Revisiting the relationship between crime and architectural design: An analysis of HUD's 1994 survey of public housing residents. Cityscape: A

The authors look at type of building design and size of development with respect to major crime problems identified by public housing residents. Size of development appears to be more closely associated with the presence of major crime problems than does type of building. Overall, high-rise buildings fare better than one would expect, given the conventional wisdom that such dwellings are more hospitable to criminal activity than are other types of housing. This analysis revisits the concept of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as it applies to public housing. Interest in the association of architectural design with the incidence of crime, especially crime in public housing, began with the publica-tion of Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design (1972). An architect by profession, Newman noted that highrise buildings deny their residents opportunities for surveillance of the public grounds, lobbies, corridors, and stairways. He contended that this lack of surveillance renders much of the public space in highrise structures vulnerable to crime. However, other than a series of studies by Brill and Associates (1975, 1976, 1977a