I stumbled across a recent artcle in Applied Geography that I think may be of interest to our readers. I got even more excited when I realized the piece was from colleagues in SUNY Buffalo's Geography Department. Amy Frazier, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, and Jason Knight examine the effect of demolition on land-use patterns and changes in human-environment interactions.
While many cities are worried about smart growth and we land use profs spend a lot of time thinking about it, shrinking cities like Buffalo face another challenge: smart decline. The authors (and others) have convinced me that maintaining pro-growth policies in a shrinking city is ill-advised. Instead of thinking we're going to suddenly grow Buffalo, let's think about how we can grow smaller gracefully. Smart decline policies include things like land banks, urban farming, and green infrastructures.
Frazier et al. look at the smart decline policy of demolition. Earlier studies (as well as conventional wisdom) suggest that vacant buildings attract criminal activities (the broken window effect). This study examined a five-year demolition program in Buffalo to assess whether demolitions of vacant buildings actually lead to reduced crime. Their results are fascinating and like all of the best projects point out areas where more research is needed. The big take aways seem to be that there may be some local reductions in crime, but that likely means that the criminal activity is pushed elsewhere. This can have unanticipated impacts on surrounding areas, transportation needs, housing values etc. Such policies need to examine the way that demolitions will shift land uses and impact human-environment interactions. To do so in a successful way will necessarily include regional approaches.
Amy E. Frazier, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, & Jason Knight, The Spatio-temporal Impacts of Demolition Land Use Policy and Crime in a Shrinking City 41 Applied Geography 55 (2013)
ABSTRACT: Land use change, in the form of urbanization, is one of themost significant forms of global change, and most cities are experiencing arapid increase in population and infrastructure growth. However, a subset ofcities is experiencing a decline in population, which often manifests in theabandonment of residential structures. These vacant and abandoned structurespose a land use challenge to urban planners, and a key question has been how tomanage these properties. Often times land use management of these structurestakes the form of demolition, but the elimination of infrastructures and canhave unknown and sometimes unintended effects on the human-environmentinteractions in urban areas. This paper examines the association betweendemolitions and crime, a human-environment interaction that is fostered byvacant and abandoned properties, through a comparative statistical analysis. Acluster analysis is performed to identify high and low hot spots of demolitionand crime activity, specifically assault, drug arrests, and prostitution, overa 5-year period. Results show that there is an association between the areatargeted for significant demolition activity and the migration of spatialpatterns of certain crimes. The direction of crime movement toward the edges ofthe city limits and in the direction of the first ring suburbs highlights theimportance of regional planning when implementing land use policies for smartdecline in shrinking cities.
Jessie Owley