Shibu,
David Davis is right in saying that it isn't a new idea, "designing out
crime" has been discussed alongside Crime Prevention Thorough
Environmental Design (CPTED), and partly related Design Against Crime
(DAC) has been discussed in Britain since Oscar Newman's and Jane
Jacobs's work. Schemes and policies having different names, with the
majority of their content being common, and each one put forward as a
"new idea" may blur the picture a bit. In this field it seems the
schemes and policies are pronounced more often than theories and
implementations are.
As you can feel from the transcript as well, various approaches related
closely or remotely to Place (deliberately not saying Space here) is
taken altogether in these policies and discussions. You will see
entrance control, fences, locks and bolts discussed alongside movement
patterns in and out of a housing area, which are admittedly both about
security and crime but work in obviously different ways: keeping people
out vs. making people use the space. Both can be necessary, just in
different levels of territory. Another lack of differentiation is
between housing estates and traditional street layouts, which again have
a similar kind of difference (making a particularly delineated space
safe vs. diffusion of safety benefits in the city).
Just like you, it worries me that whenever crime and design (built
environment) is discussed, the first focus is Oscar Newman's work. This
is because Newman's was the first quantitative study, with clearly
defined principles. Newman was appointed especially for researching into
housing estates' crime and security problems, he still put emphasis on
surveillance, but to be to performed by the insiders of a territory. We
should not forget that the insiders/outsiders and territorialiy division
is not so clear in the rest of the "urban space".
The good thing is ODPM 's 2004 guidelines report titled Safer Places
seems to take the issue more comprehensively:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/724/SaferPlacesThePlanningSystemandCrimePrevention_id1144724.pdf
Regards,
Ozlem Sahbaz
Shibu Raman wrote:
> Hi all
> Did any one saw the politic show today (Sunday 3rd dec). David Davis
> was talking about urban design and crime. He like other policy makers
> seems to be just waking up to fact that design of space may have
> something to do with crime. Great idea in principle, but worryingly he
> is quoting the Oscar Newman stuff (see the transcript below from
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/6193312.stm)
> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/6193312.stm%29>
>
>
>
> Shibu
>
> JON SOPEL: It's fine as far as it goes, this idea of designing for
> safety, but is it a radical new idea, isn't it something that everyone
> is going to say, yeah, of course.
>
> DAVID DAVIS: It's not new. I mean, it's actually thirty years old.
> What's wrong is that it hasn't actually been taken up with the sort of
> determination and drive that's necessary. What, if you look to some of
> the Bradford examples, and the predecessor to the policeman who was on
> there took me down and street and he said, well on one side of the
> street you've got sixteen or seventeen times the level of burglary,
> than you have on the other side of the street, and *none of it is down
> to social factors. It's all down to design.
> *
> It makes that big a difference, so for certain types of crime and the
> lady, the sociologist, who was talking, was right, we can't deal with
> domestic violence this way but for certain types of crime, burglary,
> mugging, robbery, some street violence, you can actually do a huge
> amount, just take away the opportunity completely and actually give
> people safety on their own streets and safety in their own home which
> is the key.
>
> JON SOPEL: So are we putting money in to the wrong things then. I mean
> are we putting, is it a mistake to put money in to extra police
> officers. Should we be putting money in to more fences and all that...
>
> DAVID DAVIS: Well the fences is the sort of patch work after the
> event. The best way to do this is when you start. I mean people
> actually, *interestingly enough, people recognised thirty years ago,
> there was a man called Oscar Newman, an American Architect*,
> recognised some thirty years ago, a lot of the post war estates were
> designed very badly with alleyways, covered walkways, garages or
> parking areas out of sight, so people could vandalise cars and so on.
>
> See also the article designing out crime
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/6193304.stm
> The *concepts - developed by the architect, Oscar Newman* - were
> successfully applied in the 1990's in US cities like St Louis and
> Dayton. It is time we learnt the same lessons here in Britain.
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