查看完整版本: How to Predict Gentrification: Look for Falling Crime

How to Predict Gentrification: Look for Falling Crime

Emily Badger @emilymbadger JAN. 5, 2017

Everyone has theories for why well-educated, higher-income professionals are moving back into parts of cities shunned by their parents’ generation.

Perhaps their living preferences have shifted. Or the demands of the labor market have, and young adults with less leisure time are loath to waste it commuting. Maybe the tendency to postpone marriage and children has made city living more alluring. Or the benefits of cities themselves have improved.

“There are all sorts of potential other amenities, whether it’s cafes, restaurants, bars, nicer parks, better schools,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.

“But a huge piece of it,” she said, “I think is crime.”

New research that she has conducted alongside Keren Mertens Horn, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and Davin Reed, a doctoral student at N.Y.U., finds that when violent crime falls sharply, wealthier and educated people are more likely to move into lower-income and predominantly minority urban neighborhoods.

Their working paper suggests that just as rising crime can drive people out of cities, falling crime has a comparable effect, spurring gentrification. And it highlights how, even if many Americans — including, by his own words, President-elect Donald Trump — inaccurately believe urban violence is soaring, the opposite long-term trend has brought wide-ranging change to cities.

“We’re trying to help people understand what a dramatic difference the reduction in violent crime in particular has made in our environment,” Ms. Ellen said. “That has repercussions far beyond what we think of. The homicide rate has gone down — that’s directly the most important consequence. But there are all sorts of repercussions as well. This really has been a sea change.”


Nationally, violent crime peaked in 1991. It fell precipitously for the next decade, then more slowly through the 2000s (and there’s a whole other set of theories about why that has happened). While homicides have increased recently in some cities, rates remain far below what they were 25 years ago, including in Chicago. (Another end-of-year fact-check, while we’re at it: Mr. Trump claimed during the campaign that the homicide rate in his new home in Washington rose by 50 percent. In fact, it fell by 17 percent in 2016.)

The new research looked at confidential geocoded data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses, and more recent American Community Surveys, to identify the neighborhoods where more than four million households moved. Using citywide violent crime data from the F.B.I., the scholars tracked the changing probability of different demographic groups moving into central cities, as opposed to suburbs, as crime fell.

Higher-income and college-educated movers — and to a lesser degree, whites — appeared significantly more sensitive to changing crime levels in their housing decisions than other groups. Lower-income and minority households, for instance, didn’t become more likely to move to cities as they grew safer.

That may reflect the fact, Ms. Ellen suggested, that lower-income families have more experience or confidence in their ability to navigate crime. Or it may suggest that attention to violence is a luxury in housing decisions that the poor and minorities may not have. A household facing racial discrimination, high housing costs or the need to be near supportive family members simply has fewer options — and less leeway to be choosy — than the higher-income, college-educated households that this research identifies.

“When cities feel safer, that opens people’s eyes,” Ms. Ellen said of the willingness of new groups to consider these neighborhoods.

It’s entirely likely that the arrival of more affluent residents affected crime, too — either by increasing opportunities for property crime in the short term, or by adding eyes on the street and pressure on the police in the long run. Because this research looked at moves that occurred after crime was already falling, the authors believe the movers were reacting to changes in crime and not simply causing it themselves.


But the relationship between crime and gentrification in particular is complex. Wealthier residents may bring new tensions to neighborhoods, fearing — and reporting — criminal activity where none exists. And such demographic change in cities could play a role in pressuring the police to pursue tactics that feel unduly aggressive to the people who preceded the newcomers.



This study also doesn’t offer evidence that existing residents were displaced by the new arrivals. Many of the urban neighborhoods studied had lost population, so they had room to grow again without pushing existing residents out. But the possibility that these trends portend higher housing costs and more housing demand in the future in poorer, minority neighborhoods adds a cautionary note, Ms. Ellen said, to the declining crime trend.

NYC 犯罪率下降

前几天听到新闻说扭腰犯罪率史上最低:o

New York City saw a significant drop in major crimes in the first quarter of 2016 with the fewest murders and shootings in its recorded history, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced during a Monday press conference.

“We are the safest big city in America. This quarter’s statistics prove it once again,” de Blasio said.

In the first three months of the year, New York City saw a 21 percent drop in murders compared with the same period last year, a statistic de Blasio called “extraordinary.” The city also saw a 14 percent decrease in shootings compared with those months in 2015.

The mayor, along with New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and other law enforcement personnel, spoke about the significant drops in several major crime categories across the city.

De Blasio said the statistics are linked to an increased focus from the New York City Police Department on getting guns off the streets — the NYPD has already seized over 800 guns, a more than 15 percent increase compared with the first quarter of 2015. Gun arrests are also up by about 13 percent, de Blasio said.

The only region in New York City that saw an increase in shootings was Manhattan North. All other areas saw “huge decreases,” Dermot Shea, a deputy police commissioner, said at the press conference.

Over the past two years, the city has seen a decrease of 5.8 percent in incidents across all major crime categories combined, the mayor said.

One of the few categories that rose in the first quarter was stabbings and slashings, Bratton said, with 899 so far this year. (There were 746 at this point last year.) The NYPD is increasing its focus on that category and Bratton said he is “comfortable” saying that statistic will also come down over time.

“When you contrast this report to what we used to know in this city, it’s an extraordinary testament to the consistency of the progress that the NYPD has made,” de Blasio said. “I remember vividly what things were like in this city when we had over 2,000 murders a year, when even walking down a busy street you had to look over your shoulder. I remember how life was, how many people left because they thought this city couldn’t possibly succeed. Well, the NYPD turned that around.”

扭腰犯罪率降低了，坏蛋们全跑到芝加哥，费城，丹佛等大城市了。

费城也不断进行着gentrification，gentrification，其实就是城市改造哈，把脏乱差的城区改造成高大上的地段。
随着gentrification进行，地价/房价就上涨，低收入群体自然就只能搬离以往的脏乱差hood，而受教育的高收入群体和年轻人不断搬入，犯罪率自然就下降了，而房价自然会继续上涨。

我记得新闻说，圣诞期间，芝加哥死了十几个人。芝加哥简直成了高犯罪率的代名词了。

我一直认为大城市的市长对城市发展起着至关重要的作用。比如扭腰，曾经高犯罪率的地方，听来米国比较早的老中同事说，90年代初期，去纽领馆的那条街，路边溜达着站街女~ 呵呵
我第一次去扭腰是98年，当时同事嘱咐我别去32街以下的那些街道，所以一出Penn Station，直接往34街而去~

扭腰的治安改变，我一直认为跟扭腰两届市长有关，一位是Rudy Giuliani，一位自然是Michael Bloomberg了。
两位都是共和党人，不过这次大选Giuliani坚定地为Trump站队，而Bloomberg守在Hillary一边。不管他俩为谁站队，他俩都是能力相当强的市长。

新年前的那天，我们正好在路上，三个人的手机和车里的收音机先后想起警报声，这是Amber Alert报警，一个未满周岁的孩子在宾州西部地区被绑架，信息还公告了嫌疑人的车牌，车型号和颜色。
几天过去，也不知道那个婴儿找到没有，Amber Alert给出的信息非常清楚，按理说应该能抓到那个人。


这不是我第一次收到Amber Alert，上次收到Amber Alert大概是一年前了，好像是隔壁county的一个男孩走丢了。当时不知道Amber Alert是怎么回事，特地查了一下。

Amber Alert源于得州的一个小女孩Amber Hagerman， 1996年她在自家院子玩耍时被绑架后来被害。Amber Hagerman的父母做了很大努力，呼吁建立nationwide registry of sex offenders，两年后开始初步建立了Alert系统。

现在Amber Alert通过电台/电视台/通信等公众平台发出广播。出现极端天气情况时，我们都收到公众平台的广播，Amber Alert是除极端天气/灾难情况以外情况的广播。


关于nationwide registry of sex offenders的事，我以前写过，也贴了网站。这个共享信息平台真的是非常好，知道坏蛋们都住哪里，离他们远点~~~

国内绑架孩子的情况不少，应该也建立一个像Amber Alert这样的系统，技术上超简单的。

回复 3楼pp_dream 的帖子

美国的枪支泛滥是个社会问题，毒品，酗酒这些社会问题引起美国大城市有好些流浪汉。欧洲的大城市就没有这么多无家可归的人，可能他们的社会福利好些吧！还是对美国大城市怕怕:'(