Civic communities and urban violence

• Measures of civic community theory work to reduce urban homicide rates.
• The presence of a locally invested population decreases homicide rates.
• An increase in local capitalism reduces homicide rates.
• Civic institutions work to reduce homicide rates only in disadvantaged areas.

Civic communities have a spirit of entrepreneurialism, a locally invested population and an institutional structure fostering civic engagement. Prior research, mainly confined to studying rural communities and fairly large geographic areas, has demonstrated that civic communities have lower rates of violence. The current study analyzes the associations between the components of civic communities and homicide rates for New Orleans neighborhoods (census tracts) in the years following Hurricane Katrina. Results from negative binomial regression models adjusting for spatial autocorrelation reveal that community homicide rates are lower where an entrepreneurial business climate is more pronounced and where there is more local investment. Additionally, an interaction between the availability of civic institutions and resource disadvantage reveals that the protective effects of civic institutions are only evident in disadvantaged communities.