Title: Land-Use Zoning Shown to Affect Crime Rates in Los Angeles | RAND
Headings: Land-Use Zoning Shown to Affect Crime Rates in Los Angeles
Land-Use Zoning Shown to Affect Crime Rates in Los Angeles
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Content: These results suggest both researchers and policymakers should pay more attention to the ways in which zoning and other land-use policies can affect crime.” Policymakers have long debated the effect that city planning and zoning can have on crime. Some experts have urged diverse uses of land in order to create an urban environment that encourages “eyes on the street” to deter crime. But there has been relatively little objective research designed to test these theories and most of the studies that have occurred have focused on older cities in the eastern United States. The study by Anderson, co-principal investigator John MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues uses stronger scientific methods than previous studies and focuses on a younger city—Los Angeles—that has land-use patterns that are more typical of where urban growth is occurring today. The results are published in the February edition of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Researchers examined the relationship between land-use law, the built environment and crime using detailed block-level crime information from July 2010 to January 2011 and detailed observations about 205 blocks in eight relatively high-crime areas in Los Angeles. In addition, researchers conducted a separate analysis of the relationship between changes in land-use zoning and crime in all neighborhoods in Los Angeles from 1994 to 2010. The central finding of the study is that blocks in the study area that include both residential and commercial zoning uses experienced less crime than blocks that are zoned for primarily commercial purposes. Overall, crime was lowest on blocks zoned for residential-only uses, even in relatively high crime neighborhoods.