ABSTRACT
The topics of crime and delinquency have only recently become recognised elements for research and teaching in urban geography and, in common with other social problem themes, they raise new kinds of research issues and multi-stranded possibilities for further study. From the long-established literature of criminology it has been possible to identify and advance a set of approaches which basically forms a spatial ecology perspective. At the complex interface with sociological perspectives on crime causation theory, a geography of crime which focuses upon area or neighbourhood effects has a useful but limited contribution to make. New lines of interest in 'managerial' roles may help understand why problem 'areas' emerge in the urban housing market and, with reference to a more direct interest in policing and the judiciary. The work in Chicago in the interwar period established an ecological tradition in criminology and also provided a significant perspective to which geographies of crime could be related.
