| Studies have shown that crime is related to socioeconomic characteristics (familial status, income and youth) and that these socioeconomic characteristics were found to be strong predictors of crime (Sampson and Groves, 1989) in socially disorganized residential communities. In addition, research indicated that crime is also related to attributes of design (Newman, 1972, 1992; Brown, 1993). More recent study indicated that crime is related to attributes of spatial configuration of layouts (Hillier, 1988, 1996).; This research argued that crime is both a social and spatial phenomena and that studying social and spatial dimensions in isolation of each other would bring only partial understanding of varying distributions of crime in residential communities. The major question explored in this research was whether residential environments of different housing types have an independent effect on crime relative to attributes of their social organization, spatial organization and socioeconomic characteristics. Seven cooperatives, five private rental apartments and two public housing communities of low and moderate-income families were selected in Southeast and Southwest Atlanta, Georgia. All of the case study sites were located proximate to each other.; Five years (1990--94) of reported crime data was used to measure the variation in crimes against property and persons in the selected case study sites. The survey of 25% of the sample population of each development provided the social data for measuring levels of social organization (neighboring, sense of community, anonymity, informal control, security and management) (see Chapter 5). The Space syntax technique was used to develop the spatial data (Hillier and Hanson, 1984). This data provided information on attributes of spatial configuration of each development. The integrated and segregated areas of each development were characterized by syntactic attributes (integration, integration radius-3 and control) of pedestrian paths and vehicular streets of each case study (see Chapter 6).; Three types of analysis were conducted: (1) crime analysis, (2) social analysis and (3) spatial analysis. The relationships between crime and attributes of social organization and spatial organization were explored by housing type and their associated socioeconomic characteristics. The results confirmed that different housing types have an independent effect on crime relative to differences in their social and spatial organization when controlled for their socioeconomic characteristics (youth, marital status and income). The results also substantiated previous findings that youth, marital status (Van Voorhis et. al, 1988, Sampson and Groves, 1989) and income (Block 1979, Curry and Spergel, 1988, Patterson, 1994, Shihadeh and Steffensmeier, 1994) have an effect on crime. |
