Lights and Shadows: How Streetlights Reflect and Shape Spatial Disparities in Houston
Heather A. O’Connell, Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University
The uneven distribution of social, economic, and public resources across neighborhoods has
important consequences for the life chances of residents and has justifiably received increasing
scholarly attention. Within the various literatures addressing spatial inequalities, research
repeatedly demonstrates a link to the racial/ethnic and economic characteristics of a place (e.g.,
Bader et al. 2010; Davis and Welcher 2013; Heynen, Perkins and Roy 2006; Stretesky 2003).
This is important for characterizing the existing spatial inequalities, and it is suggestive of the
processes driving the uneven distribution of resources, but it tells us little about what can be done
to address these inequalities and neglects the role of concrete features of place. I extend our
understanding of spatial inequalities by examining how the presence of streetlights relates to the
distribution of supermarkets in Houston, and what role it plays in explaining initial associations
to the compositional characteristics of a place.
Research stemming from urban planning and criminological traditions indicates that
streetlights play an important role in shaping individuals’ perceptions of safety (e.g., Herbert and
Davidson 1994; Painter 1996; Quinet and Nunn 1998; however, also see Nair et al. 1994).
Initially, research sought to document a decline in reported criminal activity associated with
more and brighter streetlights. However, results regarding a direct link between reported crime
and streetlights have been inconsistent. Instead, streetlights primarily provide comfort to
residents, and promote a sense of safety within a place (see especially Herbert and Davidson
1994). Critically, despite the tenuous connection to reported criminal activity, this difference in
perception significantly shapes how people interact with a place (e.g., Addy et al. 2004; Roman
2008). Previous work has primarily focused on how local residents feel about their
neighborhood, but I extend this focus to consider the extent to which streetlights inform how
people outside of the area interact with a space, particularly as those interactions relate to the
development and maintenance of public resources.
Supermarkets are ideal for this study because they represent a critical social and
economic resource, the construction of which has been connected to concerns of safety.
Supermarkets are the primary means of food distribution and acquisition in many places, but
they also add social and economic value to a neighborhood by increasing the opportunity for
connections with other local residents and by increasing the value of housing in neighboring
areas (see e.g., Von Pohlmann 2015; The Reinvestment Fund, n.d.). In addition, scholars have
indicated that part of the calculus of deciding where to locate a supermarket involves perceptions
of safety (see e.g., Eisenhauer 2001). This consideration is by no means unique to supermarkets,
which is part of the value of this study – that its theoretical framework and results can be
extended to additional community resources. However, this connection adds to the motivation
for studying the location of supermarkets in this foundational analysis.
In this work I will proceed in two steps. First, building from my previous work on the
location of supermarkets in Houston, I will include measures of the presence of streetlights in a
geographic area to assess the extent to which this feature of the built environment can help
explain the substantial neighborhood disparities in having a supermarket nearby. Despite recent
efforts by city officials to reduce the number of “food deserts” in Houston, my work
demonstrates that racial/ethnic and economic composition gaps persist (O’Connell, King, and
Bratter 2015). Second, I will examine the link between the presence of streetlights in a person’s
neighborhood and their reported concern about crime. This step will establish the extent to
which an argument regarding perceptions of safety could explain any role of streetlights in
shaping the resources available in an area.
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Background
Research on the location of supermarkets (and their absence, i.e., “food deserts”) has consistently
demonstrated a link between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition (e.g., Bader et al.
2010; Galvez et al. 2007; Moore and Diez-Roux 2006; Morland et al. 2002; Zenk et al. 2005; for
review see e.g., Larson et al. 2009). This research has been centrally involved in defining the
spatial disparities associated with supermarkets, but it provides limited insight into the
explanations for those disparities. Outside of the racial/ethnic and economic composition of
local areas, studies have only included minimal additional factors (i.e., population density). In
previous work, I consider how other place characteristics – namely retail concentration and the
density of road intersections – shape the location of supermarkets (O’Connell et al. 2015).
However, even with the addition of these new explanatory factors, substantial gaps in the odds of
having a supermarket nearby for areas of differing racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition
remain.
I extend this effort to understand neighborhood disparities by incorporating a key feature
of the built environment: streetlights. Previous research has primarily attended to how
streetlights relate to crime and safety, yet I argue that the social consequences of streetlights have
important implications for the spatial inequality literature. My focus on streetlights in relation to
understanding spatial disparities in neighborhood resources has both practical and theoretical
implications. The examination of built environment characteristics offers an opportunity to
identify potential interventions to address those disparities. In addition, this effort will advance
our understanding of the meaning that people attach to inanimate objects, like streetlights, and
how that might affect how we interact with place.
Data and Methods
Supermarket location is determined using data provided by the Center for Sustainability, Rice
University. The final variable is a binary measure indicating which block groups have a
supermarket within a quarter of a mile (also see O’Connell et al. 2015). As a result, the first
component of my analysis examining how streetlights relate to supermarkets relies on logistic
regression analysis. Although spatial regression analysis techniques are not available for
categorical outcomes, I will conduct sensitivity analyses to ensure that unaccounted for spatial
processes are not affecting my results since I am analyzing a spatially contiguous set of units.
I obtained streetlight data from Center Point Energy with the assistance of the City of
Houston. These data reference the location of streetlights as of August 11, 2015 – the date the
data request was completed. The benefit of these data is that they are geocoded using their
specific latitude and longitude location, giving me flexibility in how I attach them to larger
geographic units. Unfortunately, there is no direct information on whether the streetlights
reflected in these data are currently working. Therefore, in my analysis I operate under the
assumption that all of the reported streetlights are equally functional. However, to the extent to
which streetlights are less likely to be functional in disadvantaged neighborhoods, this
assumption means that I will provide a conservative estimate of the association between
streetlights, perceptions of safety, and subsequently the distribution of community resources.
I construct two measures from the original streetlight data. The first is a measure of the
concentration of streetlights in a block group. The second is a variable reflecting the number of
streetlights in neighboring block groups (i.e., a spatially lagged measure). When assessing the
relevance of these variables I will include controls for population size, land area, and intersection
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density. In addition, I will examine the extent to which the presence of streetlights mediates the
established associations between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition.
Finally, to assess the extent to which any role of streetlights in explaining neighborhood
resource disparities is due to concerns about safety I will conduct a separate analysis of how
streetlights relate to local residents’ perceptions of crime. The dependent variable for this
analysis comes from the 2015 Kinder Houston Area Survey, which included a question regarding
respondents’ fear of crime. I will link individual respondents in the city of Houston to the
streetlight variables using the restricted geocode information. I will assess the empirical link
between streetlights and perceptions of safety using multilevel modeling techniques so that I can
account for both individual-level and contextual processes.
Expected Findings
Through this work I will provide insight into the extent to which streetlights inform the uneven
distribution of supermarkets within a city. I expect that the greater presence of streetlights is
positively related to having a supermarket within a quarter mile. This would be reflected in a
positive association between the number of streetlights in a block group and/or the spatially
lagged streetlight variable that indicates the presence of streetlights in neighboring areas. In
addition, I hypothesize that this link to neighborhood disparities can be explained by perceptions
of safety, which shapes how people – including potential investors – interact with a place. As a
result, I expect that the presence of streetlights is negatively related to local residents’ reported
fear of crime. These results will provide an innovative extension of existing work on streetlights
to enlighten our understanding of neighborhood disparities. Simultaneously, it will suggest the
extent to which local disparities can be addressed through improvements to streetlight.
As a final note, I acknowledge that streetlights are only a proxy for perceptions of safety,
and may only reflect one slice of what people use to make judgements about the safety of a place
(if they use them at all). Ideally, this project would employ direct measures of how others
perceive an area, but such data are not currently available. This work will provide initial insight
into processes related to perceptions of safety, and thus provides a foundation for future work to
consider these processes in more depth.
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