Fewer Vacants, Fewer Crimes? Impacts of Neighborhood Revitalization Policies on Crime

Alvaro Cortes, Jenny Schuetz and Jonathan Spader

No 2015-88, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: The relationship between neighborhood physical environment and social disorder, particularly crime, is of critical interest to urban economists and sociologists, as well as local governments. Over the past 50 years, various policy interventions to improve physical conditions in distressed neighborhoods have also been heralded for their potential to reduce crime. Urban renewal programs in the mid-20th century and public housing redevelopment in the 1990s both subscribed to the idea that signs of physical disorder invite social disorder. More recently, the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) provided funding for local policymakers to rehabilitate or demolish foreclosed and vacant properties, in order to mitigate negative spillovers--including crime--on surrounding neighborhoods. In this paper, we investigate the impact of NSP investments on localized crime patterns in Cleveland, Chicago and Denver. Results suggest that demolition activity in Cleveland decreased burglary and theft, but do not find measurable impacts of property rehabilitation investments--although the precision of these estimates are limited by the number of rehabilitation activities.

Keywords: Crime; broken windows; foreclosures; neighborhood revitalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H40 H70 R10 R50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2015-08-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/index.htm Full text (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.088 http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.088 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Fewer vacants, fewer crimes? Impacts of neighborhood revitalization policies on crime (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2015-88

DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2015.088

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier ().