When ‘Eyes on the Street’ Are Not Enough: Insights from Itinerant Street Markets
9 April, 2025 12:30 hrs
Topic: “When ‘Eyes on the Street’ Are Not Enough: Insights from Itinerant Street Markets”
Speaker: Carlos Diaz (UAH)
Abstract:
The tendency of businesses and residents to gravitate towards safer streets complicates efforts to isolate the role of informal surveillance (or eyes on the street) as a crime deterrent. In this paper, we leverage a quasi-experimental setting of itinerant street markets to assess the impact of concentrated retail activity on property crime. We combine daily official records with user-generated traffic data to map the location of these markets and pair them with geospatial crime reports spanning 17 years. Using an imputation difference-in-differences design, we exploit temporal and spatial variation in retail activity to estimate the causal effect of retail-driven activity on crime. Our findings indicate that street markets significantly increase theft, yet have no discernible effect on robbery (which involves violence). The documented effects are concentrated in small geographic units with no substantial spillover into adjacent areas, indicating no crime risk diffusion. These effects are also more pronounced in larger markets, suggesting a mechanism tied to the absence of familiar strangers that typically bolsters natural surveillance. Moreover, the effects on reported thefts are particularly stronger in neighborhoods with shared socioeconomic vulnerabilities, offering insights in terms of geographic profiling. Overall, our results underscore the interplay between urban mobility patterns and crime, pointing to the need for balanced urban policies that integrate formal surveillance with community-driven strategies.
When: Wednesday, April 9th – 12:30 PM Santiago.
Where: Sala Consejo (401) – Beauchef 851, 4th floor | Department of Industrial Engineering.
Location:
Sala de Consejo (401) , Beauchef 851, piso 4 | Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, UCHILE
Speaker:
Carlos Díaz
MIPP Chile 2025