Crime in the city : an analysis of the connections between crime, urban scale, and urban centrality

This study analyses the connection between crime and the structural characteristics of municipalities. The first part compares the concentration of different crime types in the municipalities ranked by their population size across eight countries worldwide. The second part analyses the relationships between crime rates, urban scale and urban hierarchy among the Italian municipalities. The analysis suggests that both urban scale and hierarchy are relevant for understanding crime rates. [Publisher's text]