skwirl has the correct answer here, but it is buried in a sub-comment: "I don't think the article is trying to claim that elevation magically has a causal impa

skwirl has the correct answer here, but it is buried in a sub-comment: "I don't think the article is trying to claim that elevation magically has a causal impact on crime rates. It just shows that there is a correlation and claims nothing more. The point is that there IS some underlying root cause (or an extreme coincidence) and that is an interesting point in and of itself." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355511