Cities often present significant risk factors that encourage violence. These include mass unemployment, gang violence, weakened security institutions, organized crime, firearms proliferation, limited government capacity, and rising inequality. Seventy-five per cent of the world’s cities have higher levels of income inequalities than two decades ago, and research shows that urban violence generally concentrates in areas of strong disadvantage, social exclusion, and poverty. In addition, the size of cities concentrates perpetrators and victims of violence in confined spaces.
