Lingering environmental pessimism and the role of government in Hong Kong

Based on data from two opinion surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008, this study shows that Hong Kong people have been consistently highly aware of the seriousness of different environmental problems and relatively pessimistic about the future resolution of these problems. Such pessimism is arguably related to their lack of confidence in the government's enforcement of environmental protection. Through an analysis of the environmental policy‐making and enforcement agency and three selected enforcement cases, the study further finds that the people's lack of confidence can be traced to the government's failure to bring about a comprehensive, integrated, far‐sighted environmental strategy with sophisticated institutional support and detailed enforcement mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TRAJECTORIES OF CRIME AT PLACES: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF STREET SEGMENTS IN THE CITY OF SEATTLE*

Studies of crime at micro places have generally relied on cross‐sectional data and reported the distributions of crime statistics over short periods of time. In this paper we use official crime data to examine the distribution of crime at street segments in Seattle, Washington, over a 14‐year period. We go beyond prior research in two ways. First, we view crime trends at places over a much longer period than other studies that have examined micro places. Second, we use group‐based trajectory analysis to uncover distinctive developmental trends in our data. Our findings support the view that micro places generally have stable concentrations of crime events over time. However, we also find that a relatively small proportion of places belong to groups with steeply rising or declining crime trajectories and that these places are primarily responsible for overall city trends in crime. These findings are particularly important given the more general decline in crime rates observed in Seattle and many other American cities in the 1990s. Our study suggests that the crime drop can be understood not as a general process that occurred across the city landscape but one that was generated in a relatively small group of micro places with strong declining crime trajectories over time.