UC Irvine

Many disciplines frequently use residents' home neighborhoods as a proxy for their entire social lives, which ignores people's temporary spatial presence in other neighborhoods for activities such as work and school. While most research only uses information on where people sleep - their home residence, my dissertation investigates this gap in the literature by focusing on the daytime movements of residents and how different areas of the city are interrelated over the day. My dissertation examines the spatial travel patterns of people over time - what I refer to as the spatial footprint - and uses these emph{spatial footprints} to understand local crime patterns in 13 cities over the day, week, and season. By focusing on the distinct spaces of individuals' daily activities and their relevant social space over the day, I dynamically model the changing activity and availability for social control across time, examine issues that are often treated as statistical nuisances (e.g., selection effects) as theoretical processes, and explicitly investigate how the nearby area and the interdependencies between neighborhoods matter for crime. I also examine crime within and around different land uses, including residential, commercial, school, and industrial areas, as they are occupied (or unoccupied) throughout the day, week, and season.