EXPLAINING THE CO-MOVEMENT OF CRIME BETWEEN URBAN NEIGHBOURHOODS: A STUDY OF CLEVELAND AND CHICAGO

Extensive research has been carried out on neighbourhood crime over the past few decades. Prior research has emphasized the spatial clustering, similarity and stability of crime rates in different spatial units such as street segments and neighbourhoods. However, there is still very little understanding of neighbourhoods’ interdependencies beyond the role of geographical proximity. The primary aim of this ‘three-paper’ thesis was to gain an understanding of the underlying factors that are associated with the crime co-movement of neighbourhoods, especially the effects of spatial proximity, social proximity, social frontiers, people movement flows, and other diverse factors on inter-neighbourhood connections relative to crime dynamics. This project was the first, to my knowledge, that used social network analysis to investigate why some neighbourhood crime rates move in tandem. Using network theory as the conceptual framework for the co-movement of crime across neighbourhoods, I have been able to (i) create reasonably comprehensive portraits of neighbourhood crime dynamics networks and (ii) provides insights into the attributes and possible underlying mechanisms linking neighbourhoods to one another. A number of implications have emerged from this research for policy, theory, methodology, and future research.