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 Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429352775 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. No city environment reflects the meaning of urban life better than a public place. A public place, whatever its nature—a park, a mall, a train platform or a street corner—is where people pass by, meet each other and at times become a victim of crime. With this book, we submit that crime and safety in public places are not issues that can be easily dealt with within the boundaries of a single discipline. The book aims to illustrate the complexity of patterns of crime and fear in public places with examples of studies on these topics contextualized in different cities and countries around the world. This is achieved by tackling five cross-cutting themes: the nature of the city’s environment as a backdrop for crime and fear; the dynamics of individuals’ daily routines and their transit safety; the safety perceptions experienced by those who are most in fear in public places; the metrics of crime and fear; and, finally, examples of current practices in promoting safety. All these original chapters contribute to our quest for safer, more inclusive, resilient, equitable and sustainable cities and human settlements aligned to the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

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.