Fighting Crime, Constructing Segregation: Crime, Housing Policy, and the Social Brands of Puerto Rican Neighborhoods

Author: Zaire Dinzey-Flores

Dissertation School: University of Michigan

Pages: 346

Publication Date: October 2005

Availability:
Available from the HUD USER Helpdesk P.O. Box 23268 Washington, DC 20026-3268 Toll Free: 1-800-245-2691 Fax: 1-202-708-9981 Email: oup@oup.org

Access Number: 10793

Abstract:

The policies of mano dura contra el crimne, implemented in Puerto Rico in the decade of the 1990s, consisted of a range of environmental interventions applied to public housing for the purpose of eradicating crime. This dissertation uses these policies as a case study to investigate how space affects social dynamics.

I utilize a mixed-method approach employing historical, quantitative, and qualitative methodologies to understand how the changing built environment affected crime, social identity, and social interaction. Qualitative interviews and archival data are used to trace the historical development of the policies and expose the underlying logics of the policy and its interventions. This analysis reveals the policies grew out of intellectual and policy traditions that highlighted the design of urban space as a site of intervention to affect social dynamics. Moreover, this analysis uncovered the complex process by which residential space began to attain social identities and characteristics that labeled public housing and their residents as crime-producing estates to be feared. In addition, I utilize geographic data to conduct an impact evaluation that assesses whether the public housing policies resulted in a reduction in crime over a 6-year period. I collected and consolidated data from four sources (HUD, PRPHA, Puerto Rico Police, and the U.S. Census) and conducted three impact evaluation quantitative analyses.

I found that the impact of the intervention on crime was conditioned by the, at times, faulty presupposition that public housing sites experienced more violence than other residential areas. Finally, I used qualitative methods such as focus group interviews with public and private housing residents and managers, and systematic observation of the built environment to understand how the changing built environment affected the social dynamics of the communities. My findings show that the built environment became a tool which communities employed and activated to solidify class, racial, and social identities and to feed perceptions and stigma of community distinctions. Through a complex process of stigmatizations of communities and the stigmatization of elements of physical design of the neighborhoods, the built environment served to increase segregation among communities that are typically spatially adjacent.

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