Not Entertainment

[kandrathe]

Architectural choices appear to have a major impact on crime by encouraging or discouraging various types of community development. The big self-contained 10 story apartment blocks that characterize the projects (and not coincidentally, the USSR) are a major cause of deterioration. They prevent foot traffic, make policing very difficult, and encourage insular, gang-friendly communities. They create badly enforced commons, or, in your terms, urine and vomit in the stairwells and broken elevators.

If the projects had been built differently, they might not have ended up so badly. I don't think they really understood that at the time. In retrospect, however, the pattern seems clear.

Yeah, I wasn't really talking about "the projects" like tenement cell blocks. Mostly, on a given block they would tear down about a dozen strip bars, pawn shops, and adult establishments. There were some run down seedy rooms for rent upstairs as well, that mostly dealt in another illicit trade. Managed and legally operated, such as in Amsterdam, or Las Vegas it maybe works, but this type of illegal free for all becomes a cesspool of human misery. It was Guliani's success perhaps that inspired the changes here, but more the broken windows theories than merely the "get tough" zero-tolerance attitude. Although, you need both carrots and sticks. But, I feel we've gone too far. In the USA, we have far too many people incarcerated.