Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Crime prevention has long been regarded as polices’ responsibility, however, with limited resource the police agency is more and more unbearable to handle the crime in globalized cities today. This paper aims at examining crime prevention in a different approach. Since Newman (1972) proposed the “defensible space” construction as a new way to decrease crime rates, the crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) has been the most popular approach. However, most researches employed this framework implemented either in a smaller scale of location, or in a closed space, the effects of crime prevention in a broad area or large location will be weakened due to the lack of integrated design. In a larger area, crime rate is easily contaminated by improper urban planning and land use. In this paper, by proposing a new strategy, we argue that crime rate will be controlled by well-knit planning of land use. By the tool of Geographical Information System (GIS), the relationship between land use and crime locations in Taipei city is recognized and analyzed in this study. The result identifies a dual pattern coexists in which the higher rate of “property crime” is found at the better off suburb area and the “personal crime” is reported high at the downtown business districts. In contrast to existing studies, this result suggests crimes can be controlled by proper land planning. Moreover, the design of land use should be sensitive to social contexts.