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The impact of city block type on residential burglary: Mexico City as case study

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Abstract

Using block level data for Mexico City as case study, this article provides evidence that the type of city block type correlates with the likelihood of residential burglary. We employed five multilevel random intercept models to relate burglary incidents to city block types. We nested the 64,282 city blocks of Mexico City within their corresponding 846 local police quadrants. Our results show that Container-type city block configurations are associated with residential burglary to a greater degree than other physical and social environmental variables. Also, we find that close proximity to mass transit locations is not associated with residential burglary activity. The overall findings of this study describe fundamental dynamics between urban form and burglary.

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Notes

  1. We would like to thank one of the reviewers for pointing out that reference to us.

  2. With regard to collinearity, it does not make any difference whether the model is single-level or multi-level. STATA only calculates the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) statistic for OLS regression. We estimated our model 5 in OLS and the mean VIF was 1.19, with the maximum VIF value of 1.85 for the case of the Schooling variable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research in Geospatial Information Sciences (CentroGeo), Contoy 137, Lomas de Padierna, 14240, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Carlos J. Vilalta

  2. Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, 1021 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA, 22314, USA

    Thomas Sanchez

  3. Center for Economic Research and Education (CIDE), Carr. México-Toluca 3655, Santa Fe, Altavista, 01210, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Gustavo Fondevila

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  1. Carlos J. Vilalta
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Table 5 Estimation sample descriptive statistics for city blocks (level 1) variables (n = 64,282)
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Vilalta, C.J., Sanchez, T. & Fondevila, G. The impact of city block type on residential burglary: Mexico City as case study. Crime Law Soc Change 75, 73–88 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-020-09920-3

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