A Research On Security Of Our Urban Residential Areas

In the context of rapid urban development of Chinese cities, The crime rate is revving up in most urban residential areas. All along, crime is put down to the economic and social problems, but in fact, criminal activity is closely allied to the space environment factors, and the design of space environment can influence crimes and sense of security. Though good design does not prevent any crimeS, it will help create a even better environment for security of living areas."crime prevention through environment design"(CPTED) has been promoted for decades in the abroad, but Studies in this area are still weak in our country. The CPTED has been accompanied by the continuing controversy since its formation.There are two quite divergent views on this. The first is traceable to Jane Jacobs .she advocates open and permeable environments, in which strangers passing through spaces, as well as inhabitants, are part of the natural policing mechanism. The second,traceable to Oscar Newman, he advocates closed and impermeable environments, in which inhabitants are the only natural police, and the fundamental mechanism is that inhabitants recognise strangers as intruders and challenge them.Based on these controversial issues, the author developed the contents and framework of the case studies, and collected informations by the investigation of 43 residential areas in Dalian city. As the Public security agencies put the crime datas on confidentiality, I started from the datas of the sense of security. By the difference of the datas, we can find the factors that affect the safety of our living areas.There are two parts in case study, the first is the study of city area, the second is the spatial configuration of residential areas. For the city area study, first , the affections of economic > social and management factors were studied, and next, factors of the structure of urban roads and scale of blocks were associated to the residential security.In the study of spatial configuration of residential areas , Several representative residential areas were selected to be analyzed comparatively, and the affectionon of spatial configuration for living blocks and neighbourhood were defined.Conclusion of the study affirmed that space environment factors play the indirect role for the security of residential areas. Finally, the author raised the guidelines of security residential areas design in china.