8 Chapter 8 – Residence and Urban Life

Unbecoming the “Murder Capital of the World”

In 1991, Medellin, Colombia was not a particularly safe place to be. That year, it received a designation as the “murder capital of the world” with a homicide rate of 381 per 100,000 residents. (As a comparison, the homicide rate of Moorhead, MN in 2022 – where and when I am currently writing this book – was approximately 4 per 100,000 residents). The violence was so extreme because Medellin was the home base of the most notorious cocaine trafficker of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Pablo Escobar.

Medellin served Escobar’s purposes as a home base for many reasons. Medellin sits at the bottom of a valley with high mountains on either side. The city had massive wealth inequality between the richest parts of the city – which were at the bottom and south ends of the valley – and the poorest parts of the city – which were up into the mountains along the north side of the city. People living in the north part of the city into the mountains lived in small, isolated comunas and didn’t actually interact with people from the southern side of the city much at all. In fact, there are several anecdotes from people living in the comunas where, if they needed to run an errand at the city center they would say, “I have to go to Medellin” even though they technically lived within the city limits and jurisdiction of the city of Medellin. In some cases, the journey from the comunas to the city center could take more than an hour. The buildings where people lived were, in about ¼ of all cases, poorly constructed with no concern for buildings codes. They were cheaply made because rusting corrugated iron roofs assembled in a ramshackle sort of way were all the people could afford. This is where Pablo Escobar was able to recruit people – typically young men – to work for his trafficking syndicate. He offered them employment, income, and the chance to work for something bigger than themselves. Escobar also gave money to the comunas, building soccer fields, roads, and stable, functional housing. In most cases he simply gave these things to the comunas to improve living conditions and did not turn a profit on them himself.

Escobar was so popular in the comunas that he arguably became more powerful than the police and city government. Even after being arrested and convicted of narcotics trafficking, he was allowed to remain in a lavish house-arrest style arrangement partly to ensure that the residents of the comunas would not start a riot. Escobar stayed there for a while, but when it was discovered he was still running his drug empire out of the house arrest, authorities attempted to move in to take him to a more secure facility. He promptly escaped.  Eventually, Escobar was killed in a shootout with Colombian National Police in 1993.

Following the death of Pablo Escobar, Colombian authorities knew that the structural problems within Medellin would eventually create another Pablo Escobar. They wanted to change the city of Medellin to limit the possibility. They embarked on a 20-year long process called Social Urbanism to reclaim areas of the city, particularly the comunas that the city had largely abandoned due to the violence around drug trafficking, and make them safe for families and legitimate businesses again.

The Social Urbanism decision makers identified five problems that seemed most responsible for the violence and drug trafficking that had flourished in Medellin. In no particular order, these problems were 1) the large wealth inequality between the north and south ends of the city, 2) limited employment opportunities in the northern parts of the city, 3) transportation problems which made it difficult for people in the northern part of the city to travel to the more prosperous city center for work, 4) insufficiently safe housing in the north end of the city, and 5) limited infrastructure in the comunas. In an ideal world, they would have solved all of these problems. However, they were still living with the reality of limited budgets and had to prioritize which problems would be dealt with first. Their decision was partly based on fixing the problem that would then allow residents to begin fixing some of the other problems themselves.

The first problem that the committee chose to tackle was the transportation problem. The solution to this problem was not as simple as buying more buses and having them run more efficient routes. Remember, the comunas are mostly built on the side of a very steep mountain and one of the infrastructure components they lack are roads capable of supporting buses. Instead, the solution was the construction of a gondola system, similar to systems operated on popular ski hills. The gondolas were completely enclosed for safety and could quickly transport people from up the mountain to a flatter part of the city where they could then board a train to take them the rest of the way to their destination. By having a more effective public transportation system, residents of the comunas have better access to the city center where good jobs could be found. They didn’t have to spend hours in the commute and were able to bring additional income back to their home neighborhoods up the mountain. Effective transportation had the added benefit of helping residents of the comunas feel more connected and part of the city itself as well.

The second problem the committee chose to invest in solving was the limited infrastructure. Though, they did not tackle the roadways first nor the lack of running water. The thought was that with residents being able to travel and find better jobs that the additional income of individuals would help solve some of those problems. Instead, the committee chose to solve for city services. They invested in the creation of public spaces that had multiple functions including park, library, daycare, and art installation. The art installations were viewed as particularly important by the social urbanism committee. They believed that having art in these places was vital, both as something for the residents to appreciate but also something that might get residents of the more affluent southern part of the city up into the mountainsides so that they might feel more connected and invested in the communas.

All in all, the Social Urbanism program has done a remarkable job of increasing safety in Medellin and returning the city to being a functioning metropolitan area once again. The homicide rate as of 2022 was down to 15 per 100,000 residents, lower than many similar sized American cities including Chicago, IL and Houston, TX. The Social Urbanism committee even won an international award for community revitalization.

Residence: Houses vs. Homes

Our first task is to distinguish between the notions of a house vs a home. Houses are dwellings which can be suitable for shelter. They come in many shapes, sizes, purposes, and cost levels. But the term house refers to a physical space. In contrast, a home is a psychological concept. It refers to many inter-related psychological ideas including a sense of safety, security, and the warmth of positive social connections. These two do not have to be the same place. It is an ideal situation for all houses to be homes and all homes to be houses. However, for many people they are absolutely not the same place. In many instances, someone’s house environment is not a safe or secure place for them. Anyone experiencing domestic violence would be experiencing this situation. The reverse is also possible. Someone could experience a home that is not necessarily a house. Perhaps one feels safety, security, and positive emotional connections in a neighborhood gym, comic book store, or library. It might even be possible for someone to experience a feeling of home in the presence of online environments, though this idea is sometimes disputed.

House. Shelter is one of the most basic survival motives of any animal. Without shelter, survival is much less likely to occur on any given day. This is partly why so many animals take such extreme measures to establish territory. For humans, the concept of shelter is bound up in the economic system of the region one is in. For many industrialized countries, this means needing to purchase at house on some sort of market. And in recent years, around the globe, the cost of housing has increased dramatically. In the United States, China, and many countries in Europe, the cost of housing is as high as it has ever been relative to inflation and incomes. The Case-Shiller home index (a common measurement of housing affordability in the U.S.) lists the median home price in the United States at $412,000.

The reasons for the large increase in housing are multifaceted and varied depending on the area we are focused on. In the United States, there are a number of factors combining to increase the costs of homes to larger than ever levels. The first is the simple economics of supply and demand. There are simply more buyers in the market than there is supply of houses to satisfy those buyers. The natural question to ask then is why? First, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic opportunities in the form of good paying jobs were coalescing into urban areas. Rural areas were seeing people leaving because people could earn more money in urban areas. This led to an increased demand for housing in urban areas. Not enough time has passed to determine if work-from-home opportunities will reverse this trend, but it is possible that this is a change that will happen as a result of the pandemic. Second, home building has been constrained where fewer homes than the market demands are being built. Again, the reasons for this are multifaceted and varied, but generally stems from neighborhoods being uncomfortable with higher-density housing being built. In some cases, this means that there are only two types of housing that can be built within an urban space – single-family detached homes and large high-rise apartments/condominiums. The general term for this type of advocating for such policies is NIMBY, an acronym which stands for Not In My Back Yard. NIMBY is a way of thinking which recognizes the need for different city infrastructures, like low-rise apartment buildings, homeless shelters, and foster care settings, but does not want those structures within places that will impact the personal value associated with someone’s dwelling.

Because of the increasing unaffordability of houses, a growing problem of housing insecurity is occurring throughout the world. Housing insecurity refers to a situation where someone currently has a dwelling, but they are in a precarious financial position to the point that any small financial problem that the person or family experiences can have devastating consequences for their ability to pay rent or mortgage payments. Individuals experiencing housing insecurity are most at risk of entering the homeless population and, as a result, many advocates for the homeless often seek to begin their advocacy for programs by targeting people that already have a home with programs that will help ensure they do not enter the homeless population in the first place.

Homes: Homes, as stated above, are a psychological state as opposed to a physical place. There are many qualities that will turn a place into a home. And, in fact, some researchers disagree with some entries on this list or on others. However, the general list does provide guidance about what will make a place a home.

The first critical element of a home is a place for positive emotions. For a feeling of home to establish, one needs positivity and the presence of positive emotions. This element of home is often placed as a distinction for people that are experiencing domestic violence in which they have a dwelling, but do not have the positivity and safety within that dwelling to qualify as having a home. The research literature particularly focuses on women as part of this population as women are disproportionately impacted by domestic violence. There is also a small, but growing amount of research examining how LGBTQ+ populations are impacted by a lack of positivity or safety in a house environment.

The second critical element of something feeling like a home is the presence of positive social relationships. There is a critical need for social relationships within a space for it to be considered a home. These social relationships might be immediate family relationships, extended family relationships, friendships, or romantic relationships. Regardless, the critical factor is the presence of positive relationships that are generally beneficial to everyone living in the dwelling.

The third critical element of a home is a space of privacy. The basic elements of privacy and why it is important for people are detailed in Chapter 6. What is critical here is that for a dwelling to feel like a home, one needs to have a sense that certain elements of interactions within that dwelling will be held in confidence and not shown or discussed with people outside the dwelling.

Finally, the last critical element of a home is the opportunity for personalization and self-expression within the home. A home is a place that feels like one can be themselves, in whatever way that matters. Homes are spaces that someone has a sense of control and feeling of agency over. And then those spaces, through control and agency, to express themselves in ways that they may not feel comfortable doing in other spaces.

Urban Spaces

One other element about housing we should focus on is where demand for housing in growing and where it is not growing across the United States. Most of the demand for housing is centering in urban areas as opposed to rural ones. The reasons for this are fairly standard. Economic opportunities are concentrating into cities. Therefore, more and more people are moving into cities and away from rural areas. This movement puts additional pressure on cities to remain vibrant centers of growth and prosperity. A standard that can be somewhat difficult to achieve.

Urban Safety

A key question that is often asked of city leaders is whether their city is a safe place to live. Crime statistics are often mentioned on the evening news (at least when crime is going up) and there are many places one can go on the internet to find very specific crime statistics (note the very specific crime statistics cited in the story at the beginning of the chapter). As you might expect, there is a great deal of research conducted, both cataloguing various crimes in urban areas and also asking what policies and procedures can reduce particularly violent crime rates.

Crime Reduction: The untold story of crime over the last 30 years has been an extreme reduction in crime rates in most industrialized places over the last 30 years. In cities like Washington D.C., New York City, and Miami, FL have seen drastic reductions in violent crime – in some cases these urban areas are seeing their violent crime rates cut in half in 2022 compared to 1992. In fact, only two U.S. metropolitan areas have seen dramatic increases in violent crime over the last 30 years, those two being Baltimore, MD and Orlando, FL. The story of why so many American cities are seeing dramatic reductions in crime is a complicated one. In 1992, violent crime was an important political issue which resulted in many people being elected into positions of power on their ideas for reducing violent crime. This means that many of these programs were implemented all at once and none of them were implemented in a systematic fashion, meaning we only have circumstantial evidence for any of them.

Broken Windows Policing: Broken windows policing was a policy first implemented in New York City and championed by New York’s police chief at the time William Bratton and newly elected New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani. The policy idea was born as a sociology theory called the broken windows hypothesis. In short, the broken windows hypothesis states that environmental factors, like the presence or absence of broken windows on buildings, gives an indication of behaviors are tolerated in that location. If broken windows on buildings are commonplace, this may serve as a signal that petty crimes are tolerated in this area. And if petty crimes are tolerated in the area, this may serve as a signal to criminals interested in larger, more violent crimes that their crimes might be tolerated in this area as well. The academics who originally thought of the broken windows hypothesis advocated for increased social safety nets in low-income urban areas that could be used to fix broken windows and other neighborhood infrastructure.

However, the policy implemented in New York City did not follow these academic and systematic goals. New York City is an actual municipal area with a budget and transparency requirements to taxpayers. Giving taxpayer money to fix broken windows in low-income areas was not what voters had in mind when they elected Giuliani mayor on an anti-crime platform. So, a program was implemented that began with the broken windows hypothesis, but then adjusted the enforcement goals based on budget needs and taxpayer concerns. The first goal of the program was using newly available federal monies to hire more police officers to enforce existing laws. A federal program had recently been passed by the federal government – the effort was led by then-Senator Joe Biden – to put more police on the streets to enforce existing laws. New York City used the funding provided to do just that and increased their police force by 35%. The new officers were also given a new mandate. Since, according to the broken windows hypothesis, small crimes were signals for the acceptability of larger crimes, small crimes should be looked for and dealt with swiftly and harshly.

Second, even though the police force had been expanded, there still would not be enough new police officers to engage in this new policy of looking for and dealing with small crimes. A decision had to be made about which neighborhood to police in this way. And to the city leaders, the solution was obvious. We should bring these extra police and new policing methods to the places in the city with the most broken windows.

In theory, this might sound like a reasonable solution to the problem of limited resources. In practice, however, this meant that most of these new police officers with their new policing mandate entered into mostly low-income neighborhoods. After all, most people don’t tolerate broken windows if they have the money to fix them. Broken windows only stay broken when the people have to prioritize paying for rent and food. Furthermore, in New York City, like in many American cities, low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods whose residents are primarily people of color are highly correlated. So, in practice the system actually worked like a number of newly minted police officers working under a new method of policing (that was not well communicated to residents before it changed) suddenly entered neighborhoods populated by people of color struggling to get by and started hauling people to jail for jumping the turnstyle on the subway, littering, and selling loose cigarettes on the sidewalk. As you might imagine, this resulted in a reduction in neighborhood trust in the police. Never-the-less, as this program was implemented the violent crime rate in New York City started to decline.

Since this is exactly what city leaders were looking for, they didn’t ask many critical questions about the validity of the conclusion that the program was causing the reduction in crime. But many factors limit our ability to draw causal conclusions from this effort. First, the program was implemented in a very targeted way but did we select the correct target? Is violent crime actually a product of low-income neighborhoods or would we reduce violent crime more by targeting wealthy neighborhoods? And would we find just as much petty crime in those wealthier neighborhoods if we had more police entering those neighborhoods and looking for it? Second, there were no control groups of low-income neighborhoods that did not receive the intervention. This program was implemented in the city very widely and all at once. This limits our ability to tell if some other, outside factor is actually causing the decline. And, finally, what this program did not do was provide money to low-income people to fix their windows. That would represent a test of the underlying broken windows hypothesis. But that is not the intervention that New York City leaders chose. Instead, the thought was that punishing petty crime would reduce the amount of petty crime, thereby reducing the cues that petty crime happens in the area, and thereby reducing violent crime. But the test of the underlying hypothesis was not conducted.

Leaded Gasoline Hypothesis: If we want to believe that the Broken Windows Policing program was not the cause of the reduction of violent crime, we need to look somewhere else. Our alternative explanation has to include all of the same facts, but explain why violent crime might be dropping all over the city. Researcher [find name] has an answer to that question, but it involves a perspective on public health more than it does on police intervention.

In 1970, Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act. Among many other provisions, the Clean Air Act required all new automobiles sold in the United States after January 1, 1975 to have a piece of engine equipment in them called a catalytic converter. The purpose of a catalytic converter is to remove dirt and deposits from gasoline that are nearly impossible to remove during the refining processes. If the gasoline with these deposits in it were to be burned in the engine, the engine could stop working entirely and, in some cases, explode. However, this problem had always existed with gasoline, even in the earliest automobiles. How had we solved this problem before 1975 when vehicles weren’t required to have a catalytic converter? We solved it by adding a cleaning agent to the gasoline that would help wash away these deposits and expel them in the exhaust, along with the cleaning agent itself. That cleaning agent was tetraethyl lead and gives rise to the term “leaded gasoline”.

In modern times, leaded gasoline is not needed if you have a catalytic converter. Leaded gasoline would actually destroy a catalytic converter which leads to a fairly rapid phase out of leaded gasoline. As of 1996, leaded gasoline has been outlawed for use in passenger vehicles in the United States. However, prior to 1975, leaded gasoline released a great deal of burned lead into the atmosphere. This is a form of air pollution that then gets inhaled by the population at large. Now the question is, what does inhaling lead do to someone’s nervous system?

The effects of lead on the brain and nervous system are now well known. And they are not good. Lead exposure has been estimated to have reduced the general I.Q. of the entire population of the United States by 3-5 points. That might not seem like much, but when we are talking about a population of around 150 million people in 1970, that’s a substantial loss of intellectual processing capacity. Furthermore, we know that when people are exposed to extreme levels of lead as children, they develop problems later in life that largely center around impulse control. The brain seems to have a more difficult time building connections in the pre-frontal cortex, which is the area of the brain largely deemed responsible for blocking impulsive reactions.

Jessica Wolpaw Reyes took these ideas and formed them together into a hypothesis. People born during the late 1960s and early 1970s were exposed to high levels of lead which made it just slightly more likely that they would be unable to inhibit impulses. Nothing like a level of clinical lead poisoning we might see, but enough to matter on two or three very important life events. And, just like with the I.Q. loss, one to two events might not be much if you consider it from the perspective of a single person, but when you have an entire country of people all failing impulse control on 2-3 events in their lives, that can add up to a lot of negative consequences and violent behavior.

This is how Reyes explains why violent crime started declining in the early 1990s. It wasn’t because of a new program of police intervention. New York City was a pilot program in this regard. Yet the violent crime rate started dropping everywhere. Instead Reyes says that violent crime reduced because people were starting to grow up with more impulse control, and when they reached the age of around 23 years old – the median age at which an offender commits a violent crime – they were better able to control the impulse that told them to lash out.

However, this theory also lacks the rigor we would require to ultimately determine that leaded gasoline was the cause of the increased crime rates during the 1970s and 80s and that its phase out and eventual banning led to the dramatic reductions in crime seen in the 1990s and 2000s. Leaded gasoline was not phased out in a systematic way, just like broken windows policing was not implemented in a systematic way. It all depended on when people in a particular area happened to buy automobiles manufactured after 1975. This also doesn’t account for lead that is already in the atmosphere, or lead that has been absorbed from the atmosphere into the soil and ground water, or lead that people are exposed to from other sources such as old paint (lead was banned as a drying agent in house paint in 1978). This means there are no control communities that maintained their usage of leaded gasoline long after the sale of leaded gasoline in other communities was phased out. Certainly, we have a compelling theory with a possible biological mechanism and reasonable circumstantial data but finding direct evidence may be impossible given how the policy was implemented.

Whether the cause of crime reduction was Broken Windows Policing, the banning of leaded gasoline, or even something no one has thought to test yet, our uncertainty over the cause should not have us fail to celebrate the outcome. Cities are far safer now than they were thirty years ago. Community revitalization projects are ongoing, both large scale ones like in Medellin and smaller scale ones that seek to revitalize downtown areas. Urban centers represent large-scale economic engines made possible when people can work and live together safely. They are truly a marvel of modern life.

Summary

The words house and home are often used synonymously. However, in Environmental Psychology they mean very different things with a house referring to the physical building and home referring to a positive emotional connection with the place and the people that reside there. Housing has increased dramatically in price due to a concentrating of economic opportunities into urban areas.  Dramatic increases in price increase housing insecurity and can lead to increased homelessness. Urban spaces are often viewed by outsiders as places that are unsafe. However, recent evidence shows that cities have become much more safe over the last 30 years. The reasons for the improvement are debated, but the results demonstrate a reduction in violent crime by half compared to the peak violent crime in 1992.