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The relationship between variations of grid layout and Burglary
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The study examined the relationship between urban spaces and burglary in Malaysian grid-like residential layouts located in a local authority area in the Kiang Valley. It analysed first, the degree of grid in the layouts to understand how they could influence burglary rate, and, second, the spatial patterns of burglary in those layouts. The instrument used in this research was space syntax, a tool that analyse urban spaces. By comparing burglary rates to syntactical spatial attributes in six residential layouts, the findings showed how spatial attributes influenced burglary. It also attempted to relate how degree of permeability of grid-like layouts may have affected vulnerability. It concluded by suggesting for further studies in other residential layouts in this country.
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... When most studies focused on target hardening such as home security features (cctv, alarm, door lock, etc.), Hillier and Shu (2000) using space syntax indicated the features in urban layouts affected the uneven distribution of burglary. The degree of integration of spaces in the layouts seems to correspond to the type of layout; the traditional layout has more integrated spaces, while the more broken-up layout has less integrated spaces (Zaki et al. 2008). Focusing on the space as the reason of burglary, Taylor (2002) suggested that crime rate is linked to easy accessibility, in the reason of space and street network. ...
... The other study come forward using of this tool is made by Zaki and Abdullah (2008) who conduct the study on grid layout and burglary. Space syntax is used to allow the comparison of space and burglary rate. ...
... Example summary of the layout characteristics Source: Relationship table between variation of grid layout and burglary(Zaki & Abdullah, 2008) ...
Crime rate of burglary at residential areas give concern to the people in terms of their safety and property. Various aspect such as accessibility of housing layout and spaces should be seen as a factor of growth this crime. Thus, urban design theories should be used as a key to combating this menace. This study examines the relationship between spatial configurations of urban housing layout and spatial distribution of residential burglary, based on crime report provided by the police. Main focus is specifically to residential area and in comparative study of three housing estates, located in the Klang Valley metropolitan. Using geospatial techniques, the distribution of crime and accessibility are necessary to show the both relationship. While focusing on site specific and situational features of places, the output of research will provide empirical evidence for scepticism on the idea of configurationally accessibility by Bill Hillier, theory of how people relate to space in built environments. The positive features will reduce the possibility of high risk residential burglary and vice versa.
... The structure of the indicators and sub-indicators described in the questionnaire were as depicted in Figure 3 below. The design of the indicators and sub-indicator structure were inspired by the Papathoma Tsunami Vulnerability Assessment (PTVA) model developed by [37] meanwhile the input of indicator were compiled from various burglary vulnerability studies including [3], [14], [24], [25], [28], [33], [41]- [42]. ...
Developing a model allow a better understanding of the nature of a complicated phenomenon. With advancement of tools and technology, model development has been applied widely to mimic the phenomena of interest, spatial or non-spatial wise, allowing a guided decision making to be made. In this paper, the phenomena of burglary vulnerability and susceptibility are modelled based on expert opinion input to create a model that imitates the expert profiling of burglary occurrences, which is dependent on individual expert wisdom and experience in handling the burglary investigation. Due to seriousness of burglary crime offences in Malaysia, especially the urban areas, a prediction model is needed to correlates the factor of crime and further estimates the spatial susceptibility to work hand in hand with other government initiatives in reducing crime. Eighteen (18) indicators and 63 sub-indicators has been identified to be significant in defining the susceptibility of burglary. Apart from input of rating and ranking of indicators and sub-indicators obtained from questionnaire distribution to expert in handling burglary, the geospatial based data were also incorporated into the model to add the element of spatial accuracy in susceptibility prediction. The geospatial data includes the distribution of burglary incidence from 2010 – 2016, the census data, the building footprint data and the demarcation area. For the collected questionnaire feedback, the procedure of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were adapted to determine the wei ght value considering the rating input of expert from the distributed questionnaire. The input of weight and scoring were applied to the corresponding spatial features and combined with the operation of weighted sum to yield the total burglary susceptibility of a place. The results of the model were validated with the real reported burglary frequency based on True Positive Rate correlation matrix. The model validation finds that the model have a sensitivity of 82% in classifying the burglary susceptibility of the building polygon inside the study area. However this model still requires some improvement as it is still lacking to perform the classification of incidence intensity correctly.
This paper reports the results of a study that explored the relationships among property crime, the accessibility of street networks and the concentration of potential targets. It is hypothesized that the design of street networks Influences how people move about within a city and, conse- quently, their familiarity with specific areas. It was further argued that property crimes occur In known areas with attractive targets. Consequently, areas with the most complex road networks and the fewest common desti- nation points should have the lowest levels of property crime. Using an ex post facto research design in two suburban municipalities, the study com- pared the relative amount of property crime in each street segment with that segment's relative accessibility, traffic volume and quantity of potential targets. Both road network complexity and traffic flow were found to be of substantial importance. Crime was higher in more accessible and highly used areas and lower in the less accessible and less used areas. The concentration of potential targets was highly related to accessibility and traffic flow and to overall property crime totals. The findings clearly point to the importance of the urban background created by cities through zoning and
The following research calls into question some of the most deeply held assumption that have been made on all sides about the relation between spatial design and security. The most important of these is perhaps the 'safety in numbers' argument that challenges long held beliefs that small is somehow beautiful in designing for well-working, low-risk communities. On the basis of the evidence we have presented we can argue that the benefi ts of a residential culture become more apparent with larger rather than smaller numbers. A no less challenging implication of this body of evidence is that the relation between crime and spatial design may not pass through the intervening variable of community formation. Again, the evidence suggests that the simple fact of human co-presence in space, coupled to simple physical features of buildings or spaces is enough to explain differences in victimization rates in different types of location and area, albeit with variations due to social factors.
That crime is concentrated in space is now accepted as commonplace. Explanations for why it clusters at particular locations
are various reflecting the range of factors which are held to influence crime placement. In this article, we focus on the
role of the permeability of the street network on the location of crime. We first review the research conducted hitherto,
summarising the different approaches to analysis and the findings that have so far emerged. Then we present original analyses
conducted at the street segment level to examine the issues at hand. In contrast to much of the prior research, in this study
we examine the patterns for a large study area in which there is considerable variation in street network configuration. Moreover,
and in contrast to all of the previous research, the approach to analysis takes into account the multi-level structure of
the data analysed. The findings demonstrate that increased permeability is associated with elevated burglary risk, that burglary
risk is lower on cul-de-sacs (particularly those that are sinuous in nature), and that the risk of burglary is higher on more
major roads and those street segments that are connected to them. In the conclusion of the paper we outline an agenda for
future research.
KeywordsCrime risk-Permeability-Cul-de-sacs-Street segments
The spatial analysis of crime patterns has been conceived of almost entirely in terms of the analysis of clusters of crime occurrence, or ‘hot spots’. However, as Newman observed (Newman 1972), occurrence is not the same as risk. For example, a busy street may have a higher number of street crimes that a quiet street, and so will appear as a hot spot, even though much higher movement rates may mean that the risk to individuals is lower than in locations with less crime (Alford 1999). The spatial pattern of risk may in effect take the form of a dispersed pattern of types of location rather than a set of spatial clusters. The appropriate technology for analysis of such dispersed patterns is space syntax, which can not only characterise spatial location types in a numerical way but has also been shown to reflect other kinds of crime related patterns in the built environment, such as movement flows (Hillier & Iida 2005) and land use types and mixes (Hillier 2000), so allowing us to relate patterns of crime more precisely to the dynamics of city life (Hillier 2004. Hillier & Shu 2000, Hillier & Sahbaz 2005). Here we show how the use of space syntax in the study of a very large data base of residential burglary and street crime can bring to light some unexpected relations between the physical, spatial and social characteristics of the built environment on the one hand, and the spatial patterns of different crime types on the other.
To foresee social outcomes from decisions about the physical and spatial form of the built environment, built environment professionals need to make use of theory-like propositions linking the two domains. In the absence of scientifically tested propositions, a shifting consensus of beliefs fills the need, and it can take decades of social costs to show the inadequacy of these beliefs. The problem of social theory and the built environment is then defined for the purposes of this paper in terms of the potential for testable propositions at the level at which one intervenes in the built environment. This is called the need for 'design-level' theories, defining design in the broad sense of all the choices and decisions made by built environment professionals in creating and modifying the built environment. Examining social theory under two broad headings, 'urban sociology' and 'society and space', it is noted that both approach the society-environment relation 'society first', in that the form of the environment is sought as the product of the spatial dimensions of social processes. This is called the 'spatiality' paradigm, and note that such approaches have never reached, and probably can never reach, the level of precision about the built environment which would be needed to found testable propositions at the design level. The alternative is to turn the question the other way round and through 'environment first' studies look for evidence of social processes in the spatial forms of the built environment. Recent work of this kind is outlined within the 'space syntax' paradigm and it is shown how the greater descriptive precision this brings to the built environment both permits linkages to mainline formulations in social theory and leads to testable design-level propositions.