Many theories exist on the human-made environment’s impact on crime, though few of them have been properly tested. However, a piece in The Atlantic Cities summarizes a University of Pennsylvania Law Review article that describes research on zoning’s impact on crime in Los Angeles. Working at the intersection of law and land use planning, researchers found that whether a parcel is zoned as residential, commercial, or mixed-use predicts crime rates.
The results show that residential-only zones have the lowest crime rates, commercial-only zones have the highest crime rates, and mixed-use zones fall in between. Curious as to whether longstanding neighborhood features were responsible for differing crime rates, researchers also studied the impact of zoning changes on crime rates and found that adding residential parcels to commercial blocks, creating mixed-use zones, reduces crime rates.
This research seems to debunk Greenwich Village author Jane Jacobs’ influential theory that integrating businesses into residential areas decreases crime by increasing the number of “eyes on the street.” Appalled by the city’s massive public housing projects, Jacobs (who passed away in 2006) argued that dense, mixed-use blocks were safer because their active streets and sidewalks were always under observation.
