The Research On Defensible Space Design In Living Districts In Hefei On The Basis Of CPTED Theory

Because of China’s rapid progress in urbanization and expansion of city scale, more and more attention is paid on the security of living districts. As one of the important components of urban space and the most basic living space, living districts have become the targets of breaking-in crimes such as indoor theft, robbery and so on. Thus citizens’daily life and property safety has been seriously compromised.Researches done by scholars around the world prove that there is a correlation between crimes and the environment in which these crimes happen. CPTED theory proposes that a well-designed environment in a living district not only can propel social activities, creating a benign community, it also can prevent crimes, enhancing the security of the living district.This article firstly specifically introduces the six core basic rules of CPTED theory by summarizing crime prevention theories from relevant research fields including environmental psychology, criminology, and behavioral science. The six core basic rules are:territoriality, surveillance, image, access control, target hardening and activity support. Then based on the six basic rules and actual crime data, this article selects 3 samples for analysis from Baohe District in Hefei city, analyzes the correlation between their environmental factors and crime distribution using GIS process and Space Syntax software. After respectively exploring the possible correlation between the environmental factors and crime distribution patterns of each sample, this article is able to conclude which of the environmental factors contribute to crime rate and crime distribution patterns. These factors include physical environmental factors such as forms of living buildings, settings of exits and entries, road patterns and so on; as well as social environmental factors such as community management and residents’ social status. In the last part of this article, corresponding strategies for designing a defensible space are proposed according to the influential factors mentioned above. For example, attention should be paid to simplifying the shape of living buildings, uniforming living districts’ space and enhancing the restraints on exits and entries. In so doing, this article raises a set of universal principles by which the defensing ability of living districts can be improved under domestic social environment.