Social Crime or Spatial Crime? Exploring the Effects of Social, Economical, and Spatial Factors on Burglary Rates

Abstract

Space-crime research has primarily focused on crime prevention through environmental design, based on the ideology of defensible space, territoriality, target-hardening factors, and so on. Much of the research has attempted to determine ideological imperatives within the scope of either architectural buildings or urban areas. Few studies can be found dealing with whether there exists a significant influence of spatial configuration or CPTED-based building designs or social and economical reasons for the patterns of residential burglary distribution. This research focuses on three major factors: social factor of building use patterns, economical factor of building values, and two spatial factors, namely, the configurational factor of urban space structures and the design factor of architectural buildings. To examine the effect of the latter factors on burglary distribution patterns, configurational factor of urban space structures will be examined by investigating the configurational factors of intelligibility and integration. Other factors in consideration are road types, the types of buildings that witness high crime rates, and visibility issues. For the effect of building design factors, issues such as the number of entrances, building height, and target-hardening facilities will be examined. Our findings across six areas in a metropolitan city suggest that intelligible areas that can be easily accessible by passersby, and thus, enable more people to enter the area, are deemed to be less vulnerable than less intelligible areas. The urban space structure configures residential burglary patterns and building-use patterns significantly affect burglary rates, followed by road type and design factor issues.