Secured by Design Principles: excerpt

source: http://www.securedbydesign.com/pdfs/SBD-principles.pdf

2 Environmental quality and sense of ownership

Poor environment: alienation and fear
2.1 A poor quality and sterile environment can create feelings of alienation amongst residents and other users, and result in an area where people feel uncomfortable, where pride and sense of shared ownership of the environment is low. .Few people will want to linger in public spaces where crime and disorder/or fear of crime is high. In the extreme, this might be the bleak inner city “concrete jungle” characterised by barbed wire and heavy duty security hardware on buildings, where broken glass and graffiti are commonplace. To varying degrees however, similar effects may be seen in other less severely degraded urban environments. Well-designed environment: community cohesion Secured by Design Principles 2004 version 1  ACPO CPI June 2004 6
2.2 In an environment which is well designed, attractive, clearly defined and well maintained people are likely to take pride in their surroundings, will tend to feel comfortable and safe and have a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.
2.3 A ‘well designed’ environment is one that fulfils all its intended functions in an effective and harmoniously co-ordinated manner.
2.4 An ‘attractive’ environment in this context means one which has evolved or has been successfully designed to meet the needs of its legitimate users, such as the need for safe convenient means of access, the need to enable social interaction, to cater for recreational needs, etc. Legitimate users (ie the responsible majority of the population) will naturally find the environment ‘attractive’ because it is responsive to their needs. The greater the attraction for legitimate users, the less will be the attraction for the criminal minority.
2.5 A ‘clearly defined’ environment means one in which there is no ambiguity as to which areas are private, which are public, and how the two relate to one another. There may be transitional zones of semi-public or semi-private space [often referred to as ‘buffer zones’], or there may be strong physical demarcation between public and private areas by means of a wall, fence or hedge. The critical point is that the environment should be capable of being easily ‘understood’ by those experiencing it.

Anonymity
2.6 Crime is always easier to commit where offenders cannot be recognised, so in consequence they will take opportunities to offend where they are likely to benefit from this anonymity. The built environment, including areas of open space, can be organised so that it either creates the potential for, or alternatively reduces the levels of anonymity. In busy public places strangers will naturally tend to be ignored, and offenders can take advantage of this anonymity, and therefore opportunity, to commit offences. This can lead to problems where public space directly abuts private space because it can allow potential offenders to come into close proximity with private property without being noticed. This problem can be addressed by changing the nature of the part of the public space nearest to the private land or property, by reorganising it so that residents/property owners are able to exercise a degree of control over it, in effect creating a buffer between the wider public space and the private space. This ‘buffer’ might or might not still be legally public space, but if it is reorganised or redesigned in such a way as to create a zone of more ‘defensible’ space, anonymity will be reduced and potential
offenders will correspondingly be discouraged.