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 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.

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

From the security point of view, the prior social importance of residential areas is to provide a trusted environment for citizens that enhances communal resilience while reducing vulnerability. The importance of housing is recognised in the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes 'the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate ... housing'.

Resilience-enhancing aspects

Residential land use is hugely important to a citizen's quality of life, and the standard of housing experienced by citizens will have a significant impact on overall health. Housing provides shelter, a basic human need, and privacy. The quality of housing is influenced by its size, amenities, habitability and general liveability. The attractiveness of residential areas and the wider urban environment influences the quality of life of citizens. Those aspects are important from the societal security point of view since they have an impact on resilience, at individual and collective levels, as illustrated by the following examples:

• Residential areas should provide some aspect with which citizens may identify (be it employment or a recreational facility, etc), and offer the services/facilities that they seek. Some people who rent property within areas may feel less of a sense of ownership or permanency/commitment for that area.

• Communities with high levels of 'collective efficacy' – or high levels of cohesion and mutual trust – will be willing to intervene to challenge behaviour in a given setting and stop it from escalating. Communities with low levels of ‘collective efficacy’ (for example areas with a high proportion of young offenders as a result of a churning migrant population with shifting moral values, high levels of poverty and low levels of community cohesion) – will be less willing or able to intervene. On every aspect of life - mental, physical, emotional, social and economic - living in bad housing can hand children a devastating legacy. Studies show that poor housing can lead to a 25% higher risk of experiencing severe ill-health and disability before they reach middle age. It can have a devastating impact on emotional wellbeing. Research shows that homeless children are three to four times more likely to have mental health problems than other children, while bad housing can also lead to youth behavioural problems and offences:

How does bad housing affect children’s chances to make a positive contribution in life?

• Homeless children are more likely to show signs of behavioural problems such as aggression, hyperactivity and impulsivity;
• Poor housing conditions and overcrowding may also contribute to the emergence of problem behaviour;
• Behavioural difficulties in childhood, which may be attributable to or exacerbated by bad housing, can manifest themselves in offending behaviour later in life. In the UK, nearly half of male remand young offenders and 42 per cent of female sentenced young offenders have experienced homelessness).

Hazard-reducing aspects

• Quality of residency also has criminological impact in that it can contribute to preventing - or creating - hazard. Evidence suggests that nearly half of young offenders have experienced homelessness as a child, and the roots of offending behaviour may well be traceable to problems that emerge when children grow up in such conditions:

• Research has also shown that a wide range of features of the physical environment at the street block and neighborhood levels have proven relevant to predicting crime rates and crime-related outcomes, such as fear of crime and neighborhood confidence, that among other things relate to the preception of hazard.

In terms of practical methods, crime prevention by design - such as for example "crime prevention through environmental design" (CPTED) - is of priority in this field, although it also involves some measures directed at vulnerabilty reduction rather than reduction of hazard.

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. Another 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. In general, these measures demand larger investments than traditional security measures, but at the same time they are able to avoid future costs due to the long-term prevention of crime.

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.

Furthermore, in order to prevent crime, the mobility network should be designed such that there are as little spaces as possible that cannot be seen easily by the public. Crime and anti-social behaviour are more likely to occur if criminals can operate, including travelling to and from the location, without fear of being seen; and if all sides of buildings and all parts of spaces are not overlooked by surrounding users or passers-by .

cul-de-sacs

Residential areas can benefit from a design that minimises transit through the area, as crime is positively related to the amount of traffic through an area and residential areas only need good entry and exit points and can function perfectly well as cul-de-sacs. Homes in cul-de-sacs can be highly secure, but the cul-de-sac should be short and straight (to allow visibility from one end to the other) and should not be joined by networks of footpaths that are irregularly used but likely to foster criminal activity . It should be borne in mind however that while cul-de-sacs can be beneficial from a crime-reduction perspective, many urban planners and designers do not favour their use, as they can create an introverted layout which fails to integrate with the surroundings.

Safety

Safety in all its forms, is an important function for the perceived quality of these environments. The common presence of children in residential areas further elevate the required safety standards. 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

Crimes most relevant 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. For high-rise housing this is less effective due the high visibility of the structure.
• 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 .
• Intervention 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 motivators ensures the separation of perpetrators , their incentives and opportunities, Such as the prevention of blank, reachable and highly visible walls to prevent graffiti.

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