Planning for crime reduction: Analysis of social, economic, and physical variables on United States cities

The major hypothesis for this study is that the physical characteristics of cities make a significant contribution in the variation of the dependent variable (Part I crimes---number of reported violent offenses) that is statistically over and above the contribution made by the social and economic variables. Cities are examined for correlations between physical attributes, population densities, and other variables. According to the literature, residents' perceptions of safety are connected to lack of community cohesion characteristics, withdrawal of people within and from their own neighborhoods due to poorly configured physical design with respect to promote surveillance---and due to decreases in informal social contacts (lack of civic engagement, low social capital, and other kinds of alienation).;A survey and review of the literature as well as public policy preferences, have disclosed and proposed the need for more study to reduce crime. Cities are selected from within the top most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S. according to the Bureau of the Census in 2000, and the data sets are the FBI-UCR and the Bureau of the Census. Statistical analyses identify correlations between variables and groups of variables that might be used for future policing considerations. The physical structure of cities and its relationship to types of crime (empirical study) and fear of crime among residents (literature study) are included in this research, since both are stated to play an important role in promoting or retarding crime according to principles of defensible space, broken windows, CPTED, and "eyes on the street." Comprehensive sets of many indicators are stated in the literature, suggesting that physical components of urban environments do correlate with crime data in a significant manner. The findings in this study conclude that the physical variables make a significant contribution to the variation in the overall crime rate. Additionally, these results suggest that policing strategies and improvements in physical plans, urban design settings, and architecture can be successfully modified to reduce crime.