462
Souter, J., dissenting
Rather, the city apparently assumes that a bookstore selling videos and providing viewing booths produces secondary effects of crime, and more crime than would result from having a single store without booths in one part of town and a video arcade in another.5 But the city neither says this in so many words nor proffers any evidence to support even the simple proposition that an otherwise lawfully located adult bookstore combined with video booths will produce any criminal effects. The Los Angeles study treats such combined stores as one, see id., at 81-82, and draws no general conclusion that individual stores spread apart from other adult establishments (as under the basic Los Angeles ordinance) are associated with any degree of criminal activity above the general norm; nor has the city called the Court's attention to any other empirical study, or even anecdotal police evidence, that supports the city's assumption. In fact, if the Los Angeles study sheds any light whatever on the city's position, it is the light of skepticism, for we may fairly suspect that the study said nothing about the secondary effects of freestanding stores because no effects were observed. The reasonable supposition, then, is that splitting some of them up will have no consequence for secondary effects whatever.6
sanitary conditions identified in Hart Book Stores would exist in video arcades in Los Angeles, and the city has suggested no evidence that they do. For that reason, Hart Book Stores gives no indication of a substantial governmental interest that the ban on multiuse adult establishments would further.
5 The plurality indulges the city's assumption but goes no further to justify it than stating what is obvious from what the city's study says about concentrations of adult establishments (but not isolated ones): the presence of several adult businesses in one neighborhood draws "a greater concentration of adult consumers to the neighborhood, [which] either attracts or generates criminal activity." Ante, at 436.
6 In Renton, the Court approved a zoning ordinance "aimed at preventing the secondary effects caused by the presence of even one such theater
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