Resident appropriation of defensible space in public housing: Implications for safety and community

A fundamental goal of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is to create safe, supportive communities. Recently, HUD has focused attention on the role that the physical environment may have in achieving these goals through the creation of “defensible space.” Millions of dollars have been invested in rehabilitating the physical environments of public housing and other residential neighborhoods in line with Defensible Space (DS) guidelines proposed by Oscar Newman. While some DS interventions have been successful, resulting in lower crime rates and more cohesive communities, success has not been consistent. Little is known about additional factors that might promote the success of defensible space, particularly in distressed urban public housing neighborhoods in need of such interventions.; One factor that Defensible Space theory posits may contribute to the success of defensible spaces is the extent to which residents defend and in other ways appropriate near-home space. Yet little research has systematically examined residents' appropriation of space in public housing. This dissertation examined whether public housing residents' experiences of safety and community in the neighborhood were related to the extent to which they defended and in other ways appropriated near-home defensible space. Results from a survey of 91 public housing residents living in moderately defensible spaces suggested that residents who defended near-home space through territorial appropriation experienced the neighborhood as a safer, more cohesive community than did residents who did not appropriate space in this way. For other forms of space appropriation, residents who spent more time outside experienced the neighborhood as a safer place, and residents who participated in greening activities experienced the neighborhood as a more cohesive community. Casual social interaction in near-home space was not consistently related to outcomes.; Although this study is based on correlational data, and no casual inferences can be drawn, this work takes an important step of providing empirical evidence to suggest a systematic link between certain aspects of resident appropriation and positive neighborhood outcomes. This work thus contributes to research on environment-behavior relations by providing some support for an important relationship posited by DS theory. Implications for DS theory and for public housing policy are discussed.