Justice
Mixed-Use Neighborhoods May Be Safer, Too
New research from Los Angeles finds that crime rates are lower in communities with both commercial and residential uses.
Neighborhoods with a mix of residences, offices and retail outlets are now conventionally thought to have a host of benefits, a departure in thinking from the years of urban planning when cities sought to segregate uses of land, with the houses in one corner of town and the shopping district in another. Mixed-use neighborhoods enable people to walk more, with downstream health benefits. They help cut down on traffic congestion, and therefore pollution. For many people, they create livelier communities and a higher quality of life.
The list of evidence in support of these places is constantly expanding, and proponents can now add one more empirical argument: Mixed-use zoning also appears to cut down on crime.