Modeling Crime in an Uptown Neighborhood: The Case of Santa Fe in Mexico City

What are the correlates of crime incidence in an uptown and wealthy neighborhood? This article focuses on the Santa Fe neighborhood in Mexico City as a case study to answer to this question. Theoretically, it makes use of crime pattern and social disorganization theories. It is argued that crime incidence in an uptown neighborhood can also be modeled based on variables that represent crime generators and crime attractors. It is also argued that the existence of structurally disadvantaged census blocks within this neighborhood will increase the odds of crime incidence. Empirically it uses crime incidence data from the local police in Mexico City and census data from the National Institute of Statistics. The study shows that crime opportunity theory gives a better fit to the data, and that a mixed geographically weighted Poisson regression gives more reliable estimates of crime incidence.