tuta.io
Cities attract a daily influx of non-resident commuters, reflecting their role in wider urban networks – not as isolated places. However, it remains unclear how this inter-connectivity shapes the way crime scales with population, given that larger cities tend to receive more commuters and experience more crime. Here, we investigate how inter-city commuting relates to the population–crime relationship. We find that larger cities receive proportionately more commuters, which in turn is associated with higher crime levels. Specifically, each 1% increase in inbound commuters corresponds to a 0.32% rise in theft and 0.20% rise in burglary, holding population constant. We show that models incorporating both population and commuter inflows better explain crime variation than population-only models. These findings underscore the importance of considering how cities are connected – not just their population size – in disentangling the population–crime relationship.
Crime Science 14, 19 (2025).
[Download preprint here]
[arXiv]
[Link to publication]
Cite this paper
@article{puttock2025larger,
author={Puttock, Simon and Barros, Umberto and Pinheiro, Diego and Oliveira, Marcos},
title={Larger cities, more commuters, more crime? The role of inter-city commuting in the scaling of urban crime},
journal={Crime Science},
volume={14},
number={1},
pages={19},
year={2025},
month=Dec,
DOI={10.1186/s40163-025-00264-8},
url={https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-025-00264-8}
}