Abstract
Despite decades of research, our knowledge of why and howneighborhoods influence adolescent risk behavior and crime is still emerging. We argue that conventional neighborhood-based criminological approaches have neglected the day-to-day routine activities of urban residents and their implications for neighborhood social climates (e.g., trust, informal social control) and crime. We hypothesize that neighborhoods in which residents encounter one another in space more extensively in the course of conventional routine activities will exhibit higher levels of familiarity, beneficial (“weak”) ties, trust, collective efficacy, and more consistent monitoring of public space. Using travel diary data from the 1999 Mid-Ohio Area Household Travel Survey, 2000 census data, and crime data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study, we examine associations between the network structure of shared exposure based on routine activities and crime in Columbus neighborhoods. We then present preliminary data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study – an ongoing, large-scale, longitudinal data collection effort designed to capture precise information on the routine activities of Columbus youth (ages 11-17) using smartphone-based GPS tracking and real-time surveys.
Lecturer
Christopher R. Browning (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1997) is Professor of Sociology. His research interests include the causes and consequences of community social organization; the neighborhood context of crime, risk behavior, and health; the long-term effects of maltreatment during childhood; and multilevel statistical models. His current projects apply the concepts of activity space and ecological networks to research on the mechanisms linking contextual exposures (e.g., neighborhoods and schools) to youth behavioral health and well-being. He is Principal Investigator on the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study - a large scale, longitudinal investigation of the link between sociospatial exposures and developmental outcomes among youth in Franklin County, OH. The project is funded by NIDA, the WT Grant Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
