Risky places and criminogenic facilities: Understanding property crime at micro-spatial units

Criminologists have long-known that spatial crime patterns vary across different geographic areas. Until recently, research has shown that crime is highly concentrated at a small number of micro-places. Subsequent studies have found that these spatial patterns are generalizable across different urban settings and are relatively stable over time. Although more scholars are beginning to recognize the importance of measuring crime at places, little is known about the explanatory factors of crime at the micro-spatial scale. Using police incident data and land-use information obtain from the Vancouver Open-Data catalogue, zero-inflated negative binomial models were used to understand the spatial patterns of various types of property crimes at street segments. The results demonstrate that certain facilities have a significant impact on these crime types at the micro-spatial level. Depending on the crime type, the strength of the relationship varies in magnitude and level of significance.