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Highlighting resource inequality, social processes, and spatial interdependence, this study combines structural characteristics from the 1990 census with a survey of 8,872 Chicago residents in 1995 to predict homicide variations in 1996-1 998 across 343 neighborhoods. Spatial proximity to homicide is strongly related to increased homicide rates, adjusting for internal neighborhood characteristics and prior homicide. Concentrated disadvantage and low collective efficacy-defined as the linkage of social control and cohesion-also independently predict increased homicide. Local organizations, voluntary associations, and frienaYkinship networks appear to be important only insofar as they promote the collective efficacy of residents in achieving social control and cohesion. Spatial dynamics coupled with neighborhood inequalities in social and economic capacity are therefore consequential f o r explaining urban violence.Over the course of the past century, criminological research in the ecological tradition has continually discovered the concentration of interpersonal violence in certain neighborhoods, especially those characterized by

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.