Stability and Change of Urban Neighbourhoods

• The importance of the city and its neighbourhoods has gained an increasing amount of attention in criminological research over the past decades. A number of studies have shown that neighbourhood characteristics are important for our understanding of the distribution of crime and fear of crime. In addition, characteristics of the residential neighbourhood have been identified as important for our understanding of the collective socialization of children and adolescents. Less is known about how these characteristics evolve over time. It has been argued that neighbourhoods develop and change constantly, nonetheless their relative position in the socioeconomic hierarchy of the city is often stable over time. In the present study the development of 104 Malmö neighbourhoods will be investigated over a period of approximately 15 years in order to extend the knowledge on stability and change of urban neighbourhoods. Data are drawn from the Malmö fear of crime study conducted in 1998 and 2012, comprising a total of approximately 8000 respondents living in the city of Malmö (Sweden). Changes in structural characteristics like neighbourhood socioeconomic status as well as in social processes like collective efficacy will be analysed in order to enhance our understanding of stability or change in victimization and fear of crime at the neighbourhood level. The findings will be discussed in relation to interventions aiming at the development of safe neighbourhoods, as well as in relation to future research.

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