Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods

Abstract

This article assesses the sources and consequences of public disorder. Based on the videotaping and systematic rating of more than 23,000 street segments in Chicago, highly reliable scales of social and physical disorder for 196 neighborhoods are constructed. Census data, police records, and an independent survey of more than 3,500 residents are then integrated to test a theory of collective efficacy and structural constraints. Defined as cohesion among residents combined with shared expectations for the social control of public space, collective efficacy explains lower rates of crime and observed disorder after controlling neighborhood structural characteristics. Collective efficacy is also linked to lower rates of violent crime after accounting for disorder and the reciprocal effects of violence. Contrary to the "broken windows" theory, however, the relationship between public disorder and crime is spurious except perhaps for robbery.The answer to the question of how city life was to be possible, then, is this. Visual signs of social and physical disorder in public spaces reflect powerfully on our inferences about urban communities. By social disorder, we refer to behavior usually involving strangers and considered threatening, 1 We thank Tony Earls, Albert J. Reiss Jr., Steve Buka, Jeffrey Morenoff, Richard Congdon, and Matheos Yosef for their help in this project, and the NORC team led by Woody Carter, Cindy Veldman, Jody Dougherty, and Ron Boyd for heroic efforts in data collection. John Laub and the AJS reviewers provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. The long-standing interest of Albert J. Reiss, Jr., in systematic social

Neighborhood Disorder and Physical Activity among Older Adults: A Longitudinal Study

“…Third, to test the robustness of our results to our model for probability of inclusion in any given wave, we re-ran the main analysis using sampling weights supplied by Abt-SRBI for each wave, which were ranked to demographic targets as described above, but by design, it could not account for disorder, walkability, or self-reported health status. Fourth, because disorder has been associated with crime [47] (though the causal relationship of that association is controversial [8,[48][49][50][51]), we re-ran our primary analysis incorporating CrimeRisk Index variables acquired from ESRI, Inc. (www.esri.com/data/esri_data/businessoverview/crimerisk). These measures were based on the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports records and have been used in prior analyses.…”

Foreclosures and crime: A city-level analysis in Southern California of a dynamic process

“…Or these vacant units can fall into disrepair, which will increase physical disorder, leading to the mechanisms posited by broken windows theory. Researchers observe that disorder and crime rates move together (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999;Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997).…”

“…Or these vacant units can fall into disrepair, which will increase physical disorder, leading to the mechanisms posited by broken windows theory. Researchers observe that disorder and crime rates move together (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999;Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997).Although the preceding discussion may give the impression of a mechanical process in which a foreclosure will lead to a downward spiral of decay leading to more crime, this need not be the case (Wallace, Hedberg, and Katz 2012). There are several points in the process at which actors within cities could intervene, if they so choose.…”

Improving the measurement of neighbourhood characteristics through systematic observation: Inequalities in smoking as a case study

“…A recent literature review showed that the majority of observation tools used in health research were in fact rooted in theories from the sociology of crime field, mainly the "broken window theory" (Schaefer-McDaniel et al, 2009) which initially linked neighbourhood disorder to crime (Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999). This is problematic since theoretical explanations as to how elements of this theory, such as signs of vandalism, are linked to health inequalities are often left unarticulated (Parsons et al, 2010).…”

“…Many observation tools inspired by the broken window theory were developed for use in socially segregated American cities and may be inappropriate for measuring neighbourhood attributes of less segregated cities (Parsons et al, 2010). For example, in the case of Montreal, Canada, a study has shown that some indicators composing the broken window index, such as broken windows or drug paraphernalia (Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999), were not widely encountered (Paquet et al, 2010). These indicators may thus fall short of explaining neighbourhood differences in health.…”