Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

Seoul is a very safe city in comparison to other ones of this size. However, it doesn’t mean that Seoul (or Korea) is free of crime and that there aren’t any improvements possible. Nowadays the biggest problem is the rise of sexual offences and harassment of women on streets.

In the last decade the number of reported incidents related to sexual harassment doubled. Besides stronger punishment for sexual offenders, Seoul also offers the service to accompany women on their way back home at night. Police can’t be everywhere and guard every women, thus it’s necessary to find other ways to reduce crimes and to create an even safer city.

In 2012 Seoul launched a program to prevent crimes through environmental design. This project is also called “Root out Crime by Design” and it is deeply embedded with urban planning. The result of this program is summarized in guidelines, which I’ll try to introduce. You’ll see how this concept was tailored to Seoul and where you are able to find the program in full effect.

 

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Concept

CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) is urgently needed in places with a high potential for crimes. According to the report, these places look like this:

You can fairly well understand why such areas can be dangerous: They have narrow and (at night) dark streets. Stores (if there are any) close at night and there’s nobody who could help in an emergency. Such an area is for example in Mapo-Gu Yeomni-dong (northwest of Gongdeok Station). It became the first pilot project area for Seoul’s CPTED guidelines.

Measures of CPTED

There are many ways to improve the urban environment. I’ll concentrate on the measures, which are most important for Korea. Let’s begin with street lights. Usually street lights only illuminate streets. However, it’s more important that pedestrian have light. So additional lights for the sidewalks have to be installed:

However, as I showed before, most of the crimes don’t happen on main-streets. They are all these side-alleys  that  lack sufficient lighting. To improve these streets, the following changes are necessary:

An area might be confusing so a map can be very helpful. A paragraph in the guidelines is also better visibility of house addresses and information of nearby locations. That helps to orientate better. The yellow color of the street light poles lets the distance feel shorter. If you know where you are and the way feels short, you may be less scared.

Unused blind alleys can be hideouts for rapists, thieves or murderers and so they should be closed with gates:

Burglar can use gas pipes to get into apartments of the upper floors. They have to be made inaccessible. Gated windows might let you feel like in a prison but if you live on the first floor, it may be unavoidable.

There are also other measures like front doors with high safety-standards and security facilities in each neighborhood. Safer means also more beautiful:

There aren’t any safety measure in Korea without CCTV. Cameras are going to be installed in crime hot spots (or everywhere?). Last week I saw in the news that there are two types of CCTV: 1. Surveillance cameras, here someone watches the cameras almost 24/7; 2. black-box cameras which keep the recordings for a certain time and then automatically delete it. So while at the first type, someone should see the crime, the second type will be used after incidents to find out what happened. The second option is 70% cheaper and almost as effective as surveillance cameras.

Something that I have already in my neighborhood are emergency bells at some street light poles. From my understanding the bell directly alarms the police. Maybe the bell also starts a loud noise to get attention from people living close-by.

 

Social Pillar

Although it is mainly about urban design, the project also included some community work. The goal in Mapo-Gu was to strengthen the social cohesion. Education about crime prevention was done and some residents had received more responsibilities but as far as I understood it isn’t a neighborhood patrol.

 

Conclusion

All of these measures of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design make sense and they aren’t any large changes in the urban landscape. Pedestrians can feel more comfortable. My personal opinion is that the built environment can only to a certain degree decrease crime. Community work is great but it’s more important to work on the fundamental problems in the society. A well-working welfare system is important to reduce the gap between rich and the poor. This may sound very naive but at least fighting poverty would help. Until then we have to prepare our cities to deal with crimes before they can occur.

 

 

Resources and Related Links: Root out Crime by Design | Research on CPTED in Korea | CPTED Guidelines