ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on urban design approaches to creating city centres in which people feel safer. Contemporary urban design has broader concerns than simply the physical design of public space, the physical public realm. It is also concerned with what has been termed the socio-cultural public realm – the activities that occur within that space (Oc and Tiesdell 1997). It is therefore intimately concerned with the design and management of public space and the various processes that create city centre landscapes. City centres represent possibly the last significant concentrations of universally accessible, urban public space where people of different classes, races and cultures can meet (Tiesdell and Oc 1998). They are places of social exchange, transactions and interaction between people. Feelings of personal safety are prerequisites for a vital and viable city centre; if a city centre is not perceived to be safe, those with choice will decide not to use it, making it less safe for those with fewer choices. Hence, there is an important social justice dimension to efforts towards making city centres safer. In Britain, the recent Crime and Disorder Act (Home Office 1998) has placed a statutory duty on local authorities and the police to prepare local crime and disorder reduction strategies. Such strategies will inevitably have urban design dimensions (see also previous chapter).
