Defensible Space Undefended: Social Factors in Crime Control Through Environment Design', Urban Affairs Quarterly

The notion that crime can be prevented through environmental design is a recent and promising idea emerging from the fields of architecture and urban planning. However, despite intriguing correlations between crime rates and features of building design, we understand little about the social processes which induce residents to intervene to stop crimes and disorderly behavior in the spaces around them. This article investigates the conditions under which residents of an American inner-city housing project act and fail to act to defend both architecturally defensible and undefensible spaces. Because of the fragmented social fabric, even architecturally defensible spaces here are undefended. One of the more widely known and enthusiastically received theories in the field of man-environment relations is the idea of defensible space: the notion that crime can be controlled through environmental design. ’ Originally proposed by Jacobs (1961), defensible space was recently refined and empirically examined by Newman (1972), a city planner and architect, in his study of crime in New York City housing projects. Newman (1973: 50) argues that features of architectural design can create spaces which are easily observed, clearly demarcated as public or pri-AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am grateful for support from the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems of the NIMH for a predoctoral research grant 1 F31 1 MH05088-01 during the period of this research. I also appreciate the helpful advice and insights of David Jacobson during the research and writing period. The residents of the housing project under study, which I have given the pseudonym of Dover Square, were always helpful and tolerant of my endless questions