Planning, crime and urban sustainability

Globally, the environmental movement has played a pivotal role in influencing the development of sustainability. Increasingly, urban sustainability is seen as a new large-scale vision to guide the planning agenda for the twenty-first century. However, a review of the literature clearly indicates that crime and fear of crime can seriously undermine the broader aims of urban sustainability. Furthermore, analysts tend to focus on levels of recorded crime, largely ignoring the crucial and arguably more important dimension of citizens' fear of crime and their perceptions of their local environment. This paper provides recommendations for integrating crime and fear of crime within urban sustainability. It also proposes that 'designing out crime' represents a vital tool for assisting in the development of urban sustainability.