The current study extends the literature by not only studying three types of physical boundaries—interstate highways, parks, and rivers—but also one nonphysical and relatively less visible boundary—city boundaries, analyzing the relationship between crime in street segments and nearness to these four types of edges in the Southern California area.
Scholars have theorized about how spatial boundaries (edges) can be important for understanding the location of crime, yet the empirical relationship between spatial boundaries in the environment and levels of crime is relatively less explored compared with other features of the environment. We analyze the relationship between crime in street segments The authors analyzed nearness to these four types of edges in the Southern California area. They measure nearness to these boundaries in two manners: (a) whether or not the segment is adjacent to the feature and (b) how far in physical distance the segment is to the feature. (Publisher abstract provided)