| Abstract: | Strong research evidence implicates housing design as a powerful factor in crimino-genesis during the formative years of early childhood. Detailed and large-scale investigations have revealed 38 design and layout variables that favour existing criminals and breed many new ones by impeding normal child-rearing practices. The average age of criminals has progressively decreased and crimes have become more sadistic. It is well established that changing the deleterious designs responsible for social breakdown can halt and reverse the decay of local societies. The police report that the relevant type of design improvement allows natural community formation to replace the pre-existing ethos of anonymity and alienation, so that crime may virtually cease, indeed, in some cases, completely so. Young children are then integrated into the community and do not grow up delinquent. This is criminal prevention, as opposed to crime prevention, which allows delinquency to develop and then tries to control its results. This paper discusses the specific design variables that are influential; the results obtained by changing them in ten estates; the reasons why government (apart from former British Prime Minister Thatcher) turns a blind eye to the design solution to crime; and the evidence for thinking that the escalating urban crisis is close to the sort of sudden change postulated by catastrophe theory. |
