Research projects

I co-direct the Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and Crime (ILSSC) with Charis Kubrin. Here’s a presentation about the lab.

Here is a recent presentation I did as part of the “Crime and place in the making” series jointly sponsored by the Network Safe Places at KTH and the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Communities and Places (DCP). The video describes my work on the spatial scale of crime, as well as my book on the same topic.

The Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI) is an interdisciplinary project that I am heading up, involving five faculty members. The Metropolitan Futures Initiative aims to develop an improved understanding of communities and their potential for integrative and collaborative planning and action to ensure a bright future for the region. With initial focus on Orange County and its location within the larger Southern California area, The Metropolitan Futures Initiative is a commitment to build communities that are economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable, and socially just by partnering Social Ecology’s world class, boundary-crossing scholarship with expertise throughout Southern California.

The initial Regional Progress Report was released on June 14, 2012. Go here to see the MFI webpage, read the Regional Progress Report and view supplemental tables and information from the Report.

The second Regional Progress Report was released on June 11, 2014. Go here to see the MFI webpage, read the Regional Progress Report and view supplemental tables and information from the Report.

We have now begun a Quarterly Report series, starting in July 2016. Go here to see the MFI webpage, see videos that describe the results of the Quarterly Reports, use interactive web mapping applications that allow you to explore the data used for the Quarterly Reports, and also read the Quarterly Reports.

Cascades of network structure and function: Pathways to Adolescent Substance Use. This project I work on includes an interdisciplinary team of experts exploring dynamic social networks of adolescents. It uses stochastic actor based models to explore social networks in continuous time, even when the data has only been collected for just three discrete time points. We have published several substantive papers, as well as methodological papers showing the challenges of using this increasingly popular statistical technique. Here is a cool video describing some simulation work we published in the American Journal of Public Health showing that in hypothetical scenarios in which social influence is increased, smoking behaviors would, surprisingly, actually be expected to decrease. Some of our methodological work has shown the perils of ignoring missing social network data when using these techniques.

Studies about Irvine

I was involved in three different reports in honor of the city of Irvine’s 50th Anniversary in late 2021. See these reports here.

Methodological tools

Various software programs I have created can be found here.

Online appendices

Luo, Xiaoshuang Iris, John R. Hipp, and Carter T. Butts. 2021. “Does the Spatial Distribution of Social Ties Impact Neighborhood and City Attachment? Differentials among Urban/Rural Contexts.” Social Networks Forthcoming.

The online appendix for this paper is here.

Kubrin, Charis E., Nicholas Branic, and John R. Hipp. 2021. “(Re)conceptualizing Neighborhood Ecology in Social Disorganization Theory: From a Variable-Centered Approach to a Neighborhood-Centered Approach.” Crime & Delinquency Forthcoming.

The online appendix for this paper is here.

Hipp, John R. and Aaron Roussell. 2013. “Micro- and Macro-environment Population and the Consequences for Crime Rates.” Social Forces 92:563-595.

”The online appendix for this paper is here.

Hipp, John R. 2007. “Income Inequality, Race, and Place: Does the Distribution of Race and Class within Neighborhoods affect Crime Rates?” Criminology 45(3): 665-697. The online appendix for this paper is here.

Beyerlein, Kraig and John R. Hipp* (2005). “Social Capital, Too Much of a Good Thing? American Religious Traditions and Community Crime.” Social Forces. 84(2): 995-1013. The online appendix for this paper is here.

Videos

This is a video of a lecture I gave in 2021 in the SMAART seminar series that discusses the issues around the spatial distribution of crime.

This is a video describing some of my work.

In this video I describe a research project using tweets to estimate the number of people at locations at time of day, and then assess its relationship to crime. This presentation was part of the SoCal Analytics Workshop on May 11 2018.

Here’s a presentation about the Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and Crime (ILCCS) that I co-direct with Charis Kubrin (March 11 2013)

In this video, I described the state of research in social networks and neighborhoods, and how they might relate to crime. This was a presentation at the ASU Network Perspectives Conference in January 2013 at Arizona State University.

Here is a cool video describing some social network simulation work I did with a team in public health. We show that in hypothetical scenarios in which social influence is increased, smoking behaviors would, surprisingly, actually be expected to decrease.

Here is a link to the 2014 Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI) Regional Progress Report and presentation.

Here is a link to the 2012 Metropolitan Futures Initiative (MFI) Regional Progress Report, and presentation.

I was part of a presentation on Solving Societal Problems, Social Ecology Style.; this link has a photo show, as well as videos of the various presenters. Here’s the link to my presentation on “Foreclosures, Neighborhood Dynamics, and the Ecology of Communities”. Nov 4, 2011

Segregation Through the Lens of Housing Unit Transition. This study focuses on the racial/ethnic composition of households in the transition of housing units. It studies the extent to which the race/ethnicity of the new household depends on the race/ethnicity of the previous residents, the racial/ethnic composition of the local micro-neighborhood, and the racial/ethnic composition of the broader census tract. Here is a talk I gave on this at the UC Irvine Population, Society and Inequality Brownbag Series in May 2010.

Some early versions of systematic social observation!! These are film of: a trolley ride in New York City in the early 1900s, and a cable car ride in San Francisco in 1906.

Favorite papers

I select a few of my papers each year that are favorites of mine. See the list of these here.

Media coverage

Some links to some media coverage of my research is here.

“If the thorn of a rose is the thorn in your side,
then you’re better off dead if you haven’t yet died”
Bernie Taupin.