Where to live and whom to live with? Examining neighborhood preferences for living with immigrants and urban form in Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACT While preferences for different neighborhoods have long been studied, one under-studied area concerns fear of crime, namely that being more fearful of crime can shape where we decide to live. In our analysis, we analyze how fear of crime is linked to a dyad of contrasting neighborhood preferences that are also interconnected: the immigrant composition of the neighborhood and its urban form of mixed-use or single-family home-oriented neighborhoods. In doing so, we build on previous work by assessing if, and how, the pathways to these two preferences differ. The key implication is that fear of crime may operate as a racialization process across space. Using cross-sectional data from the 2015 Copenhagen Area Survey, results show that studying these contrasts is important as fear of crime is an essential predictor of neighborhood immigrant preference for Copenhageners but not for neighborhood urban form preference. This provides evidence of this racialization process given that fear of crime is linked to the immigration composition of the neighborhood but does not link to other urbanism preferences. Additional findings show that left-leaning residents and city dwellers prefer neighborhoods with more immigrants and that are more mixed-use. We conclude by focusing on implications relating to race and space for urbanism.