Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Of special interest on the spatial pattern in Taipei’s urban society, this study focuses on the interaction of nightclubs and criminal behavior by applying geographic information systems. For mapping the two research targets, we collect the archival data and field research to review the changing locations of pubs in Taipei’s history. The criminal data is from official statistics of Taipei City Police Department. In Taipei’s globalizing process, most of the land uses are increasing transformed in a mixture type. Now it is easy to find supermarket, offices, or nightclubs located in a residential area. We find the difficulty to define public area from private area. The complicated urban space causes potential dangerous for people or man-made disasters to damage urban environments. To define urban crime as seeking excitement, self-proofing, or copycat from media, we find the distinctive crimes are mostly located in the mixture of public-private space.

After 1997, the emerge of the global characteristics of Taipei city, such as convenient transportation, multi-national corporation, consumer services, and high population density also reshaped the lifestyles and landscape of the area and in turn increased the intense correlation of nightclubs and criminal behavior. In this paper, we use GIS to study the environmental change and to locate the crime spots and nightclubs in Taipei’s 12 administrative divisions. In this way, we create digital social maps for understanding the correlations of our variables and develop policy suggestion for decision.