This paper falls into a common field of scientific research and its practical applications at the interface of urban geography, environmental criminology, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The purpose of this study is to identify types of different land use which influence the spatial distribution of a set of crime types at the intra-urban scale. The originality of the adopted approach lies in its consideration of a large number of different land use types considered as hypothetically influencing the spatial distribution of nine types of common crimes, geocoded at the address-level: car crimes, theft of property-other, residential crimes, property damage, commercial crimes, drug crimes, burglary in other commercial buildings, robbery, and fights and battery. The empirical study covers 31,319 crime events registered by the Police in the years 2006-2010 in the Polish city of Szczecin with a population ca. 405,000. Main research methods used are the GIS tool "multiple ring buffer" and the "crime location quotient (LQC)". The main conclusion from this research is that a strong influence of land use types analyzed is limited to their immediate surroundings (i.e., within a distance of 50 m), with the highest concentration shown by commercial crimes and by the theft of property-other crime type. Land use types strongly attracting crime in this zone are alcohol outlets, clubs and discos, cultural facilities, municipal housing, and commercial buildings. In contrast, grandstands, cemeteries, green areas, allotment gardens, and depots and transport base are land use types strongly detracting crime in this zone.

Public transportation in cities is crucial for their sustainable development. The attractiveness of public transport for city residents depends largely on whether they are able to access the nearest stop on foot. The actual time of walking to the nearest stop and the distance covered can be measured using the band method or the circular buffer method. The accuracy of the two methods was compared for the city of Szczecin and one of its residential areas, Pomorzany (ca. 20,000 inhabitants, ca. 7 km2 area). The city provides public tram and bus transportation and has 90 km of streets and pedestrian paths. As shown by the results, the band method proved more accurate in measuring public transport stop accessibility. It showed 53.8% of the stops to be highly accessible, whereas 37.8%, 7.8%, and 0.5% were classified as moderately accessible, poorly accessible, and inaccessible, respectively; the latter would be hardly expected to be used by pedestrians in the Pomorzany neighborhood. The band method allowed also to indicate potential location of a new bus stop which would significantly improve accessibility of public transportation to residents of a housing estate (3000 inhabitants) in the area.

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The article aims to propose a new way of estimating the ambient and immobile urban population using geotagged tweets and age structure, and to test how they are related to urban crime patterns. Using geotagged tweets and age structure data in 37 neighborhoods of Szczecin, Poland, we analyzed the following crime types that occurred during 2015–2017: burglary in commercial buildings, drug crime, fight and battery, property damage, and theft. Using negative binomial regression models, we found a positive correlation between the size of the ambient population and all investigated crime types. Additionally, neighborhoods with more immobile populations (younger than 16 or older than 65) tend to experience more commercial burglaries, but not other crime types. This may be related to the urban structure of Szczecin, Poland. Neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty and unemployment tend to experience more commercial burglaries, drug problems, property damage, and thefts. Additionally, the count of liquor stores is positively related to drug crime, fight-battery, and theft. This article suggests that the age structure of the population has an influence on the distribution of crime, thus it is necessary to tailor crime prevention strategies for different areas of the city.