Thames Gateway Crime and Design Project

A c r o n y m s 3 0 2 Executive Summary This study forms part of the Thames Gateway London Partnership (TGLP) Crime and Design Project. The Crime and Design Project aims at developing a set of principles, a 'theme guide', that can inform the development of safe and attractive communities as a goal of regeneration. The links between crime, urban design and the fabric of the built environment are complex and often very local in nature. This study has been commissioned to provide a timely understanding of the broader links between crime and the social and physical environment in the Thames Gateway region. On the basis of theoretical considerations, we have sought to identify secondary data, within the resources of the study, that either measure or could be effective proxies for those social and physical environment variables which are considered to reduce or hinder the development of social cohesion. In all, 30 variables were integrated at Census Output Area (OA) level. These were then studied in relation to crime rates for residential burglary and street crime. The analysis started with Spearman rank correlations calculated for both residential burglary rates and street crime rates against the 30 modelling variables (Table 3, p17). For each crime type, those variables with a correlation coefficient of >=+0.2 or <=-0.2 were carried forward to an exploratory factor analysis. This was considered necessary as too many variables are internally correlated. The exploratory factor analysis was carried out iteratively on the groups of variables for each crime type to weed out those variables which had low factor scores across all dimensions. In this way five dimensions were identified for each crime type and formed the basis for grouping sets of variables into normalised indices. The interpretation of these dimensions is given in Table 5 on page 19. Multiple regression of each crime type against their relevant indices was carried out. Both models are statistically significant with adjusted R 2 =0.258 for residential and adjusted R 2 =0.636 for street crime. The regression equations are as follows: where B 1 to B 5 are indices for deprivation/exclusion, stability/low qualifications, immigrants/ minorities, central place and residential density respectively; and where S 1 to S 5 are indices for immigrants/minorities, stability/low qualifications, central place, deprivation/exclusion and residential density respectively. A mapping of high positive residuals (worse than expected) and low negative residuals (better than expected) in Figure …