Land Use Influencing the Spatial Distribution of Urban Crime: A Case Study of Szczecin, Poland

Abstract

This paper falls into a common field of scientific research and its practical applications at the interface of urban geography, environmental criminology, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The purpose of this study is to identify types of different land use which influence the spatial distribution of a set of crime types at the intra-urban scale. The originality of the adopted approach lies in its consideration of a large number of different land use types considered as hypothetically influencing the spatial distribution of nine types of common crimes, geocoded at the address-level: car crimes, theft of property-other, residential crimes, property damage, commercial crimes, drug crimes, burglary in other commercial buildings, robbery, and fights and battery. The empirical study covers 31,319 crime events registered by the Police in the years 2006-2010 in the Polish city of Szczecin with a population ca. 405,000. Main research methods used are the GIS tool "multiple ring buffer" and the "crime location quotient (LQC)". The main conclusion from this research is that a strong influence of land use types analyzed is limited to their immediate surroundings (i.e., within a distance of 50 m), with the highest concentration shown by commercial crimes and by the theft of property-other crime type. Land use types strongly attracting crime in this zone are alcohol outlets, clubs and discos, cultural facilities, municipal housing, and commercial buildings. In contrast, grandstands, cemeteries, green areas, allotment gardens, and depots and transport base are land use types strongly detracting crime in this zone.

The Local Colocation Patterns of Crime and Land-Use Features in Wuhan, China

“…Subsequently, Leslie et al [2] confirmed the spatial co-occurrence of sub-categories of food sources, and housing types have been verified as having spatial colocation patterns [6]. Regarding the spatial associations between crimes and land-use features, studies have found that land-use features influence the spatial distributions of various crimes in different ways and to different extents [7,8]. Furthermore, the colocation patterns of crimes and land-use features are heterogeneous over space [8].…”

GIS-Based Statistical Analysis of Detecting Fear of Crime with Digital Sketch Maps: A Hungarian Multicity Study

“…One might think that the sense of security is basically influenced by crime [10,11], but also geography seems to matter too. The importance of the spatial factor already appeared as an environmental indicator in the context of crime as early as 1993 [12], in addition to that, recent research outcomes support this idea [13,14]; namely, space matters in decisions of which places to avoid because of fear of crime [15].…”

Geo-spatial and time distribution of criminal offenses in the Zrenjanin police office 2009-2018

“…Нужни услови за даља истраживања јесу и сталан редизајн и доградња истражних стратегија, као и опремање и оспособљавање полицијских службеника за коришћење геоинформационих технологија за потребе геопросторне анализе криминала и криминалистичког профилисања уопште. 8 Превенција криминала кроз дизајн животне средине (Crime prevention through enviromental design) програм је за манипулисање изграђеним окружењем у циљу стварања сигурнијих насеља. Програм се активно спроводи у развијеним земљама Европске уније које подстичу градњу (или редизајнирање) оваквих насеља кроз пореске олакшице.…”