The Relationship Between The Physical Urban Environment And Crime Reduction And Prevention

It is generally accepted that the physical environment in towns and cities can affect patterns of crime and antisocial behaviour. This report presents the proceedings of an international conference, held in Poland in October 2000, as part of the work programme of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) of the Council of Europe to develop and promote policies for the reduction of urban crime in its 41 member countries. The conference discussions focused on four key themes: housing and crime; open spaces, street planning and design; urban transport planning to reduce crime; and the relationship between the siting and design of sporting facilities and crime.

The major hypothesis for this study is that the physical characteristics of cities make a significant contribution in the variation of the dependent variable (Part I crimes--number of reported violent offenses) that is statistically over and above the contribution made by the social and economic variables. Cities are examined for correlations between physical attributes, population densities, and other variables. According to the literature, residents' perceptions of safety are connected to lack of community cohesion characteristics, withdrawal of people within and from their own neighborhoods due to poorly configured physical design with respect to promote surveillance--and due to decreases in informal social contacts (lack of civic engagement, low social capital, and other kinds of alienation). A survey and review of the literature as well as public policy preferences, have disclosed and proposed the need for more study to reduce crime. Cities are selected from within the top most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S. according to the Bureau of the Census in 2000, and the data sets are the FBI-UCR and the Bureau of the Census. Statistical analyses identify correlations between variables and groups of variables that might be used for future policing considerations. The physical structure of cities and its relationship to types of crime (empirical study) and fear of crime among residents (literature study) are included in this research, since both are stated to play an important role in promoting or retarding crime according to principles of defensible space, broken windows, CPTED, and "eyes on the street." Comprehensive sets of many indicators are stated in the literature, suggesting that physical components of urban environments do correlate with crime data in a significant manner. The findings in this study conclude that the physical variables make a significant contribution to the variation in the overall crime rate. Additionally, these results suggest that policing strategies and improvements in physical plans, urban design settings, and architecture can be successfully modified to reduce crime.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a practice-oriented approach to reduce the risk of offences such as burglary and fear of crime by modifying the built environment. In recent years, this approach has been criticised for duplicating terminology and for failing to integrate successfully with other approaches. Rebuilding Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design explores and extends the common ground between CPTED and situational crime prevention – another traditional approach in the field of crime prevention and security – via the latter’s evolution into the field of crime science. Drawing on international research to develop new interdisciplinary perspectives, this volume explores how situational crime prevention and environmental criminological theories relate to those of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and considers how crime science can be reformulated to merge different approaches, or at least articulate them better. Rebuilding Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design will appeal to students, applied academic researchers and practitioners who wish to deepen their understanding and contribute in turn to the ongoing revitalisation of the field.

The question of how to live in the city and increase the quality of urban life creates new challenges for both urban policies and academic research. Urban parks are important keys for achieving a broader understanding of the urban landscape. Open green spaces in every form are essential for life in our ever more urbanised society and are becoming a vital issue for the liveability of the urban environment.The purpose of the present research is to acquire a more thorough knowledge of the evaluation of urban parks. The study uses statistical analysis methods combined with landscape planning and visualisation methods. The research provides an innovative and sophisticated point of view along with the means to improve the comprehension of people's preferences for alternative urban park scenarios. The results are expected to create an advanced discussion platform and make a contribution towards improving knowledge of the public's perception of urban parks. The investigation was conducted with empirical experiments on two parks in Zurich.The functional component of the research is the visualisation of spatial data using powerful visualisation tools. The theoretical prospect is the achievement of broader knowledge about individuals' perception of open green spaces, focusing on previously unexplored experimental research combining conjoint analysis and visualisation methods.The experiments created for the research are effective for modelling and explaining the signifi cance that people assign to specific dimensions characterising different park scenarios. Two motivations are at the base of the research: exploring the use of conjoint analysis methods to study virtual urban parks and evaluating the use of visual stimuli with conjoint analysis.