Protecting the Neighorhood: Safety through Design

Abstract

The built environment can be designed to help protect innocent people from being victims of crimes. My thesis will investigate how the development of the urban form influences a community's susceptibility to acts of crime. I acknowledge, however, that the form of the built environment is only one aspect of crime prevention and will have limited results if not combined with a greater strategy that addresses the social, economic and political issues of the area. My thesis will test the integration of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles - access, surveillance, and territorial reinforcement - into the design process and create a set of guidelines that can be used as a baseline for other neighborhoods facing these problems. Three different urban conditions - open space, the commercial realm and the residential realm - in the Baltimore neighborhood of Upton, have been used as examples of the application of the CPTED principles.