ABSTRACT
Over the years, criminologists have sometimes noted the city’s social and cultural ecologies: its close proximities of people and populations, its concentrations of habitation, its zones of revitalisation and decay, its shifting patterns of human movement and symbolic interaction. Criminologists have also posited connections between urban ecologies and particular forms of crime and criminality. Perhaps patterns of criminality reflect the tension between social organisation and disorganisation as the populations of urban areas ebb and flow. Perhaps urban gangs emerge in part out of the cultural proximities and externalised standards of success that the city offers, if not enforces. Perhaps the city surrounds its residents with such sharp contrasts in wealth and status that relative deprivations are experienced as unbearable inequities, to be confronted through violence or other interpersonal violations.
