THE VALUE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINOLOGY FOR THE DESIGN PROFESSIONS OF ARCHITECTURE, URBAN DESIGN, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, AND PLANNING

This article outlines several principles of Environmental Criminology and demonstrates their application in a case study of a multi-family design proposal in Vancouver, British Columbia. Principles of environmental criminology can be used by architects, urban designers, landscape architects, and planners to reduce the likelihood of crime in specific sites, situations, and settings. Environmental criminology, a field that has developed over the past 30 years, studies the components of the criminal event rather than the characteristics of the criminal. Repeated studies have shown that criminal events can be understood in terms of the normal spatial and temporal patterns of a city in combination with its physical structure and context.