Crime Prevention in Urban Design: towards Space Syntax Approach as a Quantitative Analytic Modeling of Qualitative Issue of Security (Based on Spatial Configuration)

Crime is the product of an interaction between the person and the setting. Understanding crime has been the focus of researchers in both design and social fields for a few decades. The empirical research within the design field on the issue of crime has mainly focused on site-specific and situational features of a place. In the past decade, a considerable body of design research begun to devote to the relationship between the occurrence of criminal events and spatial configuration, which is a significant factor in human behavior. More recently, there has been developing a method for analyzing space in an urban environment, capturing its quality as being comprehensible and easily navigable named Space Syntax. Urban design researchers have employed space syntax technique to analyze the geographic distribution of crime due to spatial and socio-demographic factors that could influence crime patterns. In this paper, using descriptive and content analysis research, we first demonstrate the position of crime in both traditional social sciences and place-oriented theories. Finally, a configurational approach will be introduced as an analytical method in urban design, which is based on the theoretical foundations, analytical methods and modeling techniques of space syntax.