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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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It does, but in the opposite direction from your hypothesis.

Yes, and if that generalizes to other cities and is a big enough correlation then that's a good argument for walkability. But I don't think the data in that paper supports this claim - with WalkScore as the independent variable, these are the standardized betas for different kinds of crime:

  1. Property crimes per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.026

  2. Violent crimes per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.039

  3. Total crimes per 100,000 residents 2007: 22.034 !!!

  4. Murders per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.068

I'm assuming that there's an error in the "total crimes" statistic considering its magnitude, but regardless, the other correlations are low and not statistically significant. (I'm having a hard time interpreting that table - some of the signs of the unstandardized coefficients are different from their standardized betas, and the magnitudes of the betas are much larger than the others which suggests maybe they've standardized the independent variables but not the dependent variables, since the total in category 3 is much larger corresponding to the larger standardized betas).

The only reference to that in the paper that I see is:

The attributes associated with walkability may also have the capacity to improve safety and decrease crime

Which is a pretty weak assertion and doesn't say, afaict, that walkability correlates with low crime. They mention a couple of papers but I don't see any real citation that would allow me track down the papers they're referencing, just a last name and year but no reference to what journal or month on the off chance they aren't paywalled.

The article linked shows that correlation between WalkScore™, the propriatery metric chosen by authors to measure walkability, and violent crime per 100000 residents, is -.039. As authors didn't put any stars or pluses next to it, which is their notation for highly statiscally signifcant finds, measured by the p-value, I assume p>.1.

Also the area which the authors examined was Louisville, KY, thus making this study hardly comprehensive.

It seems like junk. 'Proprietary index'. -.039 correlation.

That's almost as much BS as the guns / homicide rate correlation of .02 .

Real correlations in social science and criminology are something like the correlation between black population and homicide rate, a very robust .8 .

It's obviously false based on a cursory look at real data.

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ky/louisville/crime

https://communitycrimemap.com/

Look at that and then look at google maps and it's immediately clear that the most dangerous areas are all in the dense parts in the west with the grid streets and density that yimbys love.

Albuquerque has a combination grid and non-grid city plan in the uptown which was built post-WWII. Every half-mile is an E/W or N/S boulevard, and within each square half-mile is a neighborhood.

The neighborhoods with less crime are not internally gridded; the streets are curves and swooshes which are hard to drive through at speed. The International District, still called the War Zone by everyone except city officials and the nightly news, is full of heavily gridded residential neighborhoods, six-home single-story apartment buildings, and no services except on the half-mile major roads. The Wal-Mart which serves the War Zone is shutting down due to high crime.

Density isn't enough for a high walk score; you also need certain amenities within walking distance, and criminals tend to drive off said amenities.

Authoritative list of said amenities, for anyone who's interested (for a different, but similar, walkability metric that's less opaque)

  • Office supplies, stationery, and gift stores
  • Accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping, and payroll services
  • Elementary and secondary schools
  • Florists

All known hotbeds of crime.

Which makes it a useless metric to look at the effect of density on crime.

Yes, if you want to look at the effect of density on crime, start by looking at the correlation between density and crime; don't use a proxy like WalkScore.

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