Predicting criminal potentials through analyzing the quality of urban space-Case study: 14 regions of Esfahan

Introduction During recent years، there has been an increasing interest in behavioral science studies. Crime as one of the basic problems of urban societies has long been of a great interest to many fields such as sociology، psychology، urban planning، and etc. However، most studies are mainly restricted to crime prevention techniques instead of focusing on certain effective methods to diagnose hot spots of crime in order to bring criminal cases of crime under certain control. Accordingly this paper aims to present an analytical model to evaluate the quality of space and its use to estimate the probability of crime occurrences. In fact a team of urban designers، criminologists، urban managers and environmental psychologists are needed to utilize the method for predicting the chances of crime occurrences to prevent crime. For this purpose a hierarchical model with five levels is suggested. This model ranks urban spaces based on their quality of life in order to predict the hot spots of crime. These factors were later prioritized using pairwise comparison logic and fuzzy group Analytic Network Process (ANP) method and the relative importance of each factor on achieving environmental security determined. In addition the proposed model has been used to calculate the overall rating of quadratic areas in region 17 of Tehran based on their environmental sustainability. Also، using the calculation results، strategies were suggested separately for each SBD principle in order to reduce urban crime and improve the environmental sustainability of the studied area. Results showed that the area 4 and area 1 have the highest and lowest environmental security rate respectively. The result has important implication for design urban spaces، districts، cities considering the views of domestic urban designers. Theoretical bases The Quality of urban design One of the main concepts of new urban theories focuses on the planning، designing and controlling the factors to upgrade the urban quality of life that can be considered as a basic response to urban problems. The quality of urban life as a complex concept is related to society and urban space in all physical، social، and natural factors. Urban spaces have an important role in the community quality of life. One of the best sources of data for urban managers، planners or designers is use survey that can lead them to envisage the users need in their prospect plan. In order to improve environmental quality and pursue a sustainable use of resources in metropolitan areas، it is necessary to define measures that guide designers and users to have better spaces with better behavior. It is obvious that the environment and users have mutual effect on each other، so these items have their own effect on the space users to foster or facilitate certain types of behavior and hinder or impede others. Environmental security Man’s real environment is men. It is social behavior that conditions human development in any crucial sense of that term. And what is it that molds social behavior — ideas، beliefs، notions، biases، presuppositions. The method of doing an activity is called “behavior”. The human behavior is an outcome from his needs and motivations، the environment potentials، the image of the world which caused by his perception and the meaning of this image (Lang، 1987:58). Crime as the linked part of urban life is linked to the term of human، objects، activities and users perception from space. It’s proved that the environment affects the user’s mentality and the result is being appeared in his behavior. The relationship between the urban environment and human behavior is complex، dynamic and constantly changing. While it is false to assume that a certain environment will cause certain behaviors، the environment nevertheless has the capacity to foster or facilitate certain types of behavior and hinder or impede others. In environmental crime prevention it is important to understand the relationship between design and management in reducing crime and antisocial behavior. Cornish & Clarke (2014) focuses on the importance role of multidisciplinary researches on the subject of crime. Apart from the effect of social and cultural، the result of programming and secure environment of the city and the pattern of the behavior of the citizens and the Improvement and quality of environmental surrounding، the acceptance feature and the effect of the city framework is due to the decrease of city people or the decrease of crimes، is an important and difficult issue is focused on city planning theory. Weisberg et al. (2004) in their research focus on explaining crime through place-based factors as hot spots and the influence of users’ characteristics on space. Environmental criminology is associated with space، design and behavior. The criminologists believe in the fact that environment has undeniable role on the model of crime. As a basic theory crime is outcome of “opportunity، goal، risk and effort”، so controlling each item would be useful to rebate the chance of crime. Urban crime theories which are locative are proposed in two fields: physical factors and social factors. Crime prevention Public safety and security by crime prevention as one of the top priorities of justice system all over the world. Enforcing safety and criminal fairness by tackling the risk factors that cause crime as government tasks is the basis of crime prevention. By the concept of rational choice، situational crime prevention is the method of reducing crime opportunities and make people feel unable to commit crime. The process consists of incrementing crime risks & difficulty and also declining crime achievements. Crime prevention strategies consist of CPTSD (crime prevention trough social development) and CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design). Crime prevention by environmental design isn''t new. Our Ancestors respected this matter in designing their cities and neighborhood. Today we are responsible to design our living environment so that the behaviors improve and this will result an improvement of the quality of life. Discussion This paper critically traces the new integrative method for predicting crime rates through urban studies in the urban district and its use to rank urban spaces in Esfahan. The proposed method consists of defining criteria of urban spaces quality، using FUZZY ANP and TOPSIS to rank the districts and the analyses of outcome data. The steps of this process are: Step 1: Form a committee of experts. Step 2: Identify the factors and sub-factors to be used in the model. Step 3: Structure the hierarchical model based on the factors and sub-factors identified at Step 2. Step 4: Assuming that there is no dependence among the main factors، Form a pairwise comparison matrix to obtain pairwise comparison results of the importance of main success factors toward achieving the overall objective. Step 5: calculating the influence priority super matrix Step 6: In this step، the interdependent priorities of the main success factors are calculated Step 7: In this step، local priorities of the sub success factors are calculated using the pairwise comparison matrices. Step 8: Finally، the overall priorities (global weight) of the sub success factor are calculated by multiplying the local priorities of sub success factors (obtained in Step 7) Step 9: Determining inter organizational critical success factors. Step 10: Rank districts. This method is one of the more practical ways for ranking districts in order to predict the potentiality of crime hot spots.

Crime prevention and Safety is one of the basic necessities of today’s urban life. Besides، urban safety as an applied science in the field of urban design focuses on the relation between space and behavior. Although studying crime in the cities is majorly focused on prevention and punishment، the importance of crime prediction is undeniable. This study argues that qualitative factors of urban design are the best way to determine criminal potentials in different districts. The new proposed hierarchical - network model is consisted with urban and crime theories and is usable to rank crime hotspots before committing crime by their potentiality. Access to crime potential of districts can be used to plan، design and manage urban areas by aim of crime control. For this analytical model 5 levels، include triplet principles of urban quality، 11 criteria and 37 sub-criteria have been used and analyzed through ANP analytical method. As for inner relations، this relation model isn’t linear but as a network. Through the analytical results، the most important index of “triplet indexes of urban space quality” the most important is “structural-functional” issue with importance weight “0. 382”. Applying the model in studied area (14 districts and 5 zones of Esfahan) resulted in the ranked zones which really has invers relation with statistics of reported crime in the same zones. It shows the ascendant process of crime in 5 zones (center، south، east، west and north) has the same sequence of descending process of urban quality in the same 5 zones of Esfahan. Suggestions: What is now needed is a cross-national study involving crime as a behavior influenced by space. These studies can continue with the relational cases of fear of crime، social participation or social identity. Based on the results of this study، some of the suggested strategies for increasing urban quality and thereupon decreasing possibility of crime are as follows: - Considering standard facilities and enough lighting in the streets and passages - Preventing vandalism and repairing or replacing damaged city equipment - Reforming uncontrollable and indefensible spaces - Increasing control and surveillance on urban spaces - Planning flexibility and aggregation in urban spaces - Creating more dynamic and vibrant urban spaces - Enhancing urban safety through increasing surveillance and sense of belonging among citizens.