Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Friday, May 21, 2021

Urban murder rate rise concentrated in already dangerous areas

"Murders Are Rising the Most in a Few Isolated Precincts of Major Cities," Wall Street Journal

From the article:

A murder wave in U.S. cities that started last year is carrying forward into 2021, and a growing body of research shows a pattern behind the rise: It has been concentrated in relatively few poor neighborhoods, typically Black and Hispanic, with persistent histories of violence. 

As elected officials and communities search for solutions, recognizing this geographical reality is essential, say social scientists and police officials who have studied the murder wave. Police and other city authorities will need to focus their efforts on a few areas that have missed out on the urban renaissance of the past two decades as their middle-class residents have fled. ... 

Homicide is up 9.1% in New York so far this year and 22% so far in Chicago, following double-digit increases in both places and in many other cities last year. Mr. Ludwig calculates that nearly three-quarters of Chicago’s homicide increase in 2020 was concentrated in a cluster of eight of the city’s 25 police districts, mostly in the city’s predominantly Black South Side and largely Hispanic West Side. 

Similar patterns have shown up elsewhere. ... 

Mr. Ludwig describes the pattern as a little-noticed new form of inequality—one of public safety. In 1985, he said, the most violent neighborhoods in Chicago had about twice as many murders per capita as safer ones. In recent years that difference stretched in some places to 16 to 1—making the problem an epidemic in some neighborhoods and hardly on the radar in others. 

“The rising inequality of safety means that people in the most impacted areas have fewer and fewer allies who also care about this,” he said. 

For much of the past 20 years, violent crime receded in American cities. A range of factors led to the decline, including the waning of a national crack cocaine epidemic. Some places gentrified, drawing in business and more affluent residents, but others lost people and became even more isolated, segregated and poor. Many of these areas saw hospitals, schools, churches and businesses—the institutions that tie a place together and create order—shut down. Losing that social and economic infrastructure left them prone to gangs and violence.

-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented," 2021

Most academics excoriate "broken windows" theory, which got transmogrified into arresting people for any kind of offense.  I agree with the premise of End of Policing, that too many social problems have been criminalized, and that police response doesn't solve anything.

To me, broken windows theory is about the need for community investment, that communities don't deteriorate if they are not disinvested.

"Social urbanism" is a theoretical and practical approach that provides a way to shape and target such investments in communities.

-- "Yes, public and nonprofit investments in the city spur further reinvestment and change: is this a bad thing or a complicated thing?," 2019
-- ""Utility" infrastructure as an opportunity for co-locating urban design and placemaking improvements," 2020
-- "Social urbanism and Baltimore," 2019
-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)," 2020

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10 Comments:

At 10:17 AM, Anonymous charlie said...

What I'd like to see is someone for a crime/marijuana correlation.

I thought-- a few years ago -- that legalization would drive down crime.

My experience -- in the past few years -- is no. Some confounds are that 1) in DC it isn't legal for sale, so black/grey market is enormous, 2) Generalized withdraws of police in the last year and 3)even in state where sales are legal, outside of MI prices are too taxed so black market in full force.


As you said, largely violent crime isolated into certain areas, although spreading, see scooter shooting this week:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/reilly-family-shaw-shooting/2021/05/20/4afc58a0-b991-11eb-96b9-e949d5397de9_story.html


 
At 4:21 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Damn. Your (1) is a very good point. Could study urban Denver to see what the connection might be. I am not a user, don't know much about pricing. But yes, if high, it defeats the purpose.

(2) DK. On the Colbert King column today, there is a comment by cmckeonjr looking at the 2019 ATF data on the origin of DC's crime guns. Bracing. Of course most from Virginia. And Chicago and Northeast crime guns mostly come from states with super weak monitoring of sales.

(3) It's also in suburban with similar demographics. Eg when I was on grand jury, sure most incidents were from ward 7 and 8, but there were areas of wards 1 (by Georgia Avenue and Howard) and 5 (Edgewood area) with a persistent number of cases.

 
At 4:22 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Not suburban, supposed to be sub areas.

 
At 10:54 AM, Anonymous charlie said...

DC police historically have been considered aggressive on firearms seizures. D/K if that is still true given their pullback.



https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/dc-mpd-illegal-guns-deon-kay/65-fd745cf0-0813-41a7-83a1-aaa62ff21ff1


ATF does a yearly report on this, this may be most current:

https://www.atf.gov/file/146976/download

(same trend, guns from VA)

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/dc-mpd-illegal-guns-deon-kay/65-fd745cf0-0813-41a7-83a1-aaa62ff21ff1

In the ATF they break it down by age, but not by race. 90% under 40. The point of stop and frisk was to advertise to young black men under 40 not worth carrying a gun because the police are going to stop you regardless.

Ed Luce at FT had an editorial that we need more gun control to control crime wave. He missed the boat of course thinking about this rationally Gun control (as a media driven issue) is mostly a sham issue about school/mass shootings and not about everyday crime. As we see from the DC example, police are grabbing around 5-10 guns a day which gives you an idea of the scale. But the public demand is for less gun policing in the district, not more.


Off topic but on to your SRO topics:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/magazine/extended-stay-hotels.html


Interesting question -- should credit scores be needed for rentals? Richard Corduray does not come off well in the article.







 
At 2:32 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Thanks for this. Yes, I've been surprised (sort of) for some time about this, how people are advocating for less gun enforcement, when DC's murder rate is rising, and more people are injured by shootings.

Karl Racine had an op-ed in the Post about it. I mean, wtf? If anything that means don't devolve criminal prosecution responsibilities to DC.

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2021/01/dc-attorney-generals-opinion-on.html

I see the value in stopping the prosecution of "low level" crimes. But by definition, gun crimes aren't low level.

I know you're not a criminal lawyer but I see part of the BLM response as a kind of equivalent to jury nullification ("he's guilty but I won't vote to convict because I don't want to send another black man to jail") on crime.

Crime sucks. Especially if you're a victim of it. Because I have been in a wide variety of terrible ways, it's hard for me to slough it off.

Colbert King's column last weekend is about this wrt DC's elected officials and the policing review commission.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/21/root-cause-shootings-dc-think-guns-those-pulling-trigger/

I haven't tried yet to track down the commission's report and read it. Have you?

I imagine there's some of this, a kind of nullification of crime.

Of course, like with Krasner, the issue is he's right, you need more investment in other forms of public safety. What do you do in the short run?

OTOH, there was an article in the Inquirer about Kensington. HOLY S***!

https://www.inquirer.com/zzz-systest/a/heroin-effects-kensington-philadelphia-dealers-violence-20210520.html

It's a scourge (not that I didn't already know). The article reports that the total sales of heroin in the Kensington district total almost $1 billion annually. !!!!!!!

 
At 2:32 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

didn't see the NYT article. Thanks.

 
At 5:30 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/20/culture-war-politics-2021-democracy-analysis-489900


yeah saw your earlier cite from inquirer. Again goes back to marijuana legalization.

Is our purpose to stop crime -- or stop the usage of drugs that destroy lives?

People are going to kill themselves slowly -- through drinking, guns, driving, or opioids.

Would a welfare state stop that?

Would anything? Religion?






 
At 6:07 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

That is the dilemma, eg "harm reduction" versus crime reduction. The way it's portrayed on Philly DA, they seem a lot more focused on the former, and the people victimized by crime are collateral damage.

The Puritan streak in us makes it hard to let s*** slide, there needs to be some retribution. Cf Leaving Las Vegas and the Shue character being accepting of the Cage chapter's decision to drink himself to death.

Wrt religion, plenty of drug, alcohol, and domestic abuse in high religion areas. Then again, that's more about poverty.

I wrote about a documentary we happened on, looking at a WV community after the coal mines closed. Such poverty.

https://www.wvnstv.com/news/mcdowell-countys-grit-camaraderie-profiled-in-nationwide-documentary/

People say there's plenty of another in Western European countries with strong welfare systems. Of course the UK is like the US programmatically except for NHS, and if the Guardian is to be believed it's pretty grim.

Cf. The video in this

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/dec/11/johnny-marr-and-maxine-peake-you-cant-avoid-homelessness-in-manchester-it-touched-us-both

 
At 6:07 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Chapter = character

 
At 9:29 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

https://www.frontpagedetectives.com/p/louisana-overdose-death-charged-police

Speaking of people killing themselves. Yes drug sales are illegal. Is it the dealer's fault?

 

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