Homicide as a function of city block layout: Mexico City as case study

ABSTRACT

Focused on Mexico City, this article offers a seminal examination of the relationship between block layout and intentional homicide. The authors applied multilevel random-intercept negative binomial models to assess the contribution of block layout characteristics to homicide counts while controlling for other factors related to the physical environment and socioeconomic disadvantage. The assessment finds that container-type city blocks registered the highest likelihood of homicide incidence. It also shows that blocks with metro stations also had a statistically higher likelihood of homicide incidence. By contrast, building-type blocks exhibited the lowest likelihood of recording a homicide. Ultimately, the physical environment model provided a better fit to the data than the socioeconomic disadvantage model. The main conclusion is that homicide incidence in Mexico City may be more a function of block layout than socioeconomic composition. One implication is that urban planning may have more potent crime prevention effects than widely believed.

KEYWORDS:

• Homicide
• block layout
• physical environment
• socioeconomic disadvantage
• Mexico City

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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2. Brantingham and Brantingham, Environmental Criminology; Bullock, “Urban Homicide in Theory and Fact”; Newman, Architectural Design for Crime Prevention; Newman and Franck, Factors Influencing Crime and Instability; and Perkins, Meeks, and Taylor, “The Physical Environment of Street Blocks.”

3. Bernasco, Ruiter, and Block, “Do Street Robbery Location Choices Vary Over Time”; and Haberman and Ratcliffe, “Testing for Temporally Differentiated Relationships.”

4. Ceccato, Haining, and Kahn, “The Geography of Homicide in São Paulo, Brazil”; Cohen and Felson, “Social Change and Crime Rate Trends”; and McCord et al., “Nonresidential Crime Attractors”; and Stucky and Ottensmann, “Land Use and Violent Crime.”

5. Boessen and Hipp, “CLOSE-UPS AND THE SCALE OF ECOLOGY”; Browning et al., “Commercial Density, Residential Concentration, and Crime.”

6. Culyba et al., “Modifiable Neighborhood Features Associated With Adolescent Homicide.”

7. Smith, “The Influence of Gentrification on Gang Homicides.”

8. Ceccato, Haining, and Kahn, “The Geography of Homicide in São Paulo, Brazil”; Henderson et al., “Patterns of Non-Firearm Homicide”; Hohl et al., “Association of Drug and Alcohol Use With Adolescent Firearm Homicide”; Sparks, “Commercial Density, Residential Concentration, and Crime”; and Vilalta, Castillo, and Torres, “Violent Crime in Latin American Cities.”

9. Norza et al., “Criminología Ambiental y Homicidio”; Pridemore and Grubesic, “A Spatial Analysis of the Moderating Effects of Land Use”; Snowden, Stucky, and Pridemore, “Alcohol Outlets, Social Disorganization”; and Valasik, Brault, and Martinez, “Forecasting Homicide in the Red Stick.”

10. Pereira, Mota, and Andresen, “Social Disorganization and Homicide in Recife, Brazil.”

11. Broidy et al., “Exploring Demographic, Structural, and Behavioral Overlap”; Fuentes, “El Impacto de Las Viviendas Deshabitadas”; Norza et al., “Criminología Ambiental y Homicidio”; Suresh and Vito, “Homicide Patterns and Public Housing”; and Vilalta and Muggah, “Violent Disorder in Ciudad Juarez.”

12. Griffiths and Tita, “Homicide In and Around Public Housing.”

13. Ceccato, Uittenbogaard, and Bamzar, “Security in Stockholm's Underground Stations”; and Irvin-Erickson and La Vigne, “A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Crime at Washington, DC Metro Rail.”

14. Stucky and Smith, “Exploring the Conditional Effects of Bus Stops on Crime.”

15. Vilalta et al., “A Descriptive Model of the Relationship between Police CCTV Systems and Crime.”

16. Branas et al., “Novel Linkage of Individual and Geographic Data.”

17. Brantingham and Faust, “A Conceptual Model of Crime Prevention”; Newman, “Defensible Space”; and Taylor and Harrell, Physical Environment and Crime.

18. Brantingham, Brantingham, and Taylor, “Situational Crime Prevention as a Key Component”; and Cornish and Clarke, “Opportunities, Precipitators and Criminal Decisions.”

19. Cozens, “Crime and Community Safety.”

20. Zako, “Young People’s Gatherings in the Urban Public Realm.”

21. Thompson and Gartner, “The Spatial Distribution and Social Context.”

22. Browning et al., “Commercial Density, Residential Concentration, and Crime”; and Kubrin and Wo, “Social Disorganization Theory’s Greatest Challenge.”

23. Akins, Rumbaut, and Stansfield, “Immigration, Economic Disadvantage, and Homicide”; Barata et al., “Intra-Urban Differentials in Death Rates”; Berezin et al., “Violent Injury and Neighborhood Racial/Ethnic Diversity”; Boessen and Hipp, “CLOSE-UPS AND THE SCALE OF ECOLOGY”; Ferrandino, “Endemic, Outbreak or Epidemic?”; Hannon, “Extremely Poor Neighborhoods and Homicide”; Kubrin and Weitzer, “Retaliatory Homicide”; Larsen et al., “Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Gun Violence”; Mancik, Parker, and Williams, “Neighborhood Context and Homicide Clearance”; Mares, “Social Disorganization and Gang Homicides in Chicago”; Nieuwbeerta et al., “Neighborhood Characteristics and Individual Homicide Risks”; Ousey, “Homicide, Structural Factors”; Parker and McCall, “Structural Conditions and Racial Homicide Patterns”; Pereira, Mota, and Andresen, “Social Disorganization and Homicide in Recife, Brazil”; Santos, Barcellos, and Sacarvalho, “Ecological Analysis of the Distribution”; Strom and MacDonald, “The Influence of Social and Economic Disadvantage”; Suresh and Vito, “Homicide Patterns and Public Housing”; Suresh and Vito; Vilalta, Castillo, and Torres, “Violent Crime in Latin American Cities”; Vilalta and Fondevila, “Modeling Crime in an Uptown Neighborhood”; and Vilalta and Muggah, “Violent Disorder in Ciudad Juarez.”

24. Smith, Frazee, and Davison, “Furthering the Integration of Routine Activity”; and Stucky and Ottensmann, “Land Use and Violent Crime.”

25. See 2018 Mortality Statistics (INEGI).

26. Vilalta, “How Exactly Does Place Matter in Crime Analysis?”

27. Gieryn, “Three Truth-Spots.”

28. Groff, Weisburd, and Morris, “Where the Action Is at Places.”

29. Bernasco, “Modeling Micro-Level Crime Location Choice.”

30. INEGI, “Recorrido de Actualización Del Marco Geoestadístico Nacional.”

31. These two categories were suggested by one of the reviewers. We found this suggestion very useful for analytical purposes.

32. Brantingham and Brantingham, Environmental Criminology.

33. Bernasco and Block, “Robberies in Chicago”; Brantingham, Brantingham, and Taylor, “Situational Crime Prevention as a Key Component”; Deryol et al., “Crime Places in Context”; and Kinney et al., “Crime Attractors, Generators and Detractors.”

34. The source for these data are the Directorio Estadistico Nacional de Unidades Economicas (DENUE) of INEGI (2016).

35. Nilsson, “An Analysis of the Effect of Closing down Police Stations.”

36. Kubrin and Weitzer, “Retaliatory Homicide.”

37. The source of these data was the 2010 Mexican Census of INEGI.

38. As requested by one of the reviewers. The Appendix also contains the code snippet.

39. Ibbbez, Rodriguez, and Zarruk, “Crime, Punishment, and Schooling Decisions.”

40. Beaulieu and Messner, “Assessing Changes in the Effect of Divorce Rates.”

41. Cutts et al., “City Structure, Obesity, and Environmental Justice.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlos J. Vilalta

Carlos J. Vilalta, PhD is Researcher at CentroGeo. He studies the geography of crime and fear of crime, prevention policies, criminal statistics, and prison populations. He has been visiting researcher in Cambridge, McGill, UC San Diego, U. of Florida, U. of Missouri in St. Louis, Washington University in St. Louis, U. of Houston and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Robert Muggah

Robert Muggah, PhD is a specialist in cities, security, migration and new technologies. In 2011 he co-founded the Igarapé Institute – a think and do tank working on data-driven safety and justice across Latin America and Africa, where he is currently the director of research. Robert is a fellow or faculty at Singularity University, the University of Oxford, the University of San Diego, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, the University of British Columbia, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and the Graduate Institute Switzerland.

Gustavo Fondevila

Gustavo Fondevila, PhD is professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico, where he concentrates on empirical and comparative quantitative criminology. Specifically, Fondevila focuses on criminal justice and prisons in Latin America by use of surveys of prisons, court records and more. His most recent work examines the relationship between prison violence and criminal government within prisons of the region. He also studies criminal justice institutions from a quantitative perspective, such as prosecution, defence and courts.