Up-and-Coming or Down-and-Out? Social Media Popularity as an Indicator of Neighborhood Change

By quantifying Twitter activity and sentiment for each of 274 neighborhood areas in New York City, this study introduces the Neighborhood Popularity Index and correlates changes in the index with real estate prices, a common measure of neighborhood change. Results show that social media provide both a near-real-time indicator of shifting attitudes toward neighborhoods and an early warning measure of future changes in neighborhood composition and demand. Although social media data provide an important complement to traditional data sources, the use of social media for neighborhood studies raises concerns regarding data accessibility and equity issues in data representativeness and bias.

Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design

Broken windows theory (BWT) has heavily influenced social science and policy over the past 30 years. It posits that disorder in neighborhoods leads to elevated crime by inviting additional criminal activity and by discouraging the positive social behavior that prevents crime. Scholars have debated the veracity of BWT, and here we conduct a meta-analysis of 96 studies to examine the effects of disorder on residents’ ( a) general proclivities for aggressive behavior and ( b) perceptions of and attitudes toward their neighborhood (e.g., fear of crime), with particular attention to aspects of research design that might confound causal inference. We found no consistent evidence that disorder induces greater aggression or more negative attitudes toward the neighborhood. Studies that found such effects disproportionately utilized weaker research designs that omit key correlates or confound perceptions of disorder with other neighborhood attitudes. We explore implications for theory, research, and policy.

“What Would I Look Like?”: How Exposure to Concentrated Disadvantage Shapes Hip-Hop Artists’ Connections to Community

Hip-hop has deep historical ties to disadvantaged communities. Resounding success in mainstream and global music markets potentially disrupts those connections. The authors use in-depth interviews with 25 self-defined rap/hip-hop artists to explore the significance of place in modern hip-hop. Bringing together historical studies of hip-hop and sociological neighborhood studies, the authors examine hip-hop artists’ community connections. Findings reveal that exposure to concentrated racial and economic disadvantage shapes how artists interpret community, artistic impact, and social responsibility. This supports the “black placemaking” framework, which highlights how black urban neighborhood residents creatively build community amid structural disadvantage. The analysis also elucidates the role specific types of physical places play in black placemaking processes.

Research on Neighborhoods in European Cities

This chapter provides an overview of European neighborhood studies of crime, victimization, and delinquency that were explicitly guided or inspired by social disorganization theory. Although the origin of social disorganization theory lies in the United States with a long-lasting tradition in urban research, considerable attention has also been given to this perspective in Europe, as well as in other parts of the world. In Europe, a long research tradition of studies on the effects of city or neighborhood characteristics on crime-related outcomes existed before the social disorganization perspective emerged in the United States. Recently, several studies have been conducted in European cities that report findings that differ from those usually found in an American context. Therefore, knowledge about these European studies is paramount for our insights on the role of the neighborhood in crime and criminal behavior.