3)

The attraction of such a strategy is considerable. Traditionally, criminal law has sought to reduce crime by deterring, rehabilitating, or incapacitating potential criminals, but it has taken little account of spatial or situational factors? Unfortunately, this approach has sometimes proved disappointing in practice. For example, sentencing reforms that emphasized deterrence through the enactment of mandatory minimum sentences5 have shown little relationship with actual crime trends. (6) Meanwhile, rehabilitation efforts have been abandoned for many adult offenders in the United States. (7) Incapacitation is expensive, has limited effects on crime, and imposes other substantial social costs. (8) Most crimes are not even reported, much less solved, again limiting the efficacy of the conventional criminal law in reducing crime. (9)

Using land use law to reduce crime sidesteps both of these problems and also the overworked criminal justice system (10) By shaping the built environment, policymakers can theoretically eliminate crime by design. (11)

This idea has received considerably more attention in the urban planning literature than in legal scholarship. Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities noted the importance of the built environment on crime rates and argued for development policies that encouraged diverse land uses to create a vital urban environment and encourage "eyes on the street" (12) to deter crime. (13) In 1968, Shlomo Angel proposed reducing crime though design. (14) In 1971, C. Ray Jeffery published Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, (15) which was followed by Oscar Newman's publication of the influential Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design in 1972. (16) The field of public health has also begun to pay increased attention to the way in which the design of communities affects a wide array of health outcomes, including violent crime, (17)

Despite the theoretical attractiveness of this idea, and a profusion of many ostensibly plausible theories about the interrelationship between land use law, the built environment, and crime, there has been relatively limited high-quality empirical research on the topic generally and almost no empirical research on this topic in the legal academy specifically. Only recently have legal scholars considered the relationship between the built environment and crime, as well as the opportunities to shape the built environment through land use regulation, (18) Even so, discussions of this topic have remained speculative at best and have not faced rigorous empirical tests, due in part to the unavailability of micro-level data on both land use regulation and crime patterns.

In this Article, we examine the relationship between zoning, the built environment, and crime by testing a variety of hypotheses suggested by the previous literatures on this subject. We take advantage of the detailed block-level crime data of Los Angeles and the systematic social observations conducted on 205 blocks in eight relatively high-crime areas of Los Angeles. We supplement this data with a Los Angeles-wide analysis of the relationship between changes in land use zones and crime in neighborhoods.

We focus on relatively high-crime neighborhoods because of the pressing policy need to reduce crime in such distressed areas. Using Los Angeles as our study site also complements the limited existing literature on the effect of land use on crime--a literature that mostly focuses on older cities with a different pattern of development. (19) An important improvement over previous research is that we were able to use a stronger research design (20) and discuss ways the regulatory framework around land use can be used to reduce crime.

Our central finding is that blocks that include both residential and commercial zoning exhibit less crime than blocks that are zoned exclusively for commercial use. This result suggests that including some parcels with residential-only zoning on blocks that are otherwise zoned commercially might reduce crime. We also find that crime rates are lowest in residential-only blocks, even in relatively high-crime neighborhoods. Finally, we find that when neighborhoods undergo some change in zoning--mostly toward residential forms--crime drops more than it does in neighborhoods that had comparable crime trends prior to the zoning change that occurred.

We organize this Article by first providing background about land use law and Los Angeles before turning to a review of the sizable literatures in criminology and urban planning that address the relationship between the built environment and crime. We then recount our results and conclude with implications for policymakers.

1. BACKGROUND ON LAND USE LAW, THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT, AND CRIME

   Land Use law, zoning, and the built environment are related yet distinct concepts. Zoning is one example of land use law, which...