Spatial accessibility to gun violence exposure on walkable routes to and from school

Abstract

This study investigates the spatial accessibility of gun violence exposure along walkable routes to and from schools in Englewood, Chicago. Focusing on both direct and indirect forms of gun violence, the study uses acoustic detection technology to quantify the cumulative burden of gun violence exposure potentially encountered by students during their commute to and from school. We examined the spatial distribution of shooting incidents in proximity to schools using network-constrained kernel density estimation, secondary spatial analysis, and rapid realistic routing. G-function analysis revealed that shooting incidents cluster along streets, including safe passage routes, near schools. An average of 1.30 and 18.06 gunshots were reachable within 5- and 15-min commute times in the morning and afternoon, respectively Our findings underscore the urgent need to reframe the narrative around ‘school gun violence’ to consider exposures that occur in proximity to school boundaries to more effectively reduce violence exposure for youth who walk to school in violence-prone neighborhoods.