Geographical Juxtaposition: A New Direction in CPTED

Paul Cozens, Terence Love and Brent Davern
Additional contact information
Paul Cozens: School of Design and the Built Environment, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
Terence Love: Design Out Crime and CPTED Centre, 14 Michael St, Beaconsfield, WA 6162, Australia
Brent Davern: School of Design and the Built Environment, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia

Social Sciences, 2019, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-22

Abstract: This paper explores Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space (1972) concept of geographical juxtaposition (GJ) highlighting a significant lack of research within the criminological literature over the last 50 years. We argue the concept is a key foundation in understanding crime and crime prevention theories and in developing crime prevention strategies. Findings from a systematic review of the literature are presented to illustrate the paucity of research into geographical juxtaposition. We develop and extend the concept of geographical juxtaposition beyond that originally coined by Newman to include all immediate, local, distant, and remote environmental (physical) factors. Additionally, we demonstrate, by reference to practical criminological situations, the significant and extensive role of our revised concept of geographical juxtaposition. In particular, we point to the way that focusing on geographical juxtaposition identifies serious problems in many taken-for-granted assumptions in planning theory and practice. In exploring the concept of geographical juxtaposition, we highlight ten ways it can affect crime risks and six ways using geographical juxtaposition can benefit efforts to apply crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) more successfully when conducting a crime risk assessment. Finally, this paper briefly discusses four new CPTED principles, which emerge from our exploration of geographical juxtaposition. We identify new classes of CPTED methods and new ways of analyzing crime and offer the basis for new criminological theories.

Keywords: Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED); geographical juxtaposition; new ideas; new directions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/9/252/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/9/252/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:8:y:2019:i:9:p:252-:d:263537

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().