ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on previous work documenting the limitations of CPTED and suggesting ways to connect it more closely to crime science and architecture and recent computational approaches including simulated environments. While the earlier material sought to develop CPTED from the top down, starting with the familiar principles of surveillance, defensible space, territoriality etc., this time the aim is to start from the bottom up, identifying a range of conceptual ‘primitives’ from which the higher-level principles can be constructed and/or defined. This is the dimension of science known as ontology. Some of these primitives come from crime science – the applied field of causes and interventions active in the immediate situation leading to criminal events – but this is supplemented by a wider and more generic framework of ecology. Moreover, in order to understand the effects of the built environment and crime preventive changes in its design and management, it is necessary also to understand the human agents who respond to, and modify, that environment, whether as offenders or preventers of crime. Although centring the ontology on the immediate crime situation, the chapter therefore seeks to incorporate the more community-oriented aspects of Second-Generation CPTED and the contextual aspects of architecture and design.
