Identifying The Relatonship Between Locative Features And Crime Rates Of Residential Quarters By Space Syntax Methodology

The location of a residential quarter indicates its spatial position within the city it belongs. According to the safety-concerned "Street Eye" Theory and Defensible Space Theory, the spatial accessibility and permeability of a residential quarter’s location should be interwinely correlated with its security. Only the qualitative judgements made by several pre-published relevant work have shown that these two theories has "two exactly opposite tendencies" affecting spatial designs. However, theoretical analysis this time reveals that they both put emphases on creating benign "natural survallence" through urging individuals to remain and have activities inside the space, to achieve which they have proposed different approaches focusing "Arrivals" and "Depatures". Obviously the spatial feature of accessibility involves "Arrivals" only while its permeability involves both "Arrivals" and "Departures". Thus the correlation between these locative features of residential quarters and their security degrees still needs to be studied.Based on the points above,50 residential quarters in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province have been analyzed. Their similarities in internal spatial layouts are high. Utilizing Space Syntax methodology to quantitate the locative feature of these residential quarters and examining their correlation with security data authorized by the police department are of pioneering significance domestically. The results of this research prove a significant correlation between residential quarters’ security degrees and their locations within the blocks they belong instead of their locations in the city. This conclusion should be original and valuable for relevant studies conducted in China. Furthermore, as has been predicted, this research has also confirmed that a weak but significant positive correlation exists between residential quarter’s security degree and accessibility, while there is a weak but significant negative one between its security degree and permeability.