Crime, Insecurities, and Social Dynamics in Urban Neighborhoods

The ma­jor goal of this study is to ad­vance the un­der­stand­ing of struc­tur­al con­di­tions and so­cial pro­cesses in re­la­tion to crime prob­lems in urb­an neigh­bor­hoods in a lon­git­ud­in­al per­spect­ive. Res­id­ents’ sub­ject­ive per­cep­tions of dis­order and crime as well as col­lect­ive so­cial cap­it­al are key mech­an­isms in the com­plex so­cial pro­cesses shap­ing the de­vel­op­ment of neigh­bor­hoods. This pro­ject con­sti­tutes phase 2 of a long-term study of 139 neigh­bor­hoods in Co­logne and Es­sen, two large cit­ies in North Rhine-West­phalia with high levels of eth­nic di­versity.

After two sur­vey waves in 2014 and 2015, a second round of two waves of a mixed mail/web survey in took place the same neigh­bor­hoods in 2020 and 2021. Sur­vey data are matched to neigh­bor­hood so­ciodemo­graph­ic and crime data with the aim to study the dy­nam­ics of neigh­bor­hood de­vel­op­ment. The ana­lyses fo­cus on fear of crime, dis­order per­cep­tions, col­lect­ive ef­fic­acy and in­ter-eth­nic re­la­tions, and their re­cip­roc­al as­so­ci­ations with struc­tur­al neigh­bor­hood de­vel­op­ment.