Residential

Residential

A residential urban object is a unit which is generally zoned/designated for dwelling purposes and designed to accommodate housing facilities in which people can live.

Description

Residential areas, which are normally zoned as such by the relevant (city authority or municipality) development plan, are typically classified by providing varying amounts of living accommodation for people, with the amount of units and consequently the number of people living within them depending upon the prescribed density. The amount of land zoned for residential development should be in keeping with the projected population growth figures, as set out in regional strategic development documents (such as Regional Planning Guidelines).

Residential building types

Residential development can encompass a wide variety of structures. For the use of this page, we divided this broad spectrum into three archetypes:

Residence type	Description	Icon
Housing estates	Housing estates consist of detached, semi-detached and/or terraced housing, typically with some level of private open space associated with each unit.
Housing blocks	A housing block is made up of a rectangular layout consisting of connected residential units, often with a private open square contained within it.
High rise housing	High rise housing consists of apartment schemes usually in excess of 6 storey's in height, although apartment schemes of lower height are common.

These archetypes will never completely fit any specific situation, but are used to present the typical issues associated with these archetypical situations, to enable the reader to decide to what degree it applies to his or hers specific situation.

In the text below, any of these three icons will be used whenever a observation is specific to one or more of the above mentioned archetypes.

Functions

Social

Residential areas will generally consist of accommodation units of a number of different types: apartment schemes (medium to high density), detached or semi detached houses (low to medium density), or terraced housing (medium to high density). The character of a residential area can be heavily influenced by the mixture of tenures (owner occupier, private rental, social housing) which are available within them. All of these factors will have an influence on the security of a residential area (some people who rent property within areas may feel less of a sense of ownership or civic pride for that area).

Economic

Residential areas accommodate the people who operate in and utilise the economic systems of the urban area. Additionally, residential areas both enhance a communities’ ability to attract new business, and in the same time provide citizens with one of its most basic needs (housing). As a whole, residential land use is the most valuable urban spatial structure due to its great aggregate value and economic impact for the local economy. Moreover, residential areas foster critical mass which contributes to economic, social and transport (infrastructure) activities. These economic impacts can be estimated with the help of economic tools/techniques.

The most common types of residential security threats (in terms of human intent) are crime related (e.g., domestic burglary, robbery, graffiti, assault, etc.). Crime generates costs in anticipation of crime (e.g. locks, surveillance, etc.), as a consequence of crime (loss of property) and in response to crime (police investigation, legal system, etc.). Indirectly, crime has (amongst others) an impact on, for example, the local real estate value.

Security devices such as locks, closed circuit television, surveillance or improved street lightning have an economic impact (in terms of costs and benefits) which can be considerable. The other way to enhance security is by design, e.g. the designing out approach, or as an aspect of sustainable design which seeks a balanced consideration of social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects in urban design, including fundamental issues such as how affordability can be reconciled with a secure/safe place to live, if safety is a public or private good, and how an imbalance between affluence and deprivation can be prevented.

Mobility

The presence of large numbers of people living within one part of an urban area brings with it a requirement for mobility, in allowing them to move throughout the urban area to take advantage of the various functions on offer within its different parts.

The transportation demand in a network depends on the functions of the different zones in a network. With demand estimation models, the demand can be estimated as the expected number of trips in a certain time period for a certain modality (e.g. car, public transport) between each combination of origin zone and destination zone, depending on the function of the zones. This is also called a trip market. For a residential zone, in the morning there will be many trips going out (e.g. towards work, school), while in the afternoon there will be large demands going into the zone. This should be taken into account for operating traffic management measures or for predicting future/expected traffic flows.

Safety

As residential areas provide the home base for people and their families, safety, in all its forms, is an important function for the perceived quality of these environments. However well as these environments are designed to provide safety, the safety function can be deteriorated by crime. Examples of crime deteriorating safety are:

• 

  Vandalised electricity meters, leading to potentially unsafe situations
  Vandalism: destruction of safety features (such as traffic signs, fencing around dangerous areas or child-safe playgrounds) can lead to dangerous situations and safety hazards.
• Burglary often leads to substantial damages due to the forced entry. Broken windows and doors no longer provide shelter for the cold, wind, rain, which can lead to subsequent safety hazards, such as with electricity and wet surfaces.
• Antisocial behaviour can for instance endanger people by generating street litter, such as broken bottles or reckless driving
• Drug offences can also lead to dangerous litter in the streets, such as used needles.

Security Issues

What makes an area a good place to live?

The level of security is a very important value in the perceived attractiveness of residential area (see illustration).

Crimes most relivant to residential areas, are:

• Burglary
• Vehicle theft
• Robbery
• Assault
• Sexual Assault
• Vandalism
• Graffiti

Of these crimes, burglary is in general regarded as the most relevant to residential areas. Burglary is a security issue that is amongst others affected by the population density. Though generally high population density is associated with high rates of assault and burglary, when corrected for the presence of poverty and lack of vegetation, rates of assaults and burglaries are higher in more sparsely populated neighbourhoods. This means that especially high-density neighbourhoods with little vegetation are prone to these issues. Many traditional designed high-rise residential environments were designed with these qualities, leading to relatively high levels of crime and a tendency for early deterioration.

Measures

• Directing traffic flows can be effective both in preventing criminals to become aware of opportunities and reducing the opportunities for approach of a target. Especially housing blocks and housing estates can benefit from a careful design of traffic flows, effectively reducing the 'visibility' of an area to criminals
• Target hardening can greatly increase the effort needed for criminals to enter the object and thereby reduce the attractiveness of a n object
• Surveillance can be effective against mentioned security issues, but can incur high costs if implemented as dedicated observers, either on location or remote. A more natural form of surveillance is surveillance by the inhabitants (also known as 'natural surveillance'). This can be very effective if the right conditions are met, such as adequate surveillability of the environment (from the own home), social cohesion and a sense of ownership. These factors can all be influenced by the structure of the built environment, but have proven to be most challenging to achieve in high-rise housing .
• Reaction force is needed to make detection measures, such as alarms or surveillance effective
• Target removal such as the removal of coin operated gas and electricity meters in houses or coin operated parking meters
• Facilitating compliance can prevent littering by providing ample waste bins, it can prevent unwanted traffic flows by careful design of the mobility in an area
• Ownership is an important aspect in the prevention of unauthorized entry by creating a clear distinction between public and private space
• Maintenance and designing for easy maintenance can be used as the removal of a crime motivator, as deterioration can be an incentive to crime
• Removal of crime motivator

A combination of these measures is used in the practical approach 'secured by design'.

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