Economics Research Seminar – Dr Carmen Villa
Title: Gangs of London: Public Housing, Bombs and Knives
Date: 4 February 2026
Time: 13:30 – 14:30
Venue: NUBS.2.05
If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:
Gangs of London: Public Housing, Bombs and Knives
Speaker: Dr Carmen Villa
Carmen Villa Llera, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich and the Jacobs Centre for Productive Youth Development. Research Affiliate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Rockwool Foundation Berlin.
Dr Carmen Villa obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick in May 2025. She was selected for the EALE Tour 2025. In 2024, she was awarded the British Spanish Society scholarship. In 2023 visited the University of Chicago as a Fulbright US-UK scholar.
Abstract:
Novel spatial data on London street gangs between 1990 and 2015 are combined with local housing characteristics to show how social housing relates to gang presence and neighbourhood crime. High-rise public housing estates built in the post-World War II era are far more likely to host gangs than areas without social housing. To address concerns that social housing was built in already high-crime areas, high-rise construction is shown to be predicted from spatial patterns of WWII bomb damage that occurred in the 1940-41 Blitz. Bomb-induced high-rise construction significantly raises gang presence and criminality, with especially high juvenile crime rates in gang areas.