ABSTRACT
The drive for analyses in the geography of crime literature to be undertaken at ever finer spatial scales has led to the discovery of significant heterogeneity within smaller spatial units of analysis: there are safe places within bad neighborhoods and dangerous places within good neighborhoods (Sherman et al., 1989). Spatial heterogeneity is defined as the presence of a large spatial unit of analysis that has smaller spatial units of analysis within it, which do not all exhibit the same properties. Because of this finding, an obvious question to emerge within this geography of crime literature is: what is the appropriate spatial scale of analysis? Indeed, those that advocate for smaller spatial units of analysis state that micro-places are now deemed appropriate, whereas larger spatial units of analysis are not (Andresen and Malleson, 2011). But how much does this issue really matter? Yes, there may be significant spatial heterogeneity, but does this impact the analysis?
