OutHouse
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2000
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Europe was built with dense cities before cars. People had to learn to live close to each other
and how many wars have then been in Europe in the past 1000 years?
Europe was built with dense cities before cars. People had to learn to live close to each other
and how many wars have then been in Europe in the past 1000 years?
Wrong, and you are not thinking critically. In the short run taking people and adding them into a dense environment will increase frictions and raise crime. Further, you increase the number of interactions and you will see a short term increase. In the long run, which is clearly what I was talking about, you see less crime. The reason for this is any successful society must learn to be less violent and or reduce crime. Long ago Europe moved into cities before major forms of transportation which forced people to interact. No doubt there was lots of problems from this but eventually those smoothed out.
By and large, the available evidence increasingly tends to suggest that most types of crime tend to increase in levels of occurrence with increasing population density. This relationship, however, is moderated by SES. A cluster of affluent high-rise apartments in Mumbai or New York may have high density, but will also have a high level of guardianship, thus inhibiting crime. On the other hand, a high density poverty area will incorporate in its lifestyle incentives for predatory behaviours and disincentives for guardianship, given the hazards associated with confronting criminals (on their turf) or witnessing criminal acts.
As for social safety, explain cities all over CA that have high crime rates and huge social programs. For your claim to be true, you should see less crime in cities where they have massive social programs aimed at the poor.
http://www.sascv.org/ijcjs/harries.htmlNo, you're trafficking in your own theory which seems logical to you. I am talking about the empirical evidence. Higher population density generally equals higher crime.
http://www.sascv.org/ijcjs/harries.html
The various studies on this focus on variables which can cut one way or the other. So closer proximity can stimulate frustration and aggression. Also, in city environments, people are less likely to know their neighbors, creating a sense of anonymity, which makes it easier to commit crimes. OTOH, in areas of high foot traffic, street crime can be lower because increasing the number of potential witnesses can be a deterrent. Yet on the whole, cities have always had higher crime than suburbs or rural areas.
What I haven't read in the literature is anything supporting your theory that in the long run, crime in high population density areas naturally declines as people learn to get along. You're going to need to supply some research to source that assertion. The causes and roots of crime are complex. I really don't think this is something you can just figure out while sitting in front of a computer screen.
Here, you're just not thinking critically. I posit robust social safety nets as one mitigator of crime, not a factor which guarantees a low crime rate. There are at least 10 variables which affect overall crime rates. Poverty is just one. In order to assess the impact of social programs on their own, you'd have to know the baselines crime rates without the social programs and then compare them to the actual crime rates with the social programs.
Even in regards to this variable, your aren't making any sense. The vast majority of public assistance programs apply everywhere in a state, or even in the entire nation. Very few apply only in cities, or only in high crime areas. I live in CA, and it isn't any easier to get Medicaid or food stamps if you live in high crime Oakland than it is if you live in a low crime suburb. The programs are the same, and the rules of eligibility are the same.
While it's difficult to tease out the precise impact of a specific social program on crime rates, what the literature says is that there is generally a correlation between poverty and crime.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/073401689301800203
Social programs tend to reduce poverty. If you compare the US with Europe, our average incomes are competitive, but our bottom 10% does worse than their bottom 10%.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america_s_poor_vs_the_rest_of_the_world.html
Extreme poverty creates economic desperation, which in turn is an incentive to crime.
What you just linked does not disprove anything in terms what I said. The fact that you posted this shows you do understand what is being said.
My claim is that European cultures having lived in dense cities evolved to have less violent people. Social pressures promoted less crime. In the US, because of when it developed did not have to have the type of density like Europe and did not have to work through those same pressures as Europe. So, over hundreds of years, the culture of Western Europe has become less violent vs the US.
Your link examines if density drives down violent crime because of surveillance. Your link does not look at the long term effects at all. Zero. None.
I'm going to leave this link.
https://hbr.org/2017/07/crowded-places-make-people-think-more-about-the-future
Their analysis revealed that people in more-populated areas showed a significantly stronger preference for activities with a long-term payoff. The team’s conclusion: Crowded places make people think more about the future.
The US has new cities. The majority of Europe and Asia have old large cities. Those cities show much lower crime rates when compared to American (North, Central, South) cities. Societies that have been built around dense cities have very different crime rates. The US ranks very low in terms of population density globally.
Yes, other things can influence crime, but some cultures are more violent than others. This is known.
No, the link is research which examines the relationship between population density and crime. And I quoted it directly saying that there is a positive overall correlation between the two. It examines competing theories for why high density could mean higher or lower crime, surveillance being the theory of why it might produce lower crime. But the conclusion is that higher density = higher crime.
What does this article have to do with crime and population density? It says this:
And says nothing whatsoever about crime.
Yes, I understand this is your personal theory. I'd like to see some actual research to back this up. For one thing, if you are correct, you'd expect to see older cities within the US have lower crime rates than newer cities. New York is our oldest city, founded originally by the Dutch in the 17th century. Yet throughout our history it has had one of our highest crime rates, often topping the list. It's only been in the last 20 years where its crime rate relative to other cities has declined. Did it take 350 years for New Yorkers to suddenly figure out how to get along, or is New York's very recent declining crime rate a function of community policing, and other variables which have affected the national crime rate?
This is what I mean by having empirical evidence to back up a theory. What you're offering here is just your arm chair opinion. And it's rather novel. I've never heard anyone saying - until now - that our higher crime rate compared to other industrialized countries is a function of our lower population density. Can you find me one criminologist - or anyone who's done research on crime - to back this opinion?
I'm not going to spend my time trying to explain how the factors that go into crime rates are reduced in cities where cultures have lived in dense cities. If you cant find the link in what I posted and those factors being reduced, and connect that to lower crime rates in those same cities, then there is little to no point going further. You simply cannot understand things well enough to be worth the effort.
The data is there.
I find it highly disingenuous for you to claim I am unable to understand your point, which is not difficult to comprehend at all, when the fact is you are advancing a theory with zero empirical evidence to back it up. You say "the data is there." What data? Your link draws no conclusions whatsoever about correlating population density and crime. You are attempting to indirectly extrapolate certain conclusions about crime from the observations in your link.
I'm asking you for evidence, and you know you don't have any, so you want to shut down the discussion by claiming I'm unable to understand what you're saying. Either man up and admit you don't have any evidence to support your theory, or show some actual evidence to support your theory. Or run away. That's fine too. But it's obvious that's what you're doing.
Yet, research on the psychological effects of human population density, once a popular topic, has decreased over the past few decades. Applying a fresh perspective to an old topic, we draw upon life history theory to examine the effects of population density. Across nations and across the U.S. states (Studies 1 and 2), we find that dense populations exhibit behaviors corresponding to a slower life history strategy, including greater future-orientation, greater investment in education, more long-term mating orientation, later marriage age, lower fertility, and greater parental investment.
Jesus.
The crowded life is a slow life: Population density and life history strategy.
Density promotes lower birth rate (lowers crime), investment in education (lowers crime), long term mating (promotes dual parent households which lowers crime) ect.
You are looking data you do not understand. The reason crime is higher in cities is because of opportunity. So when there is friction, the density exacerbates the situation and people act out. But, that does not mean that people are more violent in cities. What it does mean is that if people do have a conflict, its much harder to hold back because you are going to interact more often. That said, density promotes societies that are less violent.
Like I said, you've got no data to suggest that high population density means lower crime. As I directly linked to you before, it is the opposite. What you are doing here is indirectly extrapolating from conclusions in your link. And it's not that I don't understand these extrapolations. It's that they don't matter because for whatever reason, crime is higher where population is denser.
I don't have an issue with your first 5 sentences here. Except that it undercuts your argument. In Europe they have higher population density, so all your logic suggests that they should have higher crime because, as you said, "the density exacerbates the situation and people act out." Yet they don't. They have lower crime rates.
To be clear: the underlined assertion requires empirical proof. Not some study that says city dwellers are more "forward looking," but one which shows that actual crime occurs less often in higher population density areas. You don't have any such data because it doesn't exist. The data says the opposite.
I posit several obvious differences as accounting for higher violent crime in the US: widespread availability of firearms, glorification of violence in our popular culture, materialism/greed which are traits more endemic to the US than other first world countries, and the fact that poverty is worse here. All of those things are facts. If you want to go with your own unproven theory because you don't like those explanations, fine. It's still unproven.
The US was built at a time when sprawl was possible and as such people expect personal space and stronger property rights. The downside is that people for the most part did not have to deal with being cramped like in Europe. Social frictions were smoothed in Europe in the cities where the majority of people live. In the US, our culture has not evolved to deal with people in the same way. Things are just different and more violent here.
Killing deaf people now because nobody should be allowed to live that can't hear. I just found that story on CNN providing a different source to the same incident.meanwhile in Oklahoma City police shoot and kill a developmentally challenged man while bystanders yell "he is deaf" at the police.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ot-deaf-man-despite-yells-of-he-cant-hear-you
one big problem with your calculation, not all Americans have equal contact with law enforcement. i, for example, rarely have contact with law enforcement, whereas Philando Castile was pulled over 49 times in 13 years. my odds of being shot by the police are far less than his were and no math will show all of the reasons behind that.