Towards a Responsible Strategic Planning: Urban Crime Prevention

The technique of strategic planning has been applied to manage various human activities incities. Strategic urban planning is strongly related to the city dwellers, where the main goal is toenhance their life quality and satisfy their needs and requirements (Mirza, 2010). Urban crime is thewell known factor which reduces life quality of city dwellers. Therefore, the important task of crimeprevention is highlighted in strategic planning of many cities all over the world.In environmental criminology it is widely established that the crime is closely related to theurban environment in which it happens. In environmental criminology greater attention is paid tothe places where the crime was committed. As the experience on crime investigations showscriminals are most likely to commit a crime near their living place or on the paths which connectmajor activities places (shopping, leisure etc. places). For instance, as the results of M.Lopez’s andA. van Nes’s (van Nes and Lopez, 2010) research show, most residential burglaries took place inthe most segregated and unconstituted streets that lay within a radius of 2.1 km from a burglar'shome address . Australian institute of criminology resource says that most burglars (77%)travelled away from their home suburb to do their work, travelling an average of five kilometres totheir target (Ratcliffe 2003). These facts prove the hypothesis that the network of committedcrimes’ locations is related to a certain place. Understanding the relation between the place and thecrime can help us analyse, forecast and predict the crime, and therefore, to make the right decisionsin a strategic planning of the city.