Shopping Centre Design, Decline and Crime
| Author | Sam Poyser |
| Published date | 01 May 2005 |
| Date | 01 May 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1350/ijps.7.2.123.65772 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Shopping centre design, decline and crime
Sam Poyser
Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, Ravelin House, Museum
Road, PO1 2QQ, Portsmouth, England; tel: 44+ (0) 239284 3913; email:
sam.poyser@port.ac.uk
Received 24 August 2004: revised 7 September 2004
Sam Poyser
is a research associate in the Insti-
tute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University
of Portsmouth, England. She is currently
engaged in research examining miscarriages of
justice (wrongful convictions) and campaigns for
justice and is contributing to the teaching of
research methods at the Institute. In June 2004
she was awarded the University of Portsmouth,
Vathek Postgraduate Dissertation Prize. This art-
icle is a much-shortened version of her winning
dissertation.
A
BSTRACT
It is now widely accepted that the design of
buildings and their surroundings can influence the
commission of crime and nuisance behaviour
(Garrad, 1999) and that the proper design and
effective use of the built environment can lead to a
reduction in the fear and incidence of crime, and
an improvement in the quality of life (Skogan,
1990a). This article reports on research under-
taken to determine whether architects, designing
shopping centres in the 1960s and late 1990s,
were aware of the link between environmental
design and criminal opportunity. It goes on to
examine what relation that ignorance/awareness
might have to criminal opportunity, nuisance
behaviour, and fear of crime in users. The related
issue of management/maintenance of centres is
also examined. The design of two Portsmouth,
England, shopping centres (the ‘Tricorn’ —
planned and built in the 1960s and ‘Gunwharf
Quays’ — planned and built in the late 1990s)
is compared. The research findings utilising inter-
views, questionnaires and examination of local
newspaper reports suggest that users found the
‘Tricorn’ to be poorly designed, ill maintained, to
attract crime and nuisance behaviour, and to
make them feel unsafe whilst, in contrast, users
felt that ‘Gunwharf Quays’ is well designed and
maintained. Many feel that these factors may be
connected to their feelings of safety, and to what
they observed as low levels of crime and nuisance
behaviour.
Overall, the findings indicate that design and
maintenance are important elements in relation to
levels of crime, nuisance, and fear of crime in
shopping centres. Several recommendations are
made in the light of these findings.
INTRODUCTION
‘The sixties were the cavalier years of the
shopping centre industry . . .’ (Scott, 1989,
p. 6), when concrete, modernist designs
were the fashion and passion of architects. A
priority for architects in that era was to
design, at reasonably low cost, pedestrian-
ised places for consumerism, and to take
shoppers’ cars off the street (Buchanan,
1958), and into adjoining multi-storey car
parks (Poole, 1991). In contrast, today there
is a blurring of the boundar ies between
shopping as ‘work’, and shopping as ‘lei-
sure’, with shopping centres describing
themselves in the language of recreation and
tourism (Miller, Jackson, Thrift, Holbrook,
& Rowlands, 1998). Consequently, archi-
tects have a quite different agenda to follow.
In addition, they are now obliged to con-
sider crime and security issues in their
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 7 Number 2
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 7 No. 2, 2005, pp. 123–136.
© Vathek Publishing,
1461–3557
Page 123
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