Study on the Correlation of the Street Network Pattern and Vehicle Crime －Case Studies on a City in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Che-cheng Lin, 林哲正
• Other Authors: Ming-jen Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/77573560519148489245

碩士 === 逢甲大學 === 建築所 === 95 === Following economic prosperity and the development of urbanization, the living environment has improved though the number of criminal incidents has drastically increased in recent years in Taiwan. Among all different crime types, vehicle crime has been ranked one of the highest groups of crime. The occurrence of this type of crime has not diminished and therefore needs to be scrutinized. Most research on vehicular crime prevention focus on target hardening, such as good locks, or the instalment of alarms, and fewer research projects have studied the space-time situation and its relation to vehicle crime. This research proposes to study the correlation between the spatial configuration of street network patterns in commercial areas and vehicle crime, including burglary of vehicles and burglary from vehicles occurring in those areas, and intends to identify those vulnerable spatial features that contribute to vehicle offences. Factors studied in this research include street land use patterns, temporal patterns, accessibility (both pedestrian and vehicular flow), inter-visibility, lighting, etc. It is hoped that through this research safer living environment patterns can be provided. The analytical tool this research employs is the Space Syntax method. After collecting crime data of all different vehicle crimes from a local police station, an on-site investigation of the venue of each vehicle crime offence is carried out and finally a most proximity map of vehicular crime distribution is constructed. Multi-variant statistical analysis is carried out for the detailed study of this research in order to clarify the relationship between space and crime. Though crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) cannot stop and resolve the space-crime problem, it is a useful tactic to deter criminal behaviour and this tactic is particularly useful for preventing domestic burglaries in residential areas. Although the incidences of vehicle crime have reached one of the highest proportions among all types of crime very few research projects have tackled this issue and very limited information on crime prevention strategies for vehicle crime has been offered to the public. Therefore, this research aims to deal with the space-crime problem for vehicle offences occurring in commercial areas, and will provide a theoretical model to uncover the situational vulnerability for vehicle crime. Furthermore, the crime prevention strategies proposed in this research will be of interest to related disciplines and will become a useful reference for them. From this detailed study, situational vulnerability does exhibit an influence on vehicle crime patterns, both environmental factors mentioned above and temporal factors show various degrees of influence on this type of crime. Clearly, environmental features, such as street land use type, degrees of inter-visibility, degrees of lighting, and degrees of accessibility for both pedestrians and vehicles, all demonstrate different levels of influence on vehicular crime vulnerability. One of the most intriguing findings of this study is that it examines and confirms that only if there is strong inter-visibility in day time and a high degree of street lighting at night can the degrees of accessibility of street network patterns, i.e. higher accessible commercial streets with more pedestrian and vehicular flow, play a positive role to deter the occurrence of vehicle crime. However, when there is a lack of inter-visibility or street lighting we can observe more vehicle crime in the higher accessible streets when pedestrian observance is low and more vehicles, i.e. more targets, are parked.