Defensible space in urban housing in Indonesia

Abstract

Security in the housing is considered as one of the most important things in the fulfillment of occupant’s needs. However, there are still many cases of criminality that still occur in urban housing. Defensible space is a concept of residential environment design that is able to prevent crime. Through literature study methods, field observations, and interviews, this paper discusses how defensible space is created in urban housing in Indonesia as well as its effect on the quality of security created between two different types of organic dwellings in Bogor City. The explanation starts from the identification of physical characteristics that create territoriality, natural surveillance, image, and milieu. Then, the social and physical condition are associated with their effects on people’s behaviors. The result of our discovery is that physical and social conditions create the whole defensible space condition. In the middle-class urban housing, the environment condition still opens the opportunity for the criminals to commit the crime because the defensible space is not created as a whole. Contrarily, this is created in the lower-class urban housing as a whole. Therefore, the environment condition is free from any crime.