Building on a intuition of Jane Jacobs that small mom-and-pop shops were essential to order maintenance in the street, I attempt to evaluate the impact of the relative importance of small businesses on street crime. Jane Jacobs saw vendors and shop owners as central actor in the maintenance of an active social life in neighborhoods. Conceptual development around the idea of collective efficacy by Sampson or social capital by Coleman and Granovetter give weight to this idea and tools to the research to better understand the causal mechanisms at play.