Crime is largely an urban phenomenon, but the specifically urban and
area dimen- sions of the social processes that are connected with crime
have been seriously understated in much recent criminological work ...
Such a claim could not have been made forty years ago. (Baldwin &
Bottoms, 1976, p. 1). The above statement by Baldwin and Bottoms about
the neglect in crimi- nology of the urban dimension of crime was made in
the mid-1970s. However, in the last decade there has been a significant
upswing in theory and research on crime in the urban environment. Also,
new areas oftheory and research into urban crime have come into focus.
(For overviews see Brantingham & Brantingham, 1984; Davidson, 1981.) One
very good example of the increasing interest in urban crime is the
recent volume of Crime and Justice entitled "Communities and Crime"
(Reiss & Tonry, 1986), in which Reiss makes a strong argument for the
importance of the study of crime in urban communities and for the
linking of the ecological and individual traditions in theory and
research on crime. A review of the literature on crime in urban
environments shows, not unexpectedly, that Anglo-American research
heavily dominates the scene (Wikstrom, 1982; 1987b). Hence, much of the
experience we have on urban crime is based on North American and British
research and theory.