Shima Madani grew up in Irvine’s tranquil Woodbridge community, where she and other kids hung out at parks and a shopping center overlooking the iconic lake without the fear of crime.

Most of her neighbors were long-time residents, Madani said. They looked after one another and the children in the neighborhood — in a bit of a nosy way, she said.

“I miss those days,” she said. “It really was a village.”

Madani, now 29, has returned to Irvine to raise her own family. The master planned community she’d fallen in love with is still “one of the most amazing cities to live in,” but not as safe as it used to be, she said.

“The crime has definitely gone up in Irvine,” she said. “I think it’s just the fact that our country’s changing and our generation’s changing, and it’s not changing for the better.”

Madani is hardly alone in feeling Irvine has seen an uptick in crime as the city continues to develop and more people move in. Over the past 20 years, Irvine’s population has doubled to more than 250,000.

Earlier this month, news outlets reported that Irvine police arrested five people, all from out of town, in connection with a string of residential burglaries. Last month, the police arrested a Huntington Beach man accused of robbing the East West Bank on Walnut Avenue twice.

Residents are exposed to what can feel like a constant flow of reports about crime on news and social media.

However, the chances of Irvine residents becoming a crime victim in recent years are lower than ever — at least according to data — and that’s consistent with declining crime rates nationwide since the early 1990s.

“I’ve heard people say it’s getting worse and there’s just no evidence of that,” said John Hipp, professor of criminology at UC Irvine. “It’s a very safe city, I”ll say that.”

His analysis of historical FBI data of reported crimes shows Irvine’s per capita violent and property crime rates have decreased since 1975, when the city had just over 30,000 residents.

Through 2000, Irvine was seeing at least 10 violent crimes — homicide, assault and robbery — per 10,000 residents each year. That number has dropped to fewer than five during the last five years.

Property crimes — burglary, motor vehicle theft and larceny — have also dropped from more than 400 per 10,000 residents to about 150 in recent years. In fact, there were nearly twice as many burglaries reported in the 1980s, when there were fewer than 100,000 residents, as today.

Across the country, both the violent and property crime rates dropped by half between 1993 and 2015, according to Pew Research Center.

Sociologists, economists and other experts have come up with theories to explain the sharp decline. Some credit the economic growth and others demographic shifts.

But there’s no consensus.

Why is Irvine so safe?

According to the city’s analysis of FBI data for 2016, Irvine had the lowest violent crime rate of any U.S. city with at least 250,000 residents.

The Register’s analysis showed Irvine tied with Aliso Viejo, which has only a fifth of the Irvine population, as the cities with the lowest violent crime rate in Orange County.

“I go to national conferences, my colleagues sort of joke, ‘How do you study crime in Irvine? There’s no crime there,'” Hipp said.

Criminologists say there are two major elements that determine crime rates. One is demographics, or in other words, who lives in that area.

Certain types of people are more likely to be offenders and others are more likely to be involved in crime prevention. For example, cities with high levels of poverty tend to have higher crime rates.

It’s no surprise a wealthy and educated community like Irvine — two-thirds of whose adult residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher — has such low crime rates. However, affluent communities like Beverly Hills and Irvine tend to see higher property crime rates despite their low violent crime rates, Hipp said.

The second is physical environment. This includes such variables as how close the area is to freeways (making it easier for criminals to get away) and types of businesses in the area.

For instance, liquor stores, bars and night clubs may attract certain crimes, and a parking structure at a shopping center tends to have more vehicle thefts, Hipp said.

He said the presence of universities like UCI may be contributing to Irvine’s safety, too. Students, typically in the crime-prone age range, tend to stay away from crime when they are attending college, he said.

The effectiveness of policing is difficult to measure, Hipp said, unless researchers can observe what happens if the police sit back and do nothing.

“‘Why is there less crime here?’ We don’t have a good answer to that, and that would be worth us trying to figure out because there are competing theories,” Hipp said. “Maybe it’s just the demographics.”

Public perception is another story

If the city’s safer than ever, then why are at least some residents feeling the opposite?

And it’s not just Irvine residents. In a Pew Research Center survey last year, 57 percent of registered voters said crime had gotten worse since 2008, contrary to what the data shows.

“We understand that as our city grows, some residents may express concern and question whether we are as safe now as we once were,” Irvine police Chief Mike Hamel wrote in an email to the Register. “We take these concerns seriously and work with communities to educate residents on crime prevention.”

At least partly to be blamed is TV news, Hipp said, which often begins its reports with crime stories from around the region and world.

He said there’s less crime than people think.

“That’s one of the biggest misconceptions I see with people,” Hipp said. “There’s just way less. Even if you look at some of the worst neighborhoods, crime doesn’t happen as much as people think.”

In addition to the traditional media, residents now get information about their neighborhood from social media.

Madani, who lives in the Northwood community, said it feels like every time she checks the Nextdoor app, people are reporting crimes, such as break-ins and stolen packages.

“It’s amazing how these apps show you how much crime there is,” she said. “That’s very, very surprising that it’s actually gone down.”

Hamel, the police chief, said residents are always encouraged to report suspicious activity and take simple steps like locking their vehicles and home doors.

“Every week, we apprehend suspects because members of our community call us to report in-progress crimes (like) car break-ins, theft, etc.,” he said.

Despite her notion that Irvine has changed for the worse, Madani said she loves where she lives.

Her daughter plays outside all the time and neighbors keep an eye on one another, she said. Many have installed cameras outside their homes. She recently bought her own.

“Irvine is not cheap,” Madani said. “We’ve all worked really really hard to live where we live to have the lifestyle we have and when something is not right, we watch out for each other.”

Staff Writer Ian Wheeler contributed to this report.