Behaviour analysis of the urban environment : linking city design to crime against tourists

With tourism emerging as the largest global industry, a number of researchers are raising concerns over visitor safety. While Western countries (European, North American, Australia) issue travel alerts that warn tourists of possible acts of terrorism, statistically tourists are much more likely to be victimized by everyday criminal activity. Research on tourist crime victimization has consistently shown a significant positive correlation between the increased presence of tourists and the amount of reported crime. There are three major theoretical explanations for this relationship: Psychographic (or tourist personality); change in Routine Activities (or tourist behaviours); and, Hot Spot (or tourist environments). Hot Spot research has been studied at various geographical levels: specific sites, street, block, neighbourhood and city level. This research explores city level design and its relationship to crime. Tourist settings are designed to manage the movement of large numbers of strangers in an easy and efficient manner. This design, however, includes characteristics that have been found to increase neighbourhood crime in local communities. These characteristics can be classified under Prospect, Refuge and Escape. Prospect describes environmental opportunities for criminals to view and assess the potential of a situation for successful completion of criminal behaviour. Refuge refers to the characteristics of the crime scene that allows the criminal to hide the actual commission of the crime. The third factor, Escape, describes the ease with which criminals can blend back into the community once the crime has been committed. In this study a comparative analysis was completed between three tourist towns and three non-tourist control towns. The results found that tourist towns had a higher percentage of arterial roads to all roads (good prospect, quick escape) and that the percentage of streets with public space was four times as high (good prospect, good refuge, good escape). The implication for this is that tourist environments were designed for ready access of strangers and an increased tolerance of strangers in the community by hosts: both predictors of criminal behaviour. Future research should focus on designing out tourist crime victimization by applying Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED).