Entertaining Away Crime: Does It Work?

“We’ve got a casino, a prison and now a stadium… But we don’t have a recreation center or even a McDonald’s in this city.”
— Chester, Pa., resident Tajh Eshaad, on real estate trends in his hometown, which recently experienced four murders in an eight-day span — including one in which two-year-old was killed by gunfire — and was placed under a 9 p.m. curfew as part of a citywide state of emergency. The aforementioned stadium, which will serve as the home of Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union, opened yesterday; the game, during which the Union beat the Seattle Sounders 3–1, kicked off at 5 p.m.