CPTED is gaining an increasing influence on parking lot design around the world. (CPTED is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and is pronounced "sep-ted"). For example, Auckland and other cities in New Zealand are basing their CARPARK+ Safer Parking initiative on CPTED.
The Canada-based International CPTED Association (ICA) defines CPTED as a multi-disciplinary approach to deterring criminal behavior through environmental design. According to ICA, CPTED strategies rely upon the ability to influence offender decisions that precede criminal acts by affecting the built, social and administrative environment.
When I first heard about CPTED, I assumed it was simply about making car parks brighter, with less hiding spaces for criminals and more CCTV cameras. Barry Davidson, Executive Director for ICA, assured me that CPTED is much more. Lighting, for example, is an important aspect of CPTED, but it is not as simple as I thought.
"We look at lighting very carefully, on a human scale," Davidson says, pointing out that the psychology of the design is a critical component of CPTED, intended to influence the behavior of criminals, but also improve the comfort of the car park patrons. "For example, most people are comfortable if they can identify someone walking towards them from 20-30 feet away. However, a lot of lighting is set so high that everything is in shadow, so you could see a body coming toward you but you don't have any kind of comfort level because you cannot identify them."
Davidson says the type of lighting can be a vital factor, in relation to a specific environment.
"In an inner city, high crime area, for example, we might use high-pressure sodium or some other type of light that washes out the color of skin," he explains. "Needle users can't see a vein, so they are not going to go there to shoot up. We have used that approach quite successfully."
With car parks constantly portrayed as dark and dangerous scenes of the crime in the media, CPTED could go a long way toward changing that perception.
This new design is interesting, hopefully I am very pleased to begin to implement and thereby prevent crime; great excellent article.
Posted by: tinea capitis | 07 May 2010 at 10:21 AM