Crime information
This dataset contains a variety of details about crime at the incident
level, including location, from 2006 to 2016. This will allow me to
aggregate crimes by type and location. The difficult part will be
justifying if 2006 crime data can be linked to 2005 tree census data. I
will make a strong assumption that the one year difference is
negligible.
Additional information
This site contains demographic, social, and economic data for New York City as collected on the American Community Survey. I plan to control for variables that are known to be predictive of crime rates such as population size and economic conditions by including them my regression model.
Analysis
Given that the primary research question seeks to characterize the
relationship between two measures, I plan to use regression techniques
to analyze the data. Specifically, plan to model crime rate within PUMAs using multivariate regression, including covariates such as the number of street trees per PUMA and apparent level of care for tree ('number of signs of stewardship', 'tree appears to be dead').
References
Researchers have explored the relationship between street trees and
crime rates in the past. In 2012, Troy,
Morgan Grove, and O’Neil-Dunne \cite{TROY2012262}examined the relationship between
street trees and crime in Baltimore and found an inverse relationship
between tree canopy cover and crime incidence. Similar investigations
have taken place in other cities such as New Haven, Portland, and
Chicago.