Crime & security
Our research into the effects of planning and design on urban and building safety show very strong correlations between layout and all kinds of crime.
Traditional street patterns are consistently the safest and the most 'modern' hierarchical layouts the worst. Preliminary results linking socio-economic as well as spatial data strongly indicate that rich and poor alike benefit from living in traditional streets.
Inside buildings, including hospitals and schools, we have applied similar thinking to understand and then design against the effects of poor layout on petty crime, assault and bullying.