Crime Prevention in Urban Design: towards Space Syntax Approach as a Quantitative Analytic Modeling of Qualitative Issue of Security (Based on Spatial Configuration

Abstract: crime is the product of an interaction between the person and the setting. understandingcrime has been the focus of researchers in both design and social fields for a few decades. the empiricalresearch within the design field on the issue of crime has mainly focused on site-specific and situationalfeatures of a place. in the past decade, a considerable body of design research begun to devote to therelationship between the occurrence of criminal events and spatial configuration, which is a significantfactor in human behavior. more recently, there has been developing a method for analyzing space in anurban environment, capturing its quality as being comprehensible and easily navigable named spacesyntax. urban design researchers have employed space syntax technique to analyze the geographicdistribution of crime due to spatial and socio-demographic factors that could influence crime patterns.in this paper, using descriptive and content analysis research, we first demonstrate the position of crimein both traditional social sciences and place-oriented theories. finally, a configurational approach willbe introduced as an analytical method in urban design, which is based on the theoretical foundations,analytical methods and modeling techniques of space syntax.