Date of Award

1-1-2013

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Sociology

Content Description

1 online resource (viii, 367 pages) : illustrations (some color), map.

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Samanatha Friedman

Committee Members

Steven F Messner, Glenn D Deane

Keywords

crime, fixed-effects, gentrification, longitudinal, New York City, Gentrification, Crime, Criminal statistics

Subject Categories

Criminology | Sociology

Abstract

It is a well supported fact that crime rates in cities across the United States increased between the 1960s and 1980s before dramatically declining during the 1990s. While scholars agree that this decline occurred, they continue to debate the cause of the decline (Greenberg, 2013; Zimring, 2011). References to changes in neighborhood crime rates as a result of gentrification have been common in previous research on gentrification, but only a few studies have empirically assessed the association between gentrification and crime. Kreager, Lyons, and Hays (2011), Papachristos, Smith, Scherer, and Fugiero (2011), and Smith (2012), who utilized innovative measures of gentrification, helped to advance the understanding of how gentrification was associated with crime in Seattle and Chicago respectively, but it remains unclear whether and to what extent gentrification has impacted crime rates in New York City, which has been the focus of much of the research on gentrification in American cities. The current study addresses this issue by utilizing an innovative operationalization of gentrification that draws upon data collected from The New York Times and the United States Census Bureau and conducts a series of fixed effects regressions to determine the extent to which gentrification was associated with crime at the New York City sub-borough level during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Overall, the results show that sub-boroughs that experienced greater rates of gentrification experienced declines in all four violent index crimes that were significantly different from sub-boroughs that experienced lower rates of gentrification. Additionally, limited support is found for a positive association of gentrification with rates of larceny and motor-vehicle theft.

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