Creating Defensible Space

by HUD USER

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research
Creating Defensible Space

Creating Defensible Space
by Oscar Newman
Institute for Community Design Analysis
Contractor:
Center for Urban Policy Research
Rutgers University
Contract No. DU100C000005967
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research
April 1996

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

FOREWORD

The appearance of Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space in 1972 signaled the establishment of a new
criminological subdiscipline that has come to be called by many “Crime Prevention Through Envi
ronmental Design” or CPTED. Over the years, Mr. Newman’s ideas have proven to have such signifi
cant merit in helping the Nation’s citizens reclaim their urban neighborhoods that we at HUD’s
Office of Policy Development and Research asked him to prepare a casebook to assist public and pri
vate organizations with the implementation of Defensible Space theory. Information about this pro
cess is presented for three distinct venues: in an older, small, private urban community; in an existing
public housing community; and in the context of dispersing public housing throughout a small city.
This monograph is very special because it draws directly from Mr. Newman’s experience as a con
sulting architect. Indeed, we asked the author to share with us both his perspective on creating viable
change and his personal observations on key lessons learned.
By publishing Creating Defensible Space, PD&R is pleased to be part of the continuing growth and
evolution of Defensible Space as both a criminological concept and a proven strategy for enhancing
our Nation’s quality of urban life.
Michael A. Stegman
Assistant Secretary for
Policy Development and Research
iii

CONTENTS
■ ILLUSTRATIONS ..................................................................... ix

■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................ xiii

■ INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1

What this book is about and who it is for .......................................................................................... 4
Rationale for selecting the three case studies..................................................................................... 4
Case Study One: The Five Oaks community in Dayton, Ohio .......................................................... 5
Case Study Two: The Clason Point project, South Bronx, New York City ....................................... 5
Case Study Three: Dispersing public housing in Yonkers, New York ............................................... 6
Presentation format............................................................................................................................. 7
■ Chapter I: Defensible Space Principles ........................................ 9

The concept ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Evolution of the concept..................................................................................................................... 9
The private streets of St. Louis......................................................................................................... 13
The effect of housing form on residents’ ability to control areas .................................................... 14
Summary of the effect of building type on behavior ....................................................................... 17
The effect of building type on residents’ control of streets.............................................................. 18
Social factors and their interaction with the physical ...................................................................... 23
v

Creating Defensible Space
The suitability of building types to lifestyle groups ........................................................................ 27
Factors influencing crime and instability......................................................................................... 28
■ Chapter II: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio ............... 31

Initiating the process ........................................................................................................................ 37
Initial presentations to city staff and the community....................................................................... 38
Community participation in designing mini-neighborhoods ........................................................... 43
Traffic studies ................................................................................................................................... 46
Description of the Five Oaks mini-neighborhood plan.................................................................... 46
The alley problem in Dayton............................................................................................................ 51
Allied measures for stabilizing the community ............................................................................... 51
Evaluation of the modifications ....................................................................................................... 55
Limits to the application of the mini-neighborhood concept........................................................... 59
■ Chapter III: The Clason Point Experiment ..................................... 65

Redefinition of grounds ................................................................................................................... 69
Resurfacing of buildings .................................................................................................................. 71
Redevelopment of the central area ................................................................................................... 72
Effectiveness of the modifications ................................................................................................... 74
Learning from experience ................................................................................................................ 78
vi

Table of Contents
■ Chapter IV: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers ........ 81

Design principles.............................................................................................................................. 86
Problems in controlling the design process...................................................................................... 92
Selection of residents ....................................................................................................................... 97
Training of residents ........................................................................................................................ 97
Results .............................................................................................................................................. 99
Evaluation....................................................................................................................................... 101
■ REFERENCES..................................................................... 109

■ Addendum A: Defensible Space Guidelines Used in Yonkers RFP .......... 113

Background..................................................................................................................................... 113
Definitions ..................................................................................................................................... 114
Selection of proposals .................................................................................................................... 115
Zoning ............................................................................................................................................ 115
Design criteria ................................................................................................................................ 115
Selection of proposals .................................................................................................................... 117
Proposal evaluation criteria .......................................................................................................... 118
■ Addendum B: Tenant Training Course ........................................ 121

Tenant relocation ............................................................................................................................ 121
Home maintenance ......................................................................................................................... 121
vii

Creating Defensible Space
Interpersonal relations ............................................................................................................... 122
Safety/security ........................................................................................................................... 122
Community resources ............................................................................................................... 123
viii

ILLUSTRATIONS
■ Chapter I: Defensible Space Principles
Figure I–1: Overall view of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis...................................................................... 10
Figure I–2: The architect’s vision of how the 3d floor communal corridor
in Pruitt-Igoe would be used ....................................................................................... 10
Figure I–3: The actual 3d floor communal corridor of Pruitt-Igoe ............................................... 11
Figure I–4: Vandalism in Pruitt-Igoe ............................................................................................. 11
Figure I–5: Pruitt-Igoe in the process of being torn down............................................................. 12
Figure I–6: Carr Square Village ..................................................................................................... 12
Figure I–7: Graph of increase in crime with building height ........................................................ 13
Figure I–8: Aerial view of typical closed streets in St. Louis ....................................................... 14
Figure I–9: Single-family houses and the nature of spaces ........................................................... 15
Figure I–10: Walkup buildings and the nature of spaces ................................................................. 16
Figure I–11: The elevator highrise and the nature of spaces ........................................................... 17
Figure I–12: A four-city-block row-house development.................................................................. 18
Figure I–13: A four-city-block garden apartment development ...................................................... 19
Figure I–14: A four-city-block highrise development...................................................................... 20
Figure I–15: A highrise and a walkup built at the same density ...................................................... 21
Figure I–16: Comparison of two walkups subdivided differently ................................................... 22
ix

Creating Defensible Space
Figure I–17: Crime rates by social and physical variables .............................................................. 23
Figure I–18: Variations in crime rate by socioeconomic groups ..................................................... 26
■ Chapter II: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
Figure II–1: Map locating Five Oaks and downtown Dayton ........................................................ 31
Figure II–2: Typical street in Five Oaks ......................................................................................... 32
Figure II–3: Deteriorated two-story walkup in Five Oaks ............................................................. 34
Figure II–4: Street in Five Oaks with various building types ........................................................ 34
Figure II–5: Map of Five Oaks’ internal streets and boundaries .................................................... 35
Figure II–6: Map of Five Oaks showing percent of renters ........................................................... 36
Figure II–7: Map of Five Oaks showing percent of African-American renters .................................. 36
Figure II–8: Map of Five Oaks showing percent of vacancies ....................................................... 37
Figure II–9: Greek cross plan for ideal mini-neighborhood .......................................................... 43
Figure II–10: Overly large cul-de-sac layout ................................................................................... 44
Figure II–11: Schematic showing ideal access to mini-neighborhoods........................................... 45
Figure II–12: Mini-neighborhood boundaries of Five Oaks ............................................................ 46
Figure II–13: Mini-neighborhood plan for Five Oaks showing location
of gates and entries into mini-neighborhoods ........................................................... 47
Figure II–14: Hammerhead turn at end of street .............................................................................. 48
Figure II–15: Proposed portal markers for mini-neighborhoods ..................................................... 48
Figure II–16: Actual position of portals as installed ........................................................................ 49
Figure II–17: Proposed gates defining mini-neighborhoods............................................................ 49
x

Illustrations
Figure II–18: Gates as actually installed .......................................................................................... 50
Figure II–19: Gates across the rear alleys ........................................................................................ 51
Figure II–20: Residents making improvements to their homes ....................................................... 54
Figure II–21: Renter and homeowner children playing together ..................................................... 56
■ Chapter III: The Clason Point Experiment

Figure III–1: Clason Point from street before modifications ......................................................... 66
Figure III–2: Interior grounds before modifications ...................................................................... 67
Figure III–3: Composite of fear maps produced by residents........................................................ 68
Figure III–4: Six-foot fencing defines collective rear yards .......................................................... 69
Figure III–5: Collective front yards defined by the new curbing................................................... 69
Figure III–6: Vandalized tiles and mailboxes in a highrise............................................................ 70
Figure III–7: Small play nodes ...................................................................................................... 70
Figure III–8: Wall of sample surfaces ............................................................................................ 71
Figure III–9: The central area before modifications ...................................................................... 72
Figure III–10: Plan for the conversion of the central area ............................................................... 73
Figure III–11: The central area as modified ..................................................................................... 73
Figure III–12: Revised plan of Clason Point.................................................................................... 74
Figure III–13: Internal walk at Clason Point before modifications ................................................. 75
Figure III–14: Internal walk after modifications .............................................................................. 75
Figure III–15: Before and after photographs of Clason Point ......................................................... 76
Figure III–16: Residents’ response to 6-foot fencing....................................................................... 77
xi

Creating Defensible Space
Figure III–17: Play node for young children ................................................................................... 79
Figure III–18: Aerial view of a small portion of Clason Point ........................................................ 79
■ Chapter IV: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers, NY

Figure IV–1: Map showing concentration of public housing ........................................................ 81
Figure IV–2: The School Street project in Yonkers ....................................................................... 82
Figure IV–3: Map locating Yonkers relative to New York City ..................................................... 82
Figure IV–4: Aerial view of east Yonkers ...................................................................................... 83
Figure IV–5: The Schlobohm project in Yonkers ........................................................................... 83
Figure IV–6: The Mulford Gardens project in Yonkers ................................................................. 84
Figure IV–7: Typical site plan for a 12-unit site ............................................................................ 85
Figure IV–8: Typical site plan for a 24-unit site ............................................................................ 86
Figure IV–9: Typical site plan for a 48-unit site ............................................................................ 88
Figure IV–10: Sketch of a group of row-house units ....................................................................... 88
Figure IV–11: Fencing-off of the rear yards in Yonkers .................................................................. 89
Figure IV–12: Typical garbage dumpster serving public housing ................................................... 90
Figure IV–13: Individual garbage cans along the walks .................................................................. 90
Figure IV–14: Completed scattered-site units in Yonkers ................................................................ 92
Figure IV–15: Residents’ initial improvements to front yards ....................................................... 100
Figure IV–16: Residents’ later improvements to front yards ......................................................... 100
Figure IV–17: Residents’ later improvements to rear yards........................................................... 101
xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Firstly, I wish to thank Henry Cisneros, the Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, for his personal support and encouragement in having
me prepare these case studies. Early in his administration, he recognized
the importance of our work to housing authorities and cities across the
country and prepared his own essay entitled: Defensible Space, Reducing
Crime and Creating Community. The publication has received wide
acclaim and distribution. He followed this by having me conduct a series
of seminars for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) personnel and his key staff and Assistant Secretaries to explore
how Defensible Space technology could be utilized in various HUD
programs.
Michael Stegman, HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Policy Development
and Research, initially suggested the idea for the three case studies. He
then had me meet with Margery Turner, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Research, Evaluation, and Monitoring and with Dr. Hal Holzman to
define the scope of the work.
Hal Holzman served as HUD’s Project Officer, but more importantly, as
my mentor and muse during the entire writing effort, he encouraged me
to record experiences and speak to issues I would have otherwise hesi
tated addressing.
In Dayton, Ray Reynolds, the city’s former director of urban develop
ment (now planning director for the city of Hollywood, California) bore
the full responsibility of seeing the Dayton project through from start to
finish. I describe his role in my discussion of Five Oaks. Suffice it to say,
the project would not have been realized without his efforts. Others who
were germane to the success of the Five Oaks project were: Jaruth
Durham-Jefferson, superintendent of police, who brought me to Dayton
and helped me at every stage; and Patrick Donnelly, Karen DeMasi, and
Bernice Ganble, all residents of the community and professionals in their
own right, who served to coordinate community participation during the
xiii

Creating Defensible Space
planning of the project and provided insights that helped me define the
plan and write the case study.
In Yonkers, Pete Smith, the director of the Yonkers Municipal Housing
Authority, was my second conscience through my entire 8 years of
working there. His role was difficult; as a long-time Yonkers resident,
he knew everyone and identified with their concerns and resistance, but
as executive director of the housing authority, he also identified with
public housing residents and their plight in segregated highrise projects.
He knew that what we were planning would help all public housing resi
dents and would not be the destabilizing force everyone in the commu
nity feared. Chief of police Robert Olson (now in Minneapolis) was
helpful in calming the community’s nerves during the process, provided
a police presence when it was needed, and had his men bring the com
munity and public housing teenagers together when tempers flared.
Clason Point in the Bronx, New York, was our first effort in modifying
public housing projects using the Defensible Space theory. Even though
housing authority management was skeptical, two men took to the idea,
opened doors, and provided insights and assistance that gave access to
data and to sites for experimentation. They were Sam Granville, director
of management, and Bernie Moses, director of maintenance, both now
retired.
Within our offices, Joanna King, who has served as our institute’s
administrator and my trusted editor for 20 years, continued her critical
work in helping me produce this book. Allen Christianson, architect, pre-
pared the final illustrations from my sketches, as he has in my previous
books.
Oscar Newman
Hensonville, New York
April 1996
xiv

Defensible Space Principles

C H A P T E R
ONE

■ The concept
All Defensible Space programs have a common purpose: They restruc
ture the physical layout of communities to allow residents to control the
areas around their homes. This includes the streets and grounds outside
their buildings and the lobbies and corridors within them. The programs
help people preserve those areas in which they can realize their com
monly held values and lifestyles.
Defensible Space relies on self-help rather than on government interven
tion, and so it is not vulnerable to government’s withdrawal of support.
It depends on resident involvement to reduce crime and remove the pres
ence of criminals. It has the ability to bring people of different incomes
and race together in a mutually beneficial union. For low-income people,
Defensible Space can provide an introduction to the benefits of main-
stream life and an opportunity to see how their own actions can better
the world around them and lead to upward mobility.
Over the past 25 years, our institute has been using Defensible Space
technology to enable residents to take control of their neighborhoods, to
reduce crime, and to stimulate private reinvestment. We have been able
to do this while maintaining racial and economic integration. The pro
cess has also produced inexpensive ways to create housing for the poor,
often without government assistance. In this chapter, I will briefly
explain the origins and principles of Defensible Space and introduce
the reader to the results of our various research projects.
■ Evolution of the concept: Pruitt-Igoe and Carr Square
Village
The Defensible Space concept evolved about 30 years ago when, as a
teacher at Washington University in St. Louis, I was able to witness the
newly constructed 2,740-unit public housing highrise development,
Pruitt-Igoe, go to ruin. The project was designed by one of the country’s
9

Creating Defensible Space
most eminent architects and
was hailed as the new enlight
enment. It followed the plan
ning principles of Le
Corbusier and the Interna
tional Congress of Modern
Architects. Even though the
density was not very high
(50 units to the acre), residents
were raised into the air in
11-story buildings. The idea
was to keep the grounds and
the first floor free for commu-
Figure I–1:
nity activity. “A river of trees” was to flow under the buildings. Each
Overall view of Pruitt-Igoe,
building was given communal corridors on every third floor to house a

a 2,740-unit public

housing project laundry, a communal room, and a garbage room that contained a garbage

constructed in St. Louis in
chute.

the 1960s.

Occupied by single-parent, welfare families, the design proved a disas
ter. Because all the grounds were common and disassociated from the
units, residents could not iden
tify with them. The areas
proved unsafe. The river of
trees soon became a sewer of
glass and garbage. The mail-
boxes on the ground floor were
vandalized. The corridors, lob
bies, elevators, and stairs were
dangerous places to walk. They
became covered with graffiti
and littered with garbage and
human waste.
The elevators, laundry, and
community rooms were vandal-
Figure I–2:

The architect’s vision of
ized, and garbage was stacked high around the choked garbage chutes.

how the 3d floor communal
Women had to get together in groups to take their children to school and go

corridor in Pruitt-Igoe
shopping. The project never achieved more than 60 percent occupancy. It

would be used.

10

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
was torn down about 10 years

after its construction and be-

came a precursor of what was to

happen elsewhere in the country.

Across the street from Pruitt-

Igoe was an older, smaller, row-

house complex, Carr Square

Village, occupied by an identi

cal population. It had remained

fully occupied and trouble-free

throughout the construction,

occupancy, and decline of

Pruitt-Igoe. With social vari-
Figure I–3:

ables constant in the two developments, what, I asked, was the signifi-
The 3d floor communal

cance of the physical differences that enabled one to survive while the
corridor as it actually

turned out, showing the
other was destroyed?
vandalism that ensued.
Walking through Pruitt-Igoe in

its heyday of pervasive crime

and vandalism, one could only

ask: What kind of people live

here? Excluding the interior

public areas of the development

there were occasional pockets

that were clean, safe, and well-

tended. Where only two fami

lies shared a landing, it was

clean and well-maintained. If

one could get oneself invited

into an apartment, one found it

neat and well maintained—modestly furnished perhaps, but with great
Figure I–4:

pride. Why such a difference between the interior of the apartment and
Vandalism to the large

number of vacant
the public spaces outside? One could only conclude that residents main-
apartments in Pruitt-Igoe
tained and controlled those areas that were clearly defined as their own. as seen from the outside.
Landings shared by only two families were well maintained, whereas
corridors shared by 20 families, and lobbies, elevators, and stairs shared
by 150 families were a disaster—they evoked no feelings of identity or
control. Such anonymous public spaces made it impossible for even
11

Creating Defensible Space
Figure I–5:
neighboring residents to develop an accord about acceptable behavior in
Pruitt-Igoe in the process
these areas. It was impossible to feel or exert proprietary feelings,
of being torn down, at a
impossible to tell resident from intruder.
loss of $300 million.
Most of us have seen
highrise apartments occu
pied by middle-income
people that function very
well. Why then do they not
work for low-income fami
lies? Middle-income apart
ment buildings have funds
available for doormen, por
ters, elevator operators, and
resident superintendents to
watch over and maintain the
common public areas, but in
highrise public housing,
there are barely enough
Figure I–6:
Carr Square Village, a row-house development located across the street from Pruitt-Igoe.
12

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
funds for 9-to-5 nonresident mainte
nance men, let alone for security person
nel, elevator operators, or porters. Not
surprisingly, therefore, it is within these
interior and exterior common public ar
eas that most crime in public housing
takes place.
Given that funds for doormen, porters,
and resident superintendents do not
exist for public housing, the question
emerged: Is it possible to design public
housing without any interior public
areas and to have all the grounds
assigned to individual families?
12.7
10.0 16.2
14.514.512.0
Total
30.0
Total
41.0
Total
68.0
37.3
16.55.3
In interior
public spaces
On outside
grounds
Inside
apartments
Walkups
(3 floors)
Midrises
(6–7 floors)
Highrises
(13–30 floors)
Location of Crime in
Walkups and Highrises
■ The private streets of St. Louis
Also in St. Louis, I came upon a series of turn-of-the-century neighbor-
hoods where homes are replicas of the small chateaux of France. They
are the former palaces of St. Louis’ commercial barons—the rail, beef,
and shipping kings. These chateaux are positioned on privately held
streets, closed to through traffic. St. Louis in the mid-1960s was a city
coming apart. The influx of people from the rural areas of the South had
overwhelmed the city. It had one of the Nation’s highest crime rates, but
the private streets appeared to be oblivious to the chaos and abandon
ment taking place around them. They continued to function as peaceful,
crime-free environments—nice places to rear children, if you could
afford a castle. The residents owned and controlled their own streets,
and although anyone was free to drive or walk them (they had no guard
booths), one knew that one was intruding into a private world and that
one’s actions were under constant observation. Why, I asked, could not
this model be used to stabilize the adjacent working and middle-class
neighborhoods that were undergoing massive decline and abandonment?
Was private ownership the key, or was the operating mechanism the
closing-off of streets and the creation of controlled enclaves? Through
research funded by the National Science Foundation (Newman, Dean, and
Wayno, 1974) we were able to identify the essential ingredients of the pri
vate streets and provide a model that could be replicated throughout the
Figure I–7:
Graph showing the
relationship between the
increase in crime and
increased building height
and that crime is mostly
located within public areas.
13

Creating Defensible Space
city. This was done in both African-American
and white areas, and its implementation suc
ceeded in stabilizing communities in transition.
■ The effect of housing form on
residents’ ability to control areas
Over the next few pages I will explain how dif
ferent building types create spaces outside the
dwelling unit that affect residents’ ability to
control them. Firstly, I should explain what I
mean by the dwelling unit: It is the interior of
an apartment unit or home. That is the case
whether the unit is one among many in a
highrise building or sits by itself on the ground.
I am interested in learning how the grouping
of units in different types of building configura
tions creates indoor and outdoor “nonunit”
Figure I–8:
spaces of different character.
Aerial view of typical closed
streets in St. Louis.
For simplification, I have grouped all buildings into the three categories
that capture the essential differences among them. These three categories
are: single-family houses; walkups; and highrises.
Single-family houses come in three basic types: detached houses; semi-
detached houses; and row houses (row houses are also called
townhouses).
The fully detached building sits by itself, not touching any other build
ing; the semidetached building has two single-family units sharing a
common wall; and the row-house building has a few single-family units
sharing common walls with other units, one on each side. Although all
three types of single-family buildings look different, they share an essen
tial common trait: Within the four walls of each type of building is the
private domain of one family. There are no interior spaces that are public
or that do not belong to a family. All the interior spaces, therefore, are
private. Even the row house is subdivided into a series of distinctly pri
vate spaces. There are no interior spaces within any single-family build
ing—whether a row house, a semidetached building, or a fully detached
14

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
house—that are shared by more than
one family.
The fundamental difference in the three
types of single-family houses shown is
the density at which they can be built—
which is to say the number of units that
can be put on an acre of land in each of
these configurations. The upward limit
of the detached house is about six units
to the acre. The upward limit of the
semidetached house is eight units to the
acre, but this allows for a driveway to be
put between each unit, something that
could not be achieved in detached units
• All interior spaces are within the private domain of the family.
• All grounds around the private unit are for the private use of the family.
• There is a direct abutment between private grounds and the sidewalk.
• The domain of the house encompasses the street.
at six to the acre. Row houses can be

built at an upward limit of 16 units to the acre if one also wishes to pro-

vide off-street parking on a one-to-one basis.

When one looks at the grounds surrounding these three types of single-

family units, one finds that all the grounds are private because they have

been assigned to each unit. Regardless of which type of single-family

building we examine, each has been designed so that each unit has its

own front and rear yard. The front yard of each unit also immediately

abuts the street. If we attempt to categorize the grounds as either private,

semiprivate, semipublic, or public, we would have to conclude that the

rear yards are certainly private because they belong to individual fami

lies and are only accessible from the interior of each unit. The front

yards also belong to individual families, but because they are accessible

from the street as well as from the interior of each unit their character is

different. I have classed them as semiprivate because of this difference, but

some people would say that they are really private.

Looking at the next classification of building—the walkup—one finds

that a radical new element has been introduced that totally changes the

character of both the inside and outside of the building. We now have

circulation areas within the building that are common because they are

shared by a few families. The number of families sharing these common

Figure I–9:
Three types of single-family
houses and the nature of
spaces in and around them.
15

• Private space is within the apartment unit only.
• The interior lobby, stairs, and corridor are semiprivate.
• Grounds can be designated for one family but are usually shared by all the families in the building.
• Only a small number of families (three to six) share the interior circulation areas and grounds.
• The street is within the sphere of influence of the dwellings.
Creating Defensible Space
areas depends on how
the entrances, corridors,
and stairs are distributed
within the building.
In figure I–10, the
walkup building is subdi
vided so that six families
share a common entry
and interior circulation
stair. Two families per
floor share a common
landing. Entrances from
the common staircase
usually exit to the outside
Figure I–10:
Walkup buildings and the
nature of spaces in and
around them.
at both the front and rear.
Such buildings are often called garden apartments.
Walkups can be built at a density of 30 to 40 units per acre if they are
3 stories in height, and at a density of 20 to 30 units to the acre if they
are only 2 stories in height. Three-story walkups were commonly built
in the 1950s and 1960s, but as these are nonelevator buildings, the 3-
story walkup has fallen out of favor with the decline in housing demand.
Because the grounds surrounding 3-story walkups, front and back,
belong to all the families living in the building, they cannot be consid
ered private. The grounds in the front of the unit are also adjacent to a
public street. For this reason I would categorize the grounds in front as
semipublic space. The grounds at the rear of the unit are also not as-
signed to individual families and the rear of the units are often used for
parking. In such a case, the grounds at the back would also have to be
considered semipublic. It is, however, possible to modify the design of
the rear grounds to make some of the areas private and the remainder
semiprivate, and I will demonstrate how to do that shortly.
We come now to the last of our three building types: the highrise. These
are elevator buildings and commonly come in two sizes, depending on
the type of elevator used. The least expensive elevator is the hydraulic, but
it has an upward limit of six stories. The electric elevator can comfortably
16

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
go up to 30 stories, but it is usually
used in 10- to 16-story apartment
buildings.
The 15-story building at the right has
195 families sharing common inte
rior areas. Because of the large num
ber of people sharing them, these
interior areas can only be designated
as semipublic or even public. Even
the corridors on each floor are
shared by 13 families and are acces
sible from 2 sets of stairs and 2
elevators that are very public. For
this reason I would have to designate
• Private space exists only within the apartment units.
• The interior circulation areas and the grounds are public.
• There is no association between buildings and street.
these corridors as semipublic, if not
public.
The outside grounds, because of their disassociation from any of the
individual units, and the fact that they are shared by 195 families, can
only be designated as public.
■ Summary of the effect of building type on behavior
A family’s claim to a territory diminishes proportionally as the number
of families who share that claim increases. The larger the number of
people who share a territory, the less each individual feels rights to it.
Therefore, with only a few families sharing an area, whether it be the
interior circulation areas of a building or the grounds outside, it is relatively
easy for an informal understanding to be reached among the families as to
what constitutes acceptable usage.
When the numbers increase, the opportunity for reaching such an
implicit understanding diminishes to the point that no usage other than
walking through the area is really possible, but any use is permissible.
The larger the number of people who share a communal space, the more
difficult it is for people to identify it as theirs or to feel they have a right
to control or determine the activity taking place within it. It is easier for
outsiders to gain access to and linger in the interior areas of a building
Figure I–11:
The elevator highrise and
the nature of space in and
around it.
17

Creating Defensible Space
shared by 24 to 100 families than it is in
a building shared by 6 to 12 families.
■ The effect of building type
on residents’ control of streets
If we examine the three building types
from the viewpoint of residents’ ability
to exert control over surrounding streets,
we again find marked differences.
Figures I–12, I–13, and I–14 graphically
summarize the major differences between
residents’ ability to control the areas around
their homes and public streets. The three
illustrations show the same four-block
area of a city, each developed using a
different building type.
Figure I–12:
A four-city-block row-house
development. Only the
central portion of the
roadbed can be considered
fully public.
Figure I–12 is an illustration of a row-
house development built at a density of 18
units to the acre. Each city block has been subdivided so that all the grounds,
except for the streets and sidewalks, are assigned to individual families.
The front lawns, because each belongs to an individual family, are desig
nated semiprivate. The rear yards, which are fully enclosed, are private.
In fact they are only accessible from the interior of the dwelling units.
The close juxtaposition of each dwelling unit and its entry to the street
contributes to the incorporation of the sidewalk into the sphere of influ
ence of the inhabitants of the dwelling. This is further reinforced by the
fact that their semiprivate lawn abuts the sidewalk, and the family car is
parked at the curb. Residents’ attitudes suggest that they consider this
sidewalk and parking area as semipublic, rather than public.
Examining the entire four-block area, we find an urban fabric in which
most of the outdoor areas and all of the indoor areas are private. In addi
tion, a good portion of what is a legally public street is viewed by resi
dents as an extension of their dwellings and under their sphere of
18

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
influence: that is, the sidewalk and that
portion of the roadbed on which their
cars are parked. Because of the close jux
taposition of the street to the private front
lawn of each dwelling, residents are con
cerned about ensuring its safety and act
to maintain and control it. In actual fact,
only the very central portion of each
street is truly public in nature. If the
street were narrow, even the activity in
this central portion would be considered
accountable to neighboring residents.
Figure I–13 shows the same four-block
area, this time accommodating 3-story
garden apartments built at a density of 36
units to the acre. The rear courts within
the interior of each cluster have been as-
signed both to individual families and to
all the families sharing the cluster. The

families living on the ground floor have

been given their own patios within the interior courts, with access to

them from the interior of their unit. These patios are therefore private.

The remainder of the interior court belongs to all the families sharing a clus

ter and is only accessible from the semiprivate interior circulation space of

each building, making the remainder of the interior cluster semiprivate.

The small front lawn adjacent to each building entry is the collective

area for that entry’s inhabitants and is therefore semiprivate. As in the

row-house scheme in figure I–12, all the entries face the street, but each

entry now serves six families rather than one and is thus semiprivate

rather than private. Parking again is on the street immediately in front of

each dwelling. Because of the semiprivate nature of the grounds, the side-

walk and street are not clear extensions of the realms of individual dwelling

units. But even with all these limitations, the neighboring sidewalk and

parking zone on the street are considered by many residents as areas over

which they exert some control.

Figure I–13:
A four-city-block garden
apartment development.
The streets and grounds are
encompassed within the
domain of the multifamily
dwellings.
19

Creating Defensible Space
Figure I–14 is the same four-block area
shown in figures I–12 and I–13, but now
developed as a highrise superblock at a
density of 50 dwelling units to the acre.
Each building entry serves 50 families by
means of an interior circulation system
consisting of a public lobby, elevators,
fire stairs, and corridors. The grounds
around the buildings are accessible to
everyone and are not assigned to particu
lar buildings. The residents, as a result, feel
little association with or responsibility for
the grounds and even less association with
the surrounding public streets.
Not only are the streets distant from the
units, but no building entries face them.
The grounds of the development that abut
the sidewalks are also public, and, as a
Figure I–14:
A four-city-block highrise
development. All the streets
and grounds are public.
consequence, so are the sidewalks and
streets. This design succeeds in making
public the entire ground surface of the
four-block area. All the grounds of the project must be maintained by
management and patrolled by a hired security force. The city streets and
sidewalks, in turn, must be maintained by the city sanitation department
and patrolled by city police.
The placement of the highrise towers on the interior grounds has pro
duced a system of off-street parking and access paths to the building that
involves many turns and blind corners. Residents in such developments
complain about the dangers of walking into the grounds to get to their
buildings at night. The proclivity of landscape designers for positioning
shrubs exactly at turns in the paths increases the hazards of these access
routes. This problem does not arise in traditional row-house or walkup
developments where building entries face the street and are set back
from the sidewalk no more than 10 to 20 feet. Nor do these fears occur
in highrise buildings whose entries face the streets and are only set back
slightly from them. In these latter cases, residents are able to move in a
20

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
straight line from the relative safety of the public street to what they can
observe to be the relative safety of the well lighted lobby area in the
interior of their buildings.
Figure I–15 shows two housing projects located across the street from
one another: a garden apartment complex on the right and a highrise on
the left. Both projects are designed at the same density and with similar
parking provisions (40 units to the acre and 1 parking space per unit).
The highrise project has all building entries facing the interior grounds
of the development. Parking has been designed as a continuous strip
along the street, further disassociating the buildings from the street. The
project on the right is only three stories in height and has all the buildings
and their entries juxtaposed with the city streets or the interior streets and
parking. Each entry faces the street and serves only 6 families, whereas
the highrises have 60 families sharing a common entry. Small play and
sitting areas have been provided near the entry to each walkup. This
Figure I–15:
A highrise and a walkup
built at the same density.
The project on the left is
turned in on itself, away
from the public street,
while the one on the right
brings the streets within
the control of the residents.
21

Creating Defensible Space
serves to extend into the street the
sphere of influence of each of the six
families.
The residents in the walkup are a
very short distance from the sur
rounding streets, and because of the
positioning of the building entries,
play areas, and parking, the neigh-
boring streets are brought within the
sphere of influence of inhabitants.
Another important lesson to learn
from this comparison is that 2 radi
cally different building configura-
Figure I–16:
Comparison of two ways to
subdivide the same
building envelope to serve
the same number of
families, but in radically
different ways.
tions can be produced at the same
density: in this case a density of 40
units to the acre with 1-to-1 parking. This is a very high density that will
satisfy the economic demands of high land costs. The walkup develop
ment achieves the same density as the highrise by covering more of the
grounds (37 percent ground coverage versus 24 percent). Municipalities
that wish to reap the benefits of walkup versus highrise buildings must
learn to be flexible with their floor-area-ratio requirements to assure that
they are not depriving residents of a better housing option in order to get
more open ground space that has little purpose.
What is true for site design is also true for building design: The same build
ing envelope can be subdivided in different ways to produce dramatically
different results. For instance, figure I–16 shows two ways of configuring a
three-story walkup. Both buildings serve a total of 24 families each. In the
upper layout, all 24 families share 2 common entrances and 8 families share
a common corridor on each floor, although access to the corridors on each
floor is open to all 24 families in the building. In the lower design, only
6 families share a common entry, and only 2 families share a common
landing on each floor.
In the lower design, the smaller number of families sharing an entry and
landing allows the families to control the public spaces better: They can
more readily recognize residents from strangers and feel they have a say
22

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
in determining accepted behavior.
If this were a two-story building
rather than a three-story building,
it would have been possible, in
the lower design, to give each
family its own individual entry
directly off the street and thus
avoid having any interior public
spaces at all.
■ Social factors and
their interaction with the
physical
An understanding of the interac&shy;

tion of the social and physical

factors that create high crime

rates in low- and moderate-income housing developments is useful not

only for devising remedies to solve their problems but also for develop

ing strategies for stabilizing neighboring communities composed of

single-family housing.

Figure I–17 shows the influence of different social and physical factors

on the crime rates in low- and moderate-income projects operated by the

New York City Housing Authority. This analytical technique called

stepwise regression analysis is employed when many different factors

interact to produce a particular effect, such as, a rise in crime rates. The

technique isolates those factors that contribute to the effect most strongly

and independently of other factors. In figure I–17 the percentage of popu

lation receiving welfare is shown to be the most important factor, followed

by building height or the number of families sharing the entry to a building.

Those social variables that correlated highly with different types of

crime also correlated highly with each other. These include: the percent-

age of resident population receiving welfare (excluding the elderly), the

percentage of one-parent families receiving Aid to Families with Depen

dent Children (AFDC), and the per capita disposable income of the

project’s residents.

Correlations with dependent variables
Social and physical Indoor felony Indoor robbery Robbery Felony
variables rate rate rate rate
Percentage of population
receiving welfare (1)
a
.51 (1) .46 (1) .47 (1) .54
Building height (number of
units per entry) (2) .36 (2) .36 (2) .36 (5) .22
Project size (number of
apartments) (3) .27 (3) .26 (3) .25 (3) .22
Percentage of families with
female head on AFDC (4) .44 (4) .41 (5) .36
Number of publicly assisted
projects in area (5) .25 (5) .26 (4) .33
Felony rate of surrounding
community (2) .41
Per capita disposable
income (4) .49
N.Y.C. Housing Authority police data for 1967: 87 housing projects. .01 level of significance at
+.27, .05 level of significance at +.21.
a
Numbers in parentheses indicate rank order of correlation in creating stepwise multiple regressions.
Figure I–17:
Crime rates as explained
by social and physical
variables.
23

Creating Defensible Space
My interviews with residents, management, and police provide the fol
lowing explanation for the correlation of these social factors and crime
rates: A one-parent household headed by a female is more vulnerable to
criminal attack; families with only one adult present are less able to con
trol their teenage children; young teenage AFDC mothers are often vic
timized by their boyfriends; the criminal activity by the poor is tolerated,
if not condoned, among the poor; the poor, and particularly the poor of
racial minorities, are unable to demand much in the way of police pro
tection; and the commission of crime against residents in ghetto areas
requires minimal skill and risk.
The physical factors that correlate most strongly with crime rates are, in
order of importance: the height of the buildings, which in turn correlates
highly with the number of apartments sharing the entry to a building; the
size of the housing project or “the total number of dwelling units in the
project”; and the number of other publicly assisted housing projects in
the area.
The above suggests that two classes of physical factors contribute to
crime rates: (1) those such as “project size” or the “number of publicly
assisted projects in the area” that reinforce social weakness and pathol
ogy; and (2) those such as “building height” or “the number of units per
entry” that affect the ability of residents to control their environment.
The first class of physical factors may also be considered another class
of social variable: For instance, if certain social characteristics such as
the percentage of AFDC families correlate highly with crime rate, then
we can anticipate that a large number of such families gathered together
in one area may aggravate the crime problems still further and increase
the per capita crime rate.
The significance of this aggregation is not simply that the presence of
more potential criminals creates proportionally more crime, but also that
a concentration of potential criminals actually increases the rate of
crime. Thus, large low-income projects, or low-income projects sur
rounded by other low-income projects, suffer a higher crime rate than
small or isolated projects even when the percentage of AFDC families
remains the same in all the projects.
24

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
A frequent complaint from residents of communities surrounding large
public housing projects is that the teenage criminals living in the
projects make use of the large, anonymous environment of the housing
project as a place to retreat and hide. For example, there is a particularly
notorious project in Jersey City that is located adjacent to U.S. Highway 1
entering New York City. A traffic light at an intersection that borders the
project forces truckers to stop there on their way into New York. Teen-
age project residents have developed a pattern of hijacking trucks at the
stoplight, by throwing the driver out and driving the truck into the
project. The truck is then emptied in a matter of minutes and the loot
hidden in vacant apartments.
The relationship between the socioeconomic characteristics of residents
and a project’s crime rate had long been suspected. The most fascinating
finding to come out of the data analysis presented in Defensible Space
(1972) was, therefore, the influence of building height and number of
units per entry in predicting crime rate. Regardless of the social character
istics of inhabitants, the physical form of housing was shown to play an
important role in reducing crime and in assisting residents in controlling
behavior in their housing environments.
In addition to the fact that buildings with a large number of families
sharing an entry experience higher crime rates than those with few fami
lies per entry, they are also vulnerable to additional types of criminal
activity. Most of the crime experienced by residents of single-family
buildings is burglary, committed when members of the family are either
away from home or asleep. By contrast the residents of large, multifam
ily dwellings experience both burglaries and robberies. The higher crime
rate experienced by residents in large multifamily dwellings is mostly attrib
utable to the occurrence of robberies in the interior common-circulation
areas of multifamily buildings: lobbies, hallways, stairs, and elevators.
These are also the areas where criminals wait to approach their victims
and force them into apartments for the purpose of robbing them.
Of a total of 8,611 felonies reported in all New York City Housing Authority
projects in 1969 (excluding intrahousehold incidents), 3,786, or 44 percent,
were committed in the interior public areas of buildings. Of the crimes
25

3–4 Floor 6–7 Floor 12–30 Floor
Walkups Medium rises Highrises
Creating Defensible Space
committed in interior public areas,
3,165, or 84 percent, were robberies.
The breakdown by location of the
felonies taking place in interior pub
lic areas was: elevators, 41 percent;
hallways, 22 percent; lobbies, 18 per-
cent; stairways, 9 percent; roof land
ings, 2 percent; and other, 8 percent.
Although the socioeconomic charac
teristics of the residents exert a strong
Figure I–18:
Variations in crime rate as
produced by different
socioeconomic groups
occupying different
building types.
influence on crime rate, the physical
characteristics of the buildings and
the project can exert a counteracting influence. The physical form of
residential environment can, in fact, ameliorate the effect of many of the
problems created by the concentration of low-income one-parent fami
lies with teenage children.
The more complex and anonymous the housing environment, the more
difficult it is for a code of behavior following societal norms to become
established among residents. It is even difficult for moderate-income
families with two adult heads of household to cope with crime and van
dalism problems in poorly designed environments, but when poor and
broken families are grouped together in such a setting, the results are
nothing short of disastrous. The public housing projects now experienc
ing the highest vacancy rates are those that consist of the worst mixture
of social and physical attributes.
Figure I–18 compares the vulnerability to crime of low-income one-parent
families in different building types with the experience of moderate-
income two-parent families living in the same building types. These are the
further results of the 1972 Defensible Space analysis of New York City
housing authority data. It shows that low-income one-parent families are
more vulnerable to poor building design than moderate-income two-
parent families. Although two-parent moderate-income families suffer
higher crime rates in highrise buildings than they do in walkups, the
crime rate does not increase as dramatically with building height as it
does for low-income families. Moderate-income 2-parent families living
26

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
in 12- to 30-story buildings experience a lower crime rate than low-
income 1-parent families living in 6- and 7-story buildings.
■ The suitability of building types to lifestyle groups
I have explained the problems resulting from housing low-income fami
lies with children in highrise buildings. But one should not conclude
from this that highrises are not suitable for other lifestyle groups. For
instance, elderly people, even those of low income, do very well in highrise
buildings as long as the buildings are kept exclusively for the elderly.
Elderly people do not like walking stairs and appreciate an elevator
building. Retired elderly often live away from their children, and their
elderly neighbors become their new extended family. At the push of an
elevator button, they can have access to a hundred other families within
a highrise building.
If we also design the ground floor of an elderly highrise as a communal
and recreation area, we can create a security station at the building entry
door that can be manned by elderly volunteers. If a problem arises, a
push of a button summons the police. With the use of gates and fencing,
the grounds surrounding their building can also be secured and defined
for their exclusive use.
The lesson we can learn from this is that some of the highrise stock we have
inherited, because it has proven unusable for welfare families with children,
may lend itself to conversion for the exclusive use of the elderly.
However, we should not jump for joy too quickly. Many of our highrise
public housing projects in large cities like New York, Chicago, and
Boston were built as 1,000-unit agglomerations, and the need for such
a concentration of the elderly is, at present, just not there. Also, the com
munity surrounding such a 1,000-unit agglomeration will meanwhile have
been devastated—no place to be putting the elderly. It would not be wise to
convert 1 of 10 highrise buildings for the elderly, while keeping the adja
cent 9 buildings for families with children. The elderly would be victimized
and refuse to live in such an environment.
27

Creating Defensible Space
Finally, even when highrises exist in isolation, the cost of converting a
building made up of three-bedroom apartments into one-bedroom units
may be prohibitive.
■ Factors influencing crime and instability
Our institute’s study of the Factors Influencing Crime and Instability
in Federally-Assisted Housing (Newman and Franck, 1980) involved
44 moderate-income housing sites and 29 public housing sites in three
cities: Newark, St. Louis, and San Francisco. It used a path analysis to
take into account the influence of other factors, including socioeconomic
characteristics, management effectiveness, quality of city police and security
services, and form of ownership.
The results showed that two physical factors and two social factors
accounted for most of the variation. The two physical factors were the
size of the development and the number of families sharing common
entries into a building. The two social factors were the percentage of
families on AFDC and the ratio of teenagers to adults. As public housing
has become housing for the poorest of the poor, the only variables that
lend themselves to modification are the physical, project size and the
number of apartments sharing common entries.
Project size is a measure of the overall concentration of low-income
families in a project or cluster of projects. We found that the larger the
concentration, the more residents felt isolated from the rest of society
and felt their perceived differences to be greater. Project size affects stig
matization—as perceived both by the outside world and by the project
residents themselves. The apathy that comes with stigmatization leads to
neglect and withdrawal, first on the part of the residents, then by hous
ing management, and finally by the municipal agencies that service the
project: police, education, parks and recreation, refuse collection, and
social services. A large project provides a continuous area in which
gangs can operate, allowing even one gang or group of drug dealers to
contaminate all of its public space.
The larger the number of units sharing common entries is a measure of
how public the interior corridors, elevators, and stairs are. The more
residents who have to share common areas, the more difficult it is to lay
28

Chapter One: Defensible Space Principles
claim to them; the more difficult it is to distinguish other residents from
intruders; and the more difficult it is to agree with other residents on the
care and control of these areas.
The numbers within the brackets below show the amount of variation in
residents’ behavior that is explained by building size. If the number is
preceded by a minus, it means that an increase in building size has a
negative effect on that behavior. In the case of residents’ use of public
areas, for instance, the numbers in brackets mean that an increase of
1 unit in building size will cause a reduction of 0.50 of a unit in resi
dents’ use of public areas. This demonstrates that building form has a
very strong predictive capacity on public area use, independent of other
factors that are also likely to predict it.
Building size has a statistically significant direct causal effect on resi
dents’ behavior as follows:
(i) Use of public areas in their development [– 0.50].
(ii) Social interaction with their neighbors [– 0.31].
(iii) Sense of control over the interior and exterior public areas of their
development [– 0.29].
Further results of our path analysis showed that building size has impor
tant causal effects on fear of crime [0.38] and on community instability
[0.39], independent of socioeconomic, managerial, ownership, police,
and guard service factors. Community instability is measured by apart
ment turnover and vacancy rates and by residents’ desire to move. How-
ever, as in the 1970 New York City public housing study discussed
earlier, the findings from our study of moderate-income developments
showed that the socioeconomic characteristics of residents also have
strong causal effects on fear, instability, and crime.
Independent of other factors, the socioeconomic characteristics of resi
dents have a total causal effect on fear of crime of 0.59, on community
instability of 0.51, and on crimes against persons of 0.32. These findings
can be interpreted as follows: A unit increase in the percentage of AFDC
families living in a development will produce 0.59 of a unit increase in
fear of crime.
29

Creating Defensible Space
The data from this analysis can be summarized in still another way by
looking at the results of the regression analysis. The R
2
is a sign used to
represent the percent of variance in one factor that is predicted by all
other factors acting together. The effects of building size, socioeconomic
characteristics of residents, management performance, form of ownership,
and police and guard service together produce the following: R
2
= 0.69 for
fear (p < 0.001); R
2
= 0.67 for community instability (p < 0.001); and
R
2
= 0.39 for crimes against persons (p < 0.05). Another way of stating
these findings is that the combination of these factors predict 69 percent
of the variation in fear, for instance. But more important still, of all the
factors in the predictive model, it is the socioeconomic characteristics of
residents and building size that together predict most of the variation in
fear, instability, and crime.
30

31
C H A P T E R

TWO

Mini-neighborhoods in

Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio

The Five Oaks community in Dayton, Ohio, is a one-half-square mile

residential area located a mile north of the downtown. It contains 2,000

households, or about 5,000 people, inhabiting one- and two-family

homes and some small apart

ment buildings.

Like most American cities,

Dayton experienced rapid

suburban expansion following

World War II. The exodus of

the middle-class population

from the city was accompanied

by the relocation of shopping

facilities, manufacturing, and

office buildings. The replace

ment population was initially

composed of working-class

homeowner families, but over

time these were replaced again by lower income renters who were

mostly African American.

The problems experienced by Five Oaks are typical of older urban com

munities located near the downtown core: heavy through traffic; rising

crime; the visual presence of drug dealers and prostitutes; single-family

homes being converted to multifamily use; the continuing replacement

of white, middle- and working-class property owners with low-income,

minority renters; and general disinvestment. The U.S. census showed

that in the 10 years between 1980 and 1990, the community went from a

population of mostly white homeowners to 50-percent African American

and 60-percent renter.

During the year before the Defensible Space modifications were under-

taken, violent crimes increased by 77 percent; robberies by 76 percent;

vandalism by 38 percent; and overall crime by 16 percent. Not only was

Figure II–1:
Map locating Five Oaks and
downtown Dayton. Note the
expressway that connects
downtown to the suburbs
and the exit ramp at the foot
of the Five Oaks community.
31

Creating Defensible Space
crime increasing at a maddening pace, but drug dealers, pimps, and pros
titutes had brazenly taken over the streets. Gun shots could be heard at
all times of the day and night; blaring boomboxes meant to attract drug
purchasers disturbed everyone’s sleep; and speeding cars, the byproduct
of these illicit activities, threatened people in their own streets. Children
were virtually kept locked up in their homes. A 13-member police strike
force hit the neighborhood round the clock every few months, but the
results were only temporary.
The Dayton Area Board of
Realtors reported that sales
values had dropped by 11
percent in that 1 year, while
regional values rose 6 percent.
Every second house in Five
Oaks was up for sale.
Downtown Dayton still retains
some of its finer old office and
shopping buildings. Neighbor-
hoods beautifully constructed
in the 1920s border this down-
town. Five Oaks is one of
Figure II–2:
Typical street in Five Oaks.
these, and it serves as a gateway between the downtown and the subur
ban residential communities to the north. It is encountered on a daily ba
sis by those coming to the downtown area to work and shop. Five Oaks
is a community symptomatic of the city’s problems and aspirations. For
this reason many in the city government felt that what happens to Five
Oaks will happen to the rest of Dayton. If Five Oaks fell, there would be
a domino effect on the surrounding communities.
But Five Oaks’ location between the downtown and the suburbs also
turned its interior streets into a network of cut-through traffic as com
muters used them to avoid the larger, traffic-laden arterials at the periph
ery of the community. Of Five Oaks’ total traffic volume, 35 percent was
found to be cutting through the neighborhood. The general effect was to
burden its streets so heavily as to make them unsuitable for normal,
quiet residential use—a use common to cul-de-sac streets in the suburbs
where, ironically, most of the cut-through traffic was headed.
32

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
Five Oaks was also experiencing social problems: The dynamics of
population change in the community had led to increased tensions
between the older, permanent homeowners and the new, transient renters
who were seen as a threat to the stability of the neighborhood. The lack
of shared values and aspirations among neighbors increased feelings of iso
lation and the perception of being on their own. Even the most innocent of
activities, such as children playing in the street, or one neighbor asking
the other for more careful garbage disposal, was perceived as intolerance
and incivility.
Ironically, because of its location and socioeconomic makeup and the
perception that it was still safe, Five Oaks was perceived as an ideal
community for drug dealing directed at middle-income outsiders. To the
immediate west of Five Oaks is a community that also had drug dealers
working its streets, but that community had become predominantly Afri
can American, 30 percent vacant, and severely deteriorated. It was per
ceived as too dangerous a place to buy drugs and solicit prostitutes by
white, middle-class buyers. So the activity moved to Five Oaks. One
wonders if the drug purchasers thought that the residents of Five Oaks
would protect them or call the police if a drug deal went sour or a pimp
got too greedy.
The noisy and blatantly evident traffic of drug dealers, prostitutes, and
their clients was disturbing to the community out of all proportion to the
number of vehicles, or threat, they represented. The police, however, did
suspect that the frequency of burglaries and auto thefts in the community
stemmed directly from drug-related activities.
Unable to sell their homes for a price that would pay off their outstand
ing mortgages, many homeowners had moved away and rented them—
often in subdivided form and at times illegally and in a substandard
fashion. The result of these inexpensive and inadequate conversions was
the rapid, and visually evident, deterioration of the housing stock. This
led to a reluctance on the part of neighboring homeowners to keep up
their own properties. The community had entered a spiral of decline that
appeared irreversible. Houses were selling for one-half to one-quarter of
their replacement cost. The only buyers were slumlords.
33

Creating Defensible Space
Community and municipal
efforts to acquire and refur
bish deteriorated housing had
barely any impact. Five times
as many houses were being
lost as were being refur
bished. Slumlords, who found
that drug dealers were unde
manding tenants, rented to
them and let their properties
decline still further—pulling
the condition of adjacent
housing down with them. An
Figure II–3:
immediate change to the infra-
Deteriorated two-story
structure was necessary, one that would visibly alter the entire pattern of use
walkup in Five Oaks being
and would make itself evident at the scale of the whole community. The
rented to drug dealers.
problem with the city’s program of refurbishing single homes scattered
throughout Five Oaks was that it did not produce any visual evidence of
rehabilitative change at the scale of the entire community.
Five Oaks contains a variety of different types of housing: Some streets
have large, stately homes on
them, constructed of brick
and stone and situated on
large lots; others have wood
frame houses on small lots.
Still other streets contain two-
story, two-family houses that
share a common wall, while
others house two- and three-
story apartment buildings.
Some of the arterial streets
have medium highrise apart
ment buildings on them.
Figure II–4:
Street in Five Oaks with
various building types.
The community also houses
some important institutions:
The Grandview hospital complex, located in the southeast quadrant of
Five Oaks, serves the entire urban region; two large parochial schools on
34

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
the east side of Five Oaks, Corpus Christi and Dayton Christian, serve
the broader city as well as the immediate community.
The west and east borders of Five Oaks are defined by two major arteri
als that link northern suburban Dayton with downtown Dayton (Salem
Avenue on the west and North Main on the east). The northern boundary
of Five Oaks is a residential street called Delaware Avenue. Its southern
boundary is a mixed residential and institutional street called Grand
Avenue. A further mixed-use residential and commercial street defines a
portion of the Five Oaks boundary to the east: Forest Avenue. Most of
the traffic on the streets of Five Oaks was perceived as going through
the neighborhood heading for suburban destinations to the north.
Figure II–5:
The 1990 census revealed that 3 of the 5 sectors that compose Five Oaks
Map of Five Oaks showing
internal streets and arterial
have 64-percent or more renters. The remaining 2 sectors have 43-percent
boundaries.
and 49-percent renters.
35

Creating Defensible Space
Because most of the dwellings in Five
Oaks consist of one- and two-family
houses, the data reveal that many
homeowners have moved away and are
renting their units in either their origi
nal form or subdivided. This is partially
because they were unable to sell their
homes at reasonable prices.
Figure II–7 shows that most of the
renters in Five Oaks are African
American. Because African Ameri
cans earn about two-thirds the
income of whites, it would appear
that the rental market is at the lower
Figure II–6:
Map of Five Oaks showing
percent of renters in
different areas, 1990.
end of the scale.
Figure II–8 shows that the three sectors
of Five Oaks that have a high percent-
age of renters also have a high vacancy
rate, ranging from 10 percent to 29
percent. Citywide, Dayton has a
vacancy rate of only 6 percent.
Despite the evident change revealed
by the census data, Five Oaks contin
ued to be attractive to people work
ing for institutions located in the
downtown area: for example, city
government, the universities, and
hospitals. Its large, well-constructed
houses could not be easily replicated
today: Their materials are too costly,
and the craftsmen who put them
together are of a bygone era. At the
Figure II–7:
Map of Five Oaks showing
percent of African-American
renters in different areas,
1990.
low end, a wood frame and shingled,
three-bedroom house on a small lot sold for between $45,000 and $55,000,
depending on its condition. A larger, brick house with ornate architecture,
quality woodwork and glass, on a larger lot, could be purchased for
36

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
$75,000. Should one be interested in
rental property, a two-family brick
house with each unit having two bed-
rooms could be purchased for as little
as $58,000. The large, stately houses
on large lots that had a replacement
cost of more than $500,000 could be
purchased for just over $100,000.
■ Initiating the process
Our institute first became involved in

Five Oaks when the Dayton Police

Department’s superintendent of com

munity relations, Major Jaruth

Durham-Jefferson, made an inquiring

telephone call. She was a forceful but
Figure II–8:

Map of Five Oaks showing
charming African American who had heard of my work with street
percent of vacancies in
closures in St. Louis. “The Dayton community,” she said, “was talking
different areas, 1990
Defensible Space as a remedy to some of its crime and traffic problems,
and there was some disagreement in people’s minds about what it meant.
Would I care to come for a visit so they could hear, from the horse’s
mouth, what it was all about? And while I was there, would I care to
take a first-hand look at the communities in question?” I was not sure
whether I was being asked or told. That telephone call led to a 3-day
trip, night and day tours of many of Dayton’s communities, meetings
with key city officials and staff, and lectures to both the city staff and
the community at large. In preparation, Major Durham-Jefferson had
supplied me with the demographic and crime data I had requested and
scheduled all the meetings.
From the positive response to this initial visit by residents and staff came
a request from the city manager for our institute to embark on a program
that would produce schematic plans for the modification of two commu
nities: Five Oaks, the racially mixed residential community near
Dayton’s downtown; and Dunbar Manor, a predominantly African-
American public housing project. These two communities were typical
of many in Dayton. The city manager hoped that by having city staff
work closely with me, they could learn how it was done and could then
37

Creating Defensible Space
apply the methodology elsewhere themselves. In this book I will
only talk about the Five Oaks portion of our work in Dayton because
the modifications to the Dunbar Manor public housing project have
yet to be completed or evaluated.
The day-to-day running of the Five Oaks project was assigned to the
city’s director of urban development, Ray Reynolds. He asked the
planning department and highway department to each assign a staff
person to work with me full time while I was in Dayton. Police rep
resentatives attended all meetings with the community and city staff.
The chief of police himself attended the large public presentations.
The police also made crime data available as needed and were a con
tinuing supportive presence.
■ Initial presentations to city staff and the
community
The initial 3-day visit to Five Oaks was critical in determining
whether the city and community would buy into the concept. The
night of my arrival I insisted on a tour of the neighborhoods we
would be visiting the next day. Major Durham-Jefferson looked a
little concerned. “The only way to find out what we’re dealing
with,” I told her, “is to see what is going down at night.” During that
night tour we witnessed a drug raid by police in the public housing
project and saw drug dealing and prostitutes on many streets within
Five Oaks. We drove in Major Durham-Jefferson’s own car, rather
than in a police car, so as not to create a disturbance. Not knowing
our identity, drug dealers vied with each other to make a sale.
The next morning’s meeting with city staff was scheduled early so as
not to disrupt their working day. The city manager had assembled
most department heads, including: fire, emergency response, gar
bage collection, snow removal, planning, community relations, and
traffic. I particularly insisted on having all those people who were
likely to be most opposed to the concept present. The chief of police
was also present, but he was expected to be a proponent of the idea.
At this initial meeting, it is essential also to have the mayor, the city
manager, and a few city council members present. This informs the
city department heads that the concept is being taken seriously, and
38

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
they look to elected officials for guidance about whether to be receptive
to the idea and give their cooperation.
I have found that, from the start, a planner must take into account where
all the opposition to his concepts is likely to come from and address
them first. He must understand who all the players are, what their con
cerns are, and how to involve them in the process. Mini-neighborhoods
only work if the community and the city staff really accept the idea.
At the initial meeting, the city staff, elected officials, and I sat around a
table together. Using a slide projector, but sitting with them at the table
rather than talking from a podium, I explained the Defensible Space con
cept by showing what I had done in other cities. I told them that they
were free to interrupt at any time with any questions. I explained that the
reason they were the very first in the city to see the concept was that I
knew they were not going to like it. It was going to complicate how they
collected garbage and how they removed snow, the fire and ambulance
people were going to have to memorize new routes for getting to places
quickly, and it was going to disrupt traffic flow, but it was also going to
make a big difference to the life and viability of communities and to the
city’s tax base, because it would reduce crime, increase property values,
and stabilize neighborhoods.
I then explained that the plan would only be prepared with their con
tinual participation. That meant that representatives from every city
department would be involved in every step of the process. If, at any
time, we proposed something they thought was unworkable, I wanted
them to say so. We would then try to find a way to modify what we were
planning so as to accommodate them. We would not proceed with the
plan until we felt we had arrived at something everyone could accept.
In planning mini-neighborhoods, it is very important to get to know all
the players and what is bothering them. This is as true for the politics
within city hall as it is for neighborhood rivalries. Sometimes what is
being expressed as objective opposition to the idea has its origin in per
sonal politics, but it is just as important to know that as to learn the inter
nal pecking order and priorities at city hall. For instance, in Dayton, the
current director of the planning department had just been demoted from
assistant city manager by a new administration. He felt that he should
39

Creating Defensible Space
have been made the coordinator of this project rather than the city’s director
of urban development. Even though one of his staff was assigned to me
full time, the planning director kept raising philosophical and opera
tional objections to the evolving plans. I attempted to address them all,
but soon realized that something more was wrong. I invited the city
manager and the director of urban development out for a drink and
learned that the planning director had hoped that he would become the
new city manager. The Five Oaks plan was the new city manager’s first
showcase project, and the planning director was not going to do any-
thing to help it along. Once I knew that, I tried to sidestep the planning
director rather than engage in long public discussions with him.
Following that initial meeting, I toured Five Oaks in a minivan with
community leaders and city staff. On tour, we frequently stopped to walk
the streets and alleys, picking up residents along the way who had earlier
been alerted. I explained the concept to them and sought their input, try
ing out ideas on them about which streets to close. I took slides as we
walked and had them developed within the hour so that they could be
incorporated into later presentations.
Following the neighborhood tour, we all had lunch together at an infor
mal eating place. This was intended as an opportunity for everyone to
relax. With neighborhood people coming into contact with so many city
department heads, the discussion often went off on tangents—old
wounds were opened. However, this is a source of useful information,
and it gives city staff a sense of what is taking place on the streets of
their neighborhoods.
That evening, I gave a formal presentation to a previously well-publicized
town meeting. As many community people and city personnel as possible
were invited. A few hundred people attended. I again showed slides
about what I had accomplished in other cities, but this time I also in
cluded slides of the streets I had just walked through to show how simi
lar the situations were. The presentation was followed by an open
question period that lasted more than an hour. It is important that this
community meeting be chaired by a city staff person and that city staff
appear at the podium with me to help answer some questions. Otherwise,
the appearance given is of an outsider telling the community how to do
things.
40

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
In my presentations, I explain what the restructuring of streets to create
mini-neighborhoods accomplishes: It alters the entire look and function
of the community; it completely removes vehicular through-traffic (the
only traffic remaining will be seeking destinations within each mini-
neighborhood); and it completely changes the character of the streets
(instead of being long, directional avenues laden with traffic, they
become places where children can play safely and neighbors can inter-
act). By limiting vehicular access, the streets are perceived as being
under the control of the residents. Fewer cars make it easier to recognize
neighbors—and strangers. I explain that access to the newly defined
mini-neighborhoods, which will contain three to six streets, will be lim
ited to only one entry off an arterial street. People will only be able to
drive out the same way they came in. It is important to explain, again
and again, that the gates will only restrict vehicular traffic: Pedestrians
will be able to freely walk everywhere they did before.
Limiting access and egress to one opening for each mini-neighborhood
means that criminals and their clients would have to think about coming
into a mini-neighborhood to transact their business, as they would have
to leave the same way they entered. There would no longer be a multi
tude of escape routes open to them down every city street. A call to the
police by any resident would mean that criminals and their clients would
be meeting the police on their way out. Such a street system will clearly
be perceived by criminals, and particularly by their clients, as too risky
in which to do business.
The subdivision of a community into mini-neighborhoods is intended to
encourage the interaction of neighbors. Parents will watch their children
playing in the now quiet streets and get to know each other. They will no
longer feel locked up in their houses, facing the world alone. Tensions
between renters and property owners, and the concern over incivilities,
will likely also diminish as both parties living on the same closed street
come to know each other through greater association and are able to
develop standards of mutually acceptable behavior together.
Five Oaks demonstrated that once people came together within their own
mini-neighborhood, they reached out to other neighborhoods and to the
larger urban community. In other cities, mini-neighborhoods have not
41

Creating Defensible Space
only arrested decline; they have made people realize they could intervene
to change things, and led them to become active in city politics. This is
something we documented in our study of the closed streets of St. Louis
(Newman, Grandin, Wayno, 1974) and witnessed not only in Dayton but
in our mini-neighborhood projects in Florida. At the level of the neigh
borhood, reinvestment in one’s own property no longer has to be under-
taken as a risky, individual act but as an activity done in concert with
one’s neighbors.
The cost of creating mini-neighborhoods is low, about $10,000 for each
gate serving 30 to 40 households. Cities can use a variety of means for
paying for the modifications: In St. Louis, the middle-income residents
almost universally paid for it themselves; in Florida, some cities used
CDBG funds to pay for the implementation costs, while others issued
special district tax bonds to pay for the work and taxed the beneficiaries
accordingly. Using the latter method, each household pays about $60
extra in real-estate taxes per year over a 10-year period to cover the cost
of the modifications. Still other cities split the costs between residents
and CDBG or capital improvement funds.
Resident participation in paying for the gates is important for three reasons:
■ It instills a sense of ownership, and enhancing proprietary feelings is
what Defensible Space modifications are all about. Paying for one-
half the cost of the modifications gives residents a possessive
attitude toward the gates and the semiprivate streets they create.
■ It gives the community more control over the future of the modifica
tions. If, down the road, a new city administration decides, for what-
ever reason, that it no longer wants the gates, the community will
have more leverage in preventing the city from removing them if it
has paid for one-half the construction costs.
■ A community’s willingness to cover 50 percent of the cost makes a
city more receptive to the idea and gives the project priority in the
city’s capital improvement budget. Cities are always looking for
ways to stretch their limited funds and politicians want to take as
much credit as they can in physically evident change.
42

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
It is very important to make clear to residents that most of their internal

streets will be converted to cul-de-sacs and that in the first few months

following the modifications residents, their outside friends, and service

people will be inconvenienced. During this initiation period, many

residents will want the gates removed, including some of those who

voted to have them installed. But after 4 months and after residents and

their friends have had a chance to learn to find their way around, people

will not be able to believe the improvement in the quality of their lives

produced by these changes and will insist that the gates remain.

At the conclusion of these initial meetings, I ask residents and city staff

if the consensus is that we continue with the process to see if we can

develop a plan or simply stop there. I specifically do not ask for

approval of the concept, as this is premature: Most people will have

heard of the Defensible Space and mini-

neighborhood concepts only for the first

time; they will need time to digest them.

More importantly, people will need to

see how the planning process evolves,

whether their participation genuinely

shapes the plan, and what the plan for

their mini-neighborhood will actually

look like. After these initial meetings, the

overwhelming majority of Five Oaks resi

dents voted to continue with the process.

■ Community participation in
designing the mini-
neighborhoods
It is critical to the success of the plan
that as many people as possible partici
pate in defining the boundaries of their
mini-neighborhoods, that is, in deciding
which streets should remain open, and
where the gates should go. On my sec
ond trip to Dayton, I called the community together and showed them
Figure II–9:
Greek cross plan for an
large plans of Five Oaks. These plans showed each house on each street
ideal mini-neighborhood
layout.
43

Creating Defensible Space
and each shed in each alley. I ex
plained to the residents that they were
now going to define their own mini-
neighborhoods and outlined the prin
ciples they should use in defining them:
■ Smallness is essential to identity,
so a mini-neighborhood should
consist of a grouping of no more
than three to six streets. The
optimal configuration for a
mini-neighborhood is a Greek
cross, a vertical with two hori
zontals. Only one point of the
cross will remain open, the
Figure II–10:
Overly large cul-de-sac
layout.
other five will have gates across
them.
■ Cul-de-sac configurations should not be too large, for they take resi
dents too far out of their way and produce too much of their own
internal traffic. If a mini-neighborhood is made up of a vertical with
six horizontals, for instance, residents will have to travel too long a
distance to get to the end of their mini-neighborhood, and then they
will have to travel all the way back to get out of it. In the process,
they will encounter others doing the same thing. This will produce a
great amount of internal traffic, and traffic is exactly what we are
trying to avoid.
■ A mini-neighborhood should consist of a grouping of streets
sharing similar housing characteristics: building type (such as
detached, semidetached, row houses, and walkups), building
size, lot size, setbacks from the street, building materials,
architectural style, and density.
■ To facilitate access by emergency vehicles, access to the entry
portals of each mini-neighborhood should be from existing
arterial streets. As much as possible, these arterials should be
on the border of the Five Oaks neighborhood to enable outsid
ers to find their way in easily.
44

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
■ Mini-neighborhoods and their
access arterials should be
designed to facilitate access but
discourage through-traffic in the
overall Five Oaks community.
I then asked people to come up to
the map, gave them each a different
colored felt pen, and said, “First
make an X where you live and then
show us what you think of as your
mini-neighborhood.” Then I asked
the rest of the audience: “How many
of you who live nearby agree with
their boundaries?” Some would say
yes, others would say no. I would
then ask the no persons to come up
and take another colored pen, locate
where they live, and draw in their
view of their mini-neighborhood.
This process inevitably elicits some
friendly booing interspersed with

applause. Then I ask if anybody else

wants to change that boundary. And so it goes until we reach a consensus.

Such meetings often run for a few hours. It is usually possible to get any

differences resolved, but sometimes it becomes necessary to put in two

mini-neighborhoods where you might have anticipated only one. A com

mon mistake, in any case, is to make mini-neighborhoods too large. It is

important to keep in mind that this process has two functions: to under-

stand the neighborhoods that exist in people’s minds, and to bring

people together to begin planning for their own future.

Once the mini-neighborhoods are defined, I ask people to volunteer to

become mini-neighborhood captains. Their job is to make certain that

every household in their mini-neighborhood is aware of what is being

planned and participates in determining which street will remain open

and where the gates will be placed. This will require putting fliers in

everyone’s mailbox to announce meetings and city council hearings.

Figure II–11:
Schematic showing ideal
way to access mini-
neighborhoods from
arterials.
45

Creating Defensible Space
KENILWORTH
KENWOOD
GRAFTON
HOMEWOOD
HARVARD
NEAL
GRANDVIEW
SQUIRREL
CORPUS
CHRISTI
ROCKFORD
■ Traffic studies
As soon as the city of Dayton commit
ted itself to the process, I asked the
highway department to undertake
origin-destination studies to determine
how much traffic on the streets of
Five Oaks was simply driving through
the neighborhood. They found that
35 percent was. I then asked them to
determine whether the existing arterials
at the periphery of Five Oaks would be
able to handle the 35-percent cut-
through traffic that would be removed
from the neighborhood streets. They
Figure II–12:
Mini-neighborhood
boundaries of Five Oaks as
defined by residents.
found that they could.
■ Description of the Five Oaks mini-neighborhood plan
The final Five Oaks mini-neighborhood plan that evolved under my
guidance was very much what the community sketched at its meetings.
Minor modifications were made to accommodate traffic and emergency
vehicle access but always with community approval.
The one-half-square-mile Five Oaks community was divided into
10 mini-neighborhoods, each defined by the characteristics discussed
earlier. Thirty-five streets and 25 alleys were closed. Two of the mini-
neighborhoods, Corpus Christi and Grandview, housed the community’s
major schools and hospital complex. The remaining eight mini-neighbor-
hoods were primarily residential in character—one included part of the
hospital complex. Each mini-neighborhood was defined on the basis of a
similarity in the size of the houses and lots, the materials of construction,
and whether they contained single-family or multifamily buildings. Each
mini-neighborhood contained between three and six streets.
The major arterials that defined the periphery of the Five Oaks commu
nity were retained intact and allowed east-west and north-south move
ment past the community. They were: Grand and Delaware going
east-west; and Salem, Forest, and Main going north-south.
46

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
Only one north-south arterial that was internal to the community was
retained in my plan, Richmond. The community later decided that it would
prefer to have Richmond interrupted so as to further discourage north-south
through-traffic. This produced some congestion on one or two streets, and it
is difficult to know whether that change was worthwhile.
The 10 mini-neighborhoods were given temporary names for identifica
tion purposes only. These were the names of the most prominent street
within each: Kenilworth, Kenwood, Harvard, Grafton, Homewood,
Neal, Rockford, and Squirrel. The other two neighborhoods are Corpus
Christi and Grandview, the school and hospital complex. The internal, Figure II–13:
two-way arterials that both define and give access to each of the mini-
Mini-neighborhood plan for
Five Oaks showing location
neighborhoods were: Five Oaks, Richmond, Old Orchard, Homewood,
of gates and entries into
Neal, and Rockford. mini-neighborhoods.
47

Creating Defensible Space
A plan showing the workings
of these access arterials and the
cul-de-sac streets that serve
each mini-neighborhood
appears in figure II–13.
Because the existing streets in
Five Oaks are too narrow, the
cul-de-sac at the end of each
street is not actually a cul-de-
sac but is either a hammerhead
turn, or makes use of the inter-
Figure II–14:
Hammerhead turn at end
of street.
secting alleys to provide a turn-
around at the end of each
deadend street.
Only one entrance, or portal, is provided to each mini-neighborhood, and
it is the only way out as well. A prominent symbol should be used to
mark the entry and indicate that one is coming into a private world. We
proposed the use of brick pillars that included the Five Oaks name and
the name of the mini-neighborhood.
We also proposed that the pillars be
positioned within the roadbed, inten
tionally constricting the entry. These
pillars were to be placed to define the
outer line of the curbside parking. We
also recommended that a brick paving
strip be introduced into the roadbed
running between the two pillars. The
top of the bricks would be level with
the road surface, but the strip would
produce a noise and a noticeable
vibration as automobiles ran over it.
This would bring to the drivers’ fur
ther attention the fact that they were
entering a different kind of street. The
bricks are intentionally not raised
Figure II–15:
above the surface of the road so they
Proposed portal markers for
mini-neighborhoods.
48

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
will not interfere with snow

removal equipment. A standard

deadend street sign would also be

added to explain that there was

no other outlet.

The pillars actually installed by

the city were positioned on the

sidewalk on the far side of the

road. They proved to be barely

visible and did little to identify

the entry portals. The decision to

position them this way, rather

than the way we proposed, was
Figure II–16:

the result of the snow removal people saying that pillars located within Actual position of portals

the roadway would prove a hazard.
as installed.

The gates installed by the city limiting access and egress to and from

each mini-neighborhood come very close to the ones we designed. They

are relatively prominent and

serve to deter vehicular access

while allowing pedestrians entry.

In our design we had proposed

two additional smaller gates

above the sidewalks on either

side of the road. These pedestrian

gates were to remain open all the

time. A fence would then con

tinue the closure running from

the pedestrian gate to some

physical element on the adjoining

property (fencing, shrubs, or a

building).
In case of emergencies, such as access for fire trucks and ambulances,
these gates are able to be opened. Fire and emergency personnel should
be given keys to them. To simplify access to all streets by moving vans, a
few residents living near these gates should also be given keys to them.
Figure II–17:
Proposed gates defining
mini-neighborhoods.
49

Creating Defensible Space
In implementing our designs,
the city decided to simplify
my gate design, eliminating
the pedestrian gate on either
side of the road and the fence
extension from the pedestrian
gate onto the adjacent prop
erty. The city also eliminated
the lights we proposed for the
tops of the pillars. These were
intended to illuminate the gates
at night. The city used large
reflectors instead, saving money
Figure II–18:
by not having to provide lights,
Gates as actually installed.
replacement bulbs, or wiring from the nearest electric utility pole. The result
is not too elegant and detracts from the stylishness of the gate.
The basic reason for the city changing the gate design was cost. Only
70 percent of the residents wanted the mini-neighborhood design imple
mented, and in order to placate the others, the city manager promised
that a survey would be taken at the end of the first year. If the majority
of residents wanted the gates removed, the city would remove them.
This policy dictated that the gate design be simple to minimize costs
both for implementation and removal. Although there is still another rea
son why the pedestrian gates were eliminated: The city wanted it made
clear that the gates were intended to restrict automobile traffic only, and
that pedestrians would continue to have unlimited access to every street.
It should be remembered that children would still have to walk through
various mini-neighborhoods to get to and from school.
In the street closures implemented in Florida, communities used attrac
tive plantings set against walls rather than gates to close off streets. The
lack of snow and the lack of street curbs and gutters allowed that to be
done where it could not be done up north. These floral solutions must be
careful not to interfere with existing drainage patterns, however. The
repositioning of rainwater sewers and the provision of new gutters to
accommodate a planted area at the end of a street can prove prohibi
tively costly. It can also deprive the fire department of the flexibility of
an operable gate in the case of a serious emergency.
50

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
■ The alley problem in Dayton
The fact that many of the houses in Five Oaks are also served by alleys,
and that these alleys are used for both parking and garbage collection
complicated our plan appreciably. For maximum effectiveness in facili
tating community control and in reducing crime, access to the alleys had
to be limited to the residents of each mini-neighborhood and to the gar
bage collection vehicles.
In all cases, the alleys were too narrow to allow a garbage truck to turn
around and go back the way it came. This would also be inefficient and
costly. Garbage trucks had to have the ability to continue through to the
alley in the next mini-neighborhood. In some instances, such as in the
Grafton and Homewood mini-neighborhoods, a common alley served
streets in two different mini-neighborhoods, making it impossible to make
each mini-neighborhood truly
separate.
Access to the alleys as well as
to the streets was closed off by
locked gates to which only the
sanitation department had
keys. Garbage trucks were to
be the dominant users of the
locked alley gates. Residents
did not need to open the alley
gates because they could turn
their cars around in the alleys
as they entered or left their
parking garages.
■ Allied measures for stabilizing the community
The physical modifications were intended to dramatically redefine the
community and give residents greater control and use of their streets.
But these physical modifications were only the first of three other mea
sures implemented in the Five Oaks community. The first measure was
critical to the success of the physical plan. The three other measures are
listed below in order of their importance.
Figure II–19:
Gates across the rear
alleys. Parking garages
are seen in background.
51

Creating Defensible Space
Coordinate police activities with target areas. Once the gates were
installed, police, in a concerted effort, came in and flushed out the drug
dealers, pimps, and prostitutes. They had done this before in Five Oaks,
but the criminals had come back a week or 2 later. However, when the
criminals were removed after the gates were installed, they did not return.
I believe that this police component is very important to the success of
the entire program. Continual police liaison with the community and
their participation in community planning meetings is also essential to
giving the community the reassurance it needs. The effect of creating
mini-neighborhoods in other communities where I have worked has
been to personalize community/police relations. Creating mini-
neighborhoods has produced a genuine appreciation of the police for the
work they do and has resulted in a focused program by the police to
eliminate the real problems threatening the community. Police officers
come to be recognized and known by their first names. The police, in
turn, now know many community residents by name. When a problem
arises, they usually know exactly where to go to address it. A year after
the modifications, police say it takes a much smaller expenditure of
force on their part to keep Five Oaks free of crime.
One of the benefits of street closure and the creation of mini-neighborhoods
is that it brings neighbors together in unified action to address their joint
problems. It also focuses their attention on removing criminal activity
from their communities. Rather than having one or two hesitant neigh
bors acting in isolation to bring criminal activity to the attention of the
police, an entire street, or a mini-neighborhood, now acts in concert to
alert the police and provide them with support in their anticrime efforts.
A united community can more readily document criminal activity and
photograph and identify criminals. Immediately after the street closings,
police will be called upon by the community more frequently. These
calls for service will diminish rapidly as the word about the street clo
sures spreads to criminals and their clients. Police will find themselves
working with a community that has a clearer sense of its own values and
how they want the police to assist them. It should prove easier for the
police to make arrests and to discourage further criminal activity within
the community.
52

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
Improve code enforcement procedures. There were some truly disrepu
tably maintained properties in Five Oaks that discouraged adjoining
property owners from making their own improvements. Many properties
had so many code violations, they could be shut down by the city for
being beyond repair. Their owners were milking them for what they
could and not reinvesting a penny. When these buildings could no longer
attract even poor families, the landlords rented them out to drug dealers,
who were pleased with the location and had little need for amenities.
The effect of neglected property is threefold: It results in neglect of adja
cent property; it brings down sales prices in the surrounding area; and it
attracts drug dealers who increase crime, traffic, and the perception that
the community is out of control and going downhill. All of this causes the
flight of even more homeowners, thus further deflating property values.
Although normal municipal code enforcement procedures do exist, they
are most effective against those property owners who are already consci
entious and concerned. They prove cumbersome to implement against
slumlords who retain attorneys to endlessly delay the resolution of a
complaint and see the small fines exacted by the city as part of their cost
of doing business. Using the normal process, years can go by before any
fines are exacted, and even then no improvements of any significance
will have been made.
To counter these difficulties, the city of Fort Lauderdale developed an
innovative code enforcement procedure that has not only proved to be
quick and effective, it has brought in revenue that more than covers the
cost of the program. It is called a code team and works as follows: Using
the State powers given to police to enforce municipal ordinances—that
means powers up to and including arrest—the police are able to issue
warnings stating that code violations are arrestable offenses that can
result in immediate court appearances.
The code team usually includes a building inspector and a police officer
or a fire marshall. In this way, the necessary expertise can be presented
before the court at the same time. Court appearances are usually sched
uled within 30 days of a recorded violation. Of the 250 violations cited
since the code team went into action in Fort Lauderdale, all 250 have
53

Creating Defensible Space
resulted in fines and corrections. The most notorious city slumlord has
been arrested at his office, handcuffed, and brought before a magistrate.
The city’s fines and the improvements required of the slumlord are put
ting him out of business.
Another proven method for dealing with property occupied by drug deal
ers is property confiscation. Both municipal codes and Federal laws per
mit this action.
Encourage first-time homeownership. Much of the physical decline in
Five Oaks is attributed to the exodus of resident homeowners. Absentee
landlords simply do not maintain their properties. This is particularly
true of two-family houses, where the side-by-side rental units are in the
worst state of repair. Before the decline of Five Oaks, the most common
form of tenure had the owner living in one unit and the renter in the
other. This is no longer so.
The residents of Five Oaks
felt that a city program that
assists people in purchasing
and living in the duplex units
is critical to the rehabilitation
of their neighborhood. The
key to such a program is to
couple assistance for the
downpayment with funds
needed to rehabilitate the unit.
The actual cost of these
duplex units is not high, and
with a readily available loan,
the amount of the down-
Figure II–20:

Residents making
payment is no more than a few thousand dollars. Window and roof

improvements to their
replacement are commonly needed repairs, as are furnace, plumbing,
homes after the creation of
the mini-neighborhoods.
and electric improvements. This rehabilitation can lead to a cost of
$10,000 to $20,000 per duplex. A subsidy for rehabilitation that is tied
to a required residency of 5 to 10 years (with prorated benefits) would be
most advantageous and cost effective in maintaining property values and
the urban tax base. Such a program could also be directed at perspective
purchasers of single-family houses.
54

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
Because many of the purchasers of these duplexes will likely be first-
time homebuyers, a parallel education program that teaches them how to
prioritize repairs and to manage and maintain rental property is essential.
This would also help to ensure that the funds being invested in the pro-
gram will be spent most effectively.
There are various Federal, State, and local programs directed at first-
time homebuyers and at rehabilitation. Local banks have a Federal obli
gation to participate in local rehabilitation efforts. Dayton devised a
three-point demonstration program to improve distressed properties. It
provides funds to train existing landlords to be better managers; it edu
cates and provides downpayment assistance to renters who are position
ing themselves to become homeowners; and it provides interest rate
buydowns and loans for home purchase, rehabilitation, and improve
ment. The city targeted the Five Oaks community with these programs
immediately after the street closures went into effect.
■ Evaluation of the modifications
An evaluation by the city’s office of management and budget revealed
that within a year of creating the mini-neighborhoods, cut-through traffic
was reduced by 67 percent, overall traffic volume by 36 percent, and
traffic accidents by 40 percent. A survey of 191 residents conducted by
the Social Science Research Center of the University of Dayton showed that
73 percent of residents thought that there was less traffic, but 13 percent saw
no change; 62 percent said there was less noise, but 27 percent saw no
change (Dayton OMB Evaluation, 1994).
The police department found that overall crime had been reduced by
26 percent and violent crime by 50 percent. Robbery, burglary, assault,
and auto theft were found to be the lowest they had been in 5 years. By
comparison, in Dayton overall, crime had increased by 1 percent. The
university survey showed that 53 percent of residents thought there was
less crime, but that 36 percent felt there was no change; 45 percent felt
safer, and 43 percent thought it was as safe as it had been before.
Housing values were up 15 percent in Five Oaks in the first year, versus
4 percent in the region. People’s investment in their homes and property
55

Creating Defensible Space
had substantially increased.
The owners of 75 rental build
ings and 45 homeowners had
applied for and received city
improvement loans. Others
had gone directly to banks or
financed improvements them-
selves. With the neighborhood
changing and housing values
going up, people found that it
now paid to make improve
ments: They were no longer
acting alone and knew they
Figure II–21:
would be getting their money
Renter and homeowner
back when they sold the property. A survey found that housing requiring
children playing together in
both major and minor repairs dropped by 45 percent. For the first time in
a cul-de-sac street. The
gates can be seen at rear.
many years, houses in the neighborhood were attracting families with
children. There was a 55-percent increase in housing sales during this
same 1-year period.
The University of Dayton’s survey found that 67 percent of residents
thought their neighborhood was a better place to live, while 13 percent
said it had remained about the same; 39 percent said they knew their
neighbors better, while 53 percent said they knew as many as before;
24 percent said it was easier to recognize strangers; and 36 percent were
more involved in the community (that is, through block clubs, civic
activities, neighborhood watches). Most importantly, there was no differ
ence in these perceptions between African Americans and whites, renters
and homeowners. Drugs, theft from houses and cars, and harassment
were all found to be less of a problem than a year earlier (University of
Dayton, 1994).
The usual complaint about such programs, that they displace crime into the
surrounding neighborhoods, also proved untrue. Crime in all the communi
ties immediately surrounding Five Oaks decreased by an average of
1.2 percent. The police’s explanation is that criminals and their clients knew
that the residents of Five Oaks have taken control of their streets, but
because they did not know the neighborhood’s exact boundaries, they
moved out of the surrounding communities as well. The positive effects
56

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
in traffic reduction also spilled over into bordering communities as all
of Five Oaks has itself become an obstacle to cut-through traffic. Other
communities in Dayton are now exploring a similar restructuring.
Whether this neighborhood stabilization effort served to deprive low-
income residents of future housing opportunities in Five Oaks is best
answered in this way: The neighborhood to the immediate west of Five
Oaks is virtually identical in physical construction. Its decline preceded
that of Five Oaks by a few years. Nothing was done to stop it. Driving
through it now, one finds that every third house has either been boarded
up or torn down. The community is perceived as being so unsafe that
even white drug buyers will not go into the neighborhood. It is no longer
a desirable place to live for renters or homeowners. Because of the high
rates of abandonment and vacancy, there are fewer low-income renters
per block now than in Five Oaks. So the policy of letting neighborhoods
decline to create rental opportunities for low-income families proves to
be a short-lived one. From the city’s point of view, that neighborhood
now contributes very little to its tax base, and its infrastructure of streets,
water, power, and sewer lines goes wasted.
By comparison, Five Oaks is reducing its vacancies. Its African-Ameri
can, low-income renters share their streets with middle-income whites.
Their children play together. They benefit from low crime, good schools,
and safe streets and play areas. The quality of municipal services Five
Oaks receives, such as police, fire, snow removal, and garbage collec
tion, is typical of that enjoyed by middle-income communities that con-
tribute to the city’s tax base. The mutual respect resulting from closer
contact between the different racial and income groups has a positive
effect on everyone. “The bottom line is this,” says Ray Reynolds, the
city’s director of urban development, “if Five Oaks had not adopted its
mini-neighborhood plan, it would have gone the way of its neighbor to
the west.”
Michael R. Turner, the mayor of Dayton, had the following to say after
2 years of observing the changes in Five Oaks:
The Five Oaks neighborhood has been the subject of articles in pro
fessional journals, the popular press from Newsweek to the Econo
mist, television shows from The Today Show to Dateline NBC. We
57

Creating Defensible Space
have hosted visitors from a dozen cities and responded to literally
hundreds of requests for information. This attention is a testament to
the search in America for urban solutions that work.
The lesson we learned in Dayton is that when Defensible Space con
cepts are applied thoughtfully and with complete grassroots involve
ment, results can make neighborhoods more livable and increase the
sense of community.
Dayton is typical of many mid-sized cities in America: It has lost
many of its major employers; it lost 25 percent of its population
since 1970 (declining from 243,000 in 1970 to 182,000 in 1990); it
has an average income of $22,000/year, compared with the average
income in the county of $32,000/year; its unemployment rate is usu
ally a couple of points above the national (9.4 percent in 1993).
But Dayton is also a city of world-class innovation, from the Wright
Brothers Flyer to the pop-top can. The Five Oaks Neighborhood Sta
bilization program is another such innovation.
If your community is considering a Defensible Space plan, pay
attention to the lessons we learned:
1. A high level of citizen participation is critical.
2. Do more than close the streets; make it a comprehensive program:
offer first-time homebuyers loans, target code enforcement efforts,
and use police task forces to flush out the bad elements.
3. Accept some shortcomings. There are going to be a lot of benefits,
but also some traffic inconveniences. It is not like you are starting
from scratch on a fresh site: This is a retrofitting process, and
some of the problems will not have 100-percent solutions.
4. Put some public policy in place: Decide on how the changes to
the streets will be made and paid for; and decide when and for
whom the gates will be opened (for snow plowing, fire and police
emergencies, etc.).
58

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
■ Limits to the application of the mini-neighborhood
concept
The creation of mini-neighborhoods will not survive a cookie-cutter
approach: The concept does not lend itself to every situation. In commu
nities where neighborhood people have tried the concept on their own,
they have often failed. The experience of the highway department initia
tives in Chicago and Los Angeles are not much better. There are certain
conditions that must be in place and the action must involve the commu
nity in a particular way to be successful.
Need for a minimal percentage of homeowners. Existing homeowner-
ship is a critical ingredient to the success of mini-neighborhood creation.
I have found that the presence of 40-percent resident homeowners may
prove to be a minimum requirement. This is because in many communi
ties, renters are normally given only 6-month to 1-year leases. This does
not give them time to develop a commitment to their neighborhood, nor
is there any incentive for them to maintain the house they live in or to
care for its grounds. For us to also expect them to be concerned about
the nature of the activity in the street would be really stretching it.
It might be possible for this 40-percent homeowner minimum to be
reduced if there is a community tradition of renters occupying their units
for periods of 5 years or more, and/or if there is a strong community
identity among renters, coupled with strong social organizations. This
does occur in some cities. In Baltimore, for instance, some renters have
occupied neighborhoods for a few generations and have strong commu
nal and religious organizations within them. Where this exists, the per-
cent of homeowners could drop to as low as 20 percent, but a first-time
homebuyer’s program should still be made a very active parallel compo
nent of the mini-neighborhood effort.
Need for a predominance of single-family units. The percentage of
single-family houses versus multifamily housing on each street is also
an important factor. This is because in single-family houses, the front
yard belongs to the family. By closing the street it makes it easy for that
family to extend its realm of concern from its front yard into the street.
Single-family houses include all three categories: fully detached houses,
semidetached houses, and row houses (see the exposition of Defensible
59

Creating Defensible Space
Space principles in chapter I). Each of these three categories of single-
family houses has separate entries facing the street directly off its front yard.
It is not that easy to create mini-neighborhoods in streets composed of
multifamily buildings. The entries to these buildings serve many fami
lies and are often located at the side rather than facing the street. The
grounds are usually public and not associated with particular families.
Thus residents’ adoption of the closed street as an extension of their
dwellings is not second nature.
Need for quality schools. If a mini-neighborhood program is meant to
attract working- and middle-class families with children, it is necessary
to have good schools in the area. Dayton’s public schools are not highly
regarded. The Five Oaks community had three parochial schools operat
ing within its boundaries, and 30 percent of the students in these schools
came from the community. Residents felt that the presence of these schools
was a necessary ingredient to the success of the mini-neighborhood effort.
Communities in other cities may not have parochial schools, but a mag-
net school of good quality can serve the same purpose. In some gated
communities in St. Louis, where neither magnet schools nor parochial
schools were in existence, parents participated actively in the local pub
lic schools to improve performance. They helped purchase books and
supplies, and ran special music, art, and sports programs.
It should be remembered that one of the appeals of inner-city mini-
neighborhoods is the quality housing available at low cost in comparison
with the suburbs. But the price for that is the need to supplement the cost of
local schooling, either through the use of parochial schools or through active
participation on the part of residents in making local schools better.
Need for mini-neighborhoods to reflect people’s perceptions. It is criti
cal that residents from every street participate in the planning process
and define their own mini-neighborhoods. This can be a time-consuming
process that many cities would prefer to avoid. In cities where the high-
way departments designed the street closures without community
involvement, the results have often been pointless.
Working with local institutions. In creating mini-neighborhoods, it is
important to work closely with the institutions in the area. The schools,
60

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
hospitals, and universities can be a real resource in many ways. They
usually have a stronger commitment to the neighborhood than individual
homeowners. They are also in a position to subsidize their staff to buy
homes in the community.
I try to hold my community meetings in hospitals and schools and invite
the principals of these institutions to attend so that they too can help
shape the plan and make it theirs. In Dayton, the plan I prepared made it
easy for the hospital staff, ambulances, and patients to come and go. But
after I left, the community modified that portion of the plan and, by so
doing, antagonized the hospital staff. The city then had to tear down
these gates and revert to my original plan. The lesson again is: Everyone
must participate in the planning process from beginning to end.
Race and the attitude toward mini-neighborhoods. Most of my work in
creating mini-neighborhoods has been in racially and economically
mixed communities, but I have also worked in all-African-American
communities of varying income levels. Where the residents of these
communities were working and middle class, they proved to be as strong
advocates of mini-neighborhoods as whites of similar incomes in pre-
dominantly white communities. They understood very clearly that these
mechanisms would enable them to keep the local gangs under control
and the drug dealers and prostitutes out.
The most difficult communities I have found to work in are those that
are about 70-percent African American that are undergoing rapid transi
tion. In these situations, some African-American residents perceive the
proposed gates as a device for either locking them in or locking them
out. When I point out that some of the most expensive communities in
their city and suburbs are gated, they scoff, saying: What has that to do
with us? African Americans in this country do have a history of being
excluded, so their position is understandable. However, by totally refus
ing to entertain such a solution, they are depriving themselves of a
simple and effective means of making their communities safer and free
of traffic.
A bit into the process, I discovered that African-American opposition in
communities undergoing transition often came from people who did not
actually live in the community but were hoping to buy into it given that
61

Creating Defensible Space
housing prices were falling. Because of this situation, they did not want
a program that would interrupt the trend. They did not enjoy hearing me
say: “We’re going to make this community more attractive to home-
owners; and housing prices are going to jump by 20 to 30 percent.” In
self-defense, one of the things I learned to do was ask people to identify
themselves and give their address in the community before they spoke.
That put their criticism in perspective. But in truth, one cannot stabilize
a neighborhood for homeowners and increase property values on the one
hand, without also making it more expensive for some people to buy into
on the other.
When working in one neighborhood, one is open to criticism of favorit
ism from various other neighborhoods throughout a city. It is important
for a city, therefore, to target African-American and Hispanic-American
communities as well as predominantly white communities for Defensible
Space modifications. In Dayton, I prepared plans for the modification of a
public housing project as well as for Five Oaks. In this way it cannot be
said that the city’s security programs are being directed only at middle-
income families. In fact, I was told that Five Oaks was selected to be the
first test of the mini-neighborhood concept in Dayton just because it was
50/50 African American and white. City officials feared that if it were a
predominantly white community, their choice would have been severely
criticized and implementing the modifications would have been made
difficult.
Criticism from resident drug dealers and others. In some communities,
drug dealers prove to be the wealthiest residents and often own the big
gest houses. Needless to say, they feel very threatened by my proposals,
but they will rarely get up and talk for themselves. Instead, they have
well-spoken friends give long dissertations on the evil of gates and the
removal of freedom of access and association, which is the “American
way.” When I reply that my experience has shown that mini-neighborhoods
actually serve to bring people out of hiding and encourage them to interact
with each other, they boo me. When I ask what evidence they can point to
that shows that people living on open streets interact more readily, or
interact across the urban spectrum, they are silent. (So, for that matter,
are my critics from academia.) Our study in St. Louis compared closed
streets with open streets and found a significant difference in residents’
knowledge of their neighbors (Newman, Grandin, Wayno, 1974).
62

Chapter Two: Mini-neighborhoods in Five Oaks, Dayton, Ohio
The police can be very useful in helping one learn about the relationship
of community critics with drug dealers and slumlords. Let me hasten to
say though that not everyone objecting to mini-neighborhoods on philo
sophical grounds is either a drug dealer or slumlord. Certainly, my crit
ics from academia are not.
In some communities, including public housing projects, drug dealers
are so omnipresent, they literally run the community and are strong con
tributors to the local economy. They provide young children with jobs as
runners and subsidize the rents of seniors for the use of their apartments
in which to hide their stash or to manufacture drugs. I have seen college-
educated women at meetings speak of drug dealers as a financial boon to
the community, oblivious to the fact that these same drug dealers have
hooked resident teenagers on drugs and turned some of them into prostitutes.
In such communities, concerned residents will also stand up and say,
“You don’t understand the situation here. Drug dealers run this place.
These gates are just going to enable them to further assert their control.”
That assessment may be correct: Mini-neighborhoods may not work
there. Mini-neighborhoods only work where the people who do not want
crime feel that they are the majority and that this mechanism will give
them the control of their neighborhood they seek. But if they feel that
the neighborhood is no longer theirs, they are right not to support the
concept.
63

C H A P T E R
The Clason Point Experiment
THREE
Row-house communities account for one-fifth of all public housing in the
United States. Many medium-size cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco, and
Washington, D.C., have a significant number of row-house developments, and
in smaller cities like Indianapolis, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City, public hous
ing for families with children was primarily built as row houses. From a Defen
sible Space point of view, this was a good first step because developers created
housing with no interior public spaces. However, many of these projects prevent
residents from controlling the spaces outside their homes because the units were
so poorly positioned on their grounds.
Most residents come to public housing with no previous experience of maintain
ing a home of their own. Few have ever had the opportunity of identifying the
land outside their home as their own. Housing management knows this history,
but rather than adopt a policy of guiding residents toward the assumption of
responsibility, most authorities assume that their residents are inadequate to the
task and accept the notion of their dependency.
I became interested in testing this basic assumption early in my Defensible
Space work and looked for the opportunity of dividing up and assigning the
previously public grounds of a housing project to individual residents. I wanted
to learn whether residents would adopt these areas as their own and assume
responsibility for maintaining and securing them. Actually, I had even greater
hopes that after this reassignment of grounds, residents would look out their
windows and see the public street, not as a distant environment, but as an exten
sion of their own private lawns, and, therefore, under their sphere of influence
and scrutiny.
My second interest in this experiment was to provide low-income residents, in their
successful efforts in improving the grounds around their own homes, with living
testament to the success and permanence of their individual efforts. Finally, I hoped
that this success would change the attitudes of housing management about resi
dents’ ability to affect change and take control.
65

Creating Defensible Space
The opportunity to radically redesign the grounds of a row-house project
and to reassign it to residents was given me by the New York City
Housing Authority in 1969. I say, given to me, but it took a great deal
of convincing. After I had prepared the plans for the modification of the
project, the authority changed its mind and withdrew its support. This
was because they had made a recent decision to tear it down and build
highrises on the site. I begged and pleaded, but to no avail. I finally had
to go to our research sponsor, the U.S. Department of Justice, to ask
them to intervene on our behalf. The housing authority acquiesced, and I
am endlessly grateful to them. For what would have been the impact of
my first Defensible Space writings without Clason Point? I tell this story
only to prepare those who would follow me for the struggles they face.
The management of the New York City Housing Authority used to say
that I knew exactly how hard the floors of their building were from hav
ing been bounced off them so many times.
Although I have modified many row-house projects since Clason
Point—and many have proven even more successful—I chose to use
Clason Point here, as the example of this kind of work, because it was an
important first step, and there were many things I did wrong that are
worth pointing out.
Clason Point is a 400-unit pub
lic housing project located in
the South Bronx, a compara
tively high-crime area of the
city of New York. It consists
of 46 buildings that mostly
contain row houses. Smaller
walkup units for seniors are
located at the ends of some
buildings. At 25 units per acre,
this is a dense project by row-
house standards. Such a high
density was achieved by limiting
Figure III–1:
off-street parking to 0.15 spaces
Clason Point as seen from per unit.

street, before modifications.

Note the overflowing

garbage dumpster at left.

66

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
The project was built as
munitions workers’ housing
during World War II when
few people had cars. It was
constructed of exposed ce
ment block in an army bar-
racks fashion. Although it
was supposed to have been
torn down after the war, the
housing authority kept it run
ning until 1969, which is
when I first learned about it.
The project was then suffer

ing a 30-percent vacancy rate

because of its rundown condition. Its open, unkempt grounds and the un

finished, cement block buildings made it stand out against the surround

ing streets of privately owned, red-brick row houses. The project bore the

stigma of public housing, and public housing meant that it was owned by the

public and residents’ rights were confined to the interior of their units. One

had the impression that intrusion by strangers would go unchallenged.

Thirty-two percent of the project was occupied by elderly whites,

29 percent by African-American families, and 24 percent by Puerto

Rican families. Intergenerational and interracial conflict was common

on the undefined public grounds. Interviews I conducted with residents

revealed that they were fearful of being victimized by criminals, both

during the day and in the evening; they had severely changed or cur-

tailed their patterns of activity as a result of the new presence of gangs

and drug dealers; and they felt they had no right to question strangers as

a means of anticipating and preventing crimes.

Teenagers from surrounding streets used the grounds as a congregation

area, instilling fear and anger in many Clason Point residents. To better

understand how residents perceived the project, I asked them to draw

maps of those areas they thought most dangerous. Most residents drew

the same kind of map. The only area they thought safe was the one

immediately around their home. Everyone also declared the public

open space in the center of the project as the most dangerous.

Figure III–2:
Interior grounds of Clason
Point before modifications.
67

Creating Defensible Space
The housing authority had a small mod
ernization budget available for improving
the project. It was slated for adding a
stucco surface to the cement block to
reduce penetration of cold air, replacing
the roofing and boilers, and adding a little
play equipment. I hoped we could stretch
these dollars significantly to change the
look and function of the entire project.
The physical modifications I planned for
Clason Point had these goals:
■ To increase the proprietary feelings
of residents by subdividing and
assigning much of the public grounds
to the control of individual families
and small groupings of families
through the use of real and symbolic
Figure III-3:
Composite of fear maps
produced by residents.
fencing.
■ To reduce the number of pedestrian routes throughout the project so
as to limit access and to intensify the use of the remaining walks.
Only those walks that passed in front of the units would remain in
use, and these would be widened to allow them to be used for play
and sitting areas. New lighting would be added to improve visibility
and to extend the use of the walks into the evening.
■ To intensify tenants’ surveillance of the grounds by giving them a
greater identification with the grounds.
■ To improve the image of the project by resurfacing the exterior of
the existing cement-block building and by further identifying indi
vidual units through the use of varying colors and resurfacing materials.
■ To reduce intergenerational conflict among residents within the
project by assigning specific areas for each group to use.
68

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
■ Redefinition of grounds
Using 6-foot-high fencing that
looked like iron, but was actually
inexpensive hollow tubular steel, I
created real barriers to define and
secure the rear yard areas. The
number of families grouped in
each rear yard cluster was deter-
mined by the existing layout of
buildings. The clusters ranged from
as few as 12 dwellings per cluster to
as many as 40.
The 6-foot fence defined 50 percent of the previously public grounds
located at the rear of the units for the private use of individual families.
The low concrete curbing, placed adjacent to the public walk in front of
the units, served to redefine an additional 30 percent of the public
grounds as private front lawn. These were symbolic barriers. It should
be noted that both the fencing
Figure III–4:
Six-foot-high tubular steel
fencing defines the
collective rear yards of
residents, allowing them to
place picnic tables and
other outdoor furnishings
there for the first time.
and curbing only defined collec
tive areas, not individual front or
rear yards. If residents desired to
further define the boundaries of
their own front or rear yards,
they had to install their own
individual side fencing. Most of
the residents chose to do so after
the first year.
To improve the usefulness of
pedestrian walks and to attract
residents to them, I designed a

combination planter-seating-

lighting element that would be placed in the center of the walk at inter

vals of about 40 feet. This new, decorative lighting served both to high-

light the main public walk and to make the benches usable at night. The

lighting also improved residents’ surveillance potential and resulting

feelings of security.

Figure III–5:
Collective front yards are
defined by the new concrete
curbing. A new combination
lighting, seating, and planter
helps residents use and
identify with the central walk.
69

Creating Defensible Space
A small battle ensued with the
housing authority about the
decorative lighting. They had
never allowed themselves to
use anything like it before.
They found my lights too low
and too delicate, and therefore
too vulnerable to vandalism.
Their rule was to provide
highway-type lighting fixtures
that were so high they could
not be easily reached. These
had plastic covers that could
Figure III–6:
withstand being hit by stones.
Vandalized tiles and
I argued that the residents would take pride in the new fixtures with their
mailboxes in a highrise.
spherical glass globes and would not want to vandalize them. The hous
ing authority again acquiesced—against their better judgment—but the
new fixtures looked glorious at night. They provided a row of soft,
domestic scale lighting that
showed the way to the front
doors of the units. The new
lighting was not vandalized.
Housing authorities some-
times get into an escalating
spiral by advocating vandal-
resistant products. These
products are so institutional
looking, one expects to
see them in prisons. As an
example, I cite the large yellow
tiles that are commonly used
Figure III–7:
Small play nodes—as little
as a basketball hoop and an
adjacent bench—are
located to serve small
clusters of residents.
in corridors (figure III–6).
These materials are an unflattering reflection of the residents. They are
so demeaning, they invite vandalism. Of course, once they are vandal
ized, the housing authority embarks on a new search to find even more
70

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
vandal-resistant, and inevitably, uglier materials to replace them. At
Clason Point, I broke out of that cycle by saying, with my fixtures, that
the residents were special. The quality of the fixtures reflected on the
residents. They evoked pride and care. The residents did not want to see
them vandalized.
At selected intersections along the primary paths, I created play nodes
for young children and teenagers. I put benches next to these play areas
to allow other children and adults to sit and watch the play activity.
■ Resurfacing of buildings
As part of the effort to remove

the public housing image of

Clason Point, I opted for a

slightly more expensive resur

facing treatment that would

make the stucco look like brick

and stonework. This finish

could be applied in a range of

different colors, and rather than

choose the color combinations

myself, as most architects

would insist on doing, I had the

contractor put up a wall of

samples and let individual ten-
Figure III–8:

ants come and select their own colors. This became an event out of all
Wall of samples showing

proportion to its significance. Entire families came out together to stand
residents the range of wall

surfaces and colors
before the sample wall to debate among themselves and with their neigh-
available to choose from for
bors what colors would be best for the units in their row house. This was
their units.
exactly the kind of involvement with, and commitment to, the improve
ments I was looking for.
I hoped that resident involvement in the process would increase their
sense of individuality and proprietorship and that this would not only
result in greater care and maintenance but in increased watchfulness and
greater potency in dealing with gangs and drug dealers.
71

Creating Defensible Space
Figure III–9:

The central area at Clason ■ Redevelopment of the central area

Point before modifications.

This area was identified by
In the premodification interviews, tenants identified the central area as

residents and police as the
the most dangerous part of the project. This, they claimed, was where
most dangerous of the
pushers congregated, where neighborhood addicts came to meet connec
project.
tions, and where one was sure to be mugged at night. On further obser
vation, I found that the area was also used by teenagers, of both sexes,
who congregated in one corner of the square after school. Younger chil
dren would occasionally throw a ball around here, but because the
ground was uneven, intensive ball playing was difficult.
As Clason Point was almost devoid of play and sitting areas, I decided
to transform this no-man’s land into an intensive community recreation
area for all age groups. By peopling it with young children, parents,
teenagers, and the elderly, I felt the residents could expunge the drug
dealers. Because this central area was also located at the intersection of
a few of the newly created walks, I thought I could turn it into a heavily
travelled, well congregated, and inviting area by treating it with the
same lighting, play equipment, and seating I had provided elsewhere.
72

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
As the area was to serve
three different age
groups, I tried to create
three zones that would
each have a different
look and character. I
designed the area for the
elderly in a conservative,
orderly, and restrained
manner. In contrast, the
teenage area was designed
using curvilinear patterns,
intense colors, and large
bold rocks. These two
areas, representing the

prime contenders at any

housing project, were separated by a large, defined central play area for

younger children.

I had hoped that all this activ

ity would transform this dor-

Figure III–10:
Plan for the conversion of
the central area into a
facility serving, from left to
right, the elderly, young
children, and teens.
mant and frightening area into
the most alive and safe area of
the entire project—that it
would become the new focus
of Clason Point.
I had hoped, too, that my first
step in defining the collective
front and rear ground areas
would encourage residents to
further define them into their
own individual yards. Would
they see the opportunity to

install their own side fences and plant grass and shrubs? The housing

authority certainly had no intention of doing that. As it was, they saw the

new curbs and fencing as barriers to their large mowers.

Figure III–11:
The central area as modified.
Note that the extended front
yards of neighboring homes
now border the central area,
bringing more under
residents’ control.
73

Creating Defensible Space
I anticipated that once
residents realized that no
one else had access to these
areas, they would begin to
place their own things in
them. This would make them
possessive of them, and they
would begin to take care of
and guard over them. This
proved to be the case.
Figure III–12:
Revised plan of Clason
Point showing 90 percent
of the grounds assigned to
individual families.
But I also created areas requiring joint maintenance that were assigned to
groups of 8 to 12 families. These had little to no success. They were only
cared for when one adjacent family took it upon itself to do so. If that area
was then misused by another adjacent family, the family that was taking care
of it abandoned their effort. The lesson here is: Try to subdivide all the
grounds and assign every scrap of it to individual families.
The reassignment of public grounds was undertaken with the intention
of expanding the domain that residents felt they controlled and in which
they felt they had the right to expect accountability from strangers. I
theorized that this reassignment would lead residents to watch the users
of the grounds and walks more carefully and to set up in their own
minds expectations about what kind of behavior would be acceptable in
these areas. As a psychologist on my staff put it, “This reorganization of
grounds will set up a dependent relationship between spatial organization
and social expectations, and we should find that the informal expectations on
the part of residents will become more exacting and differentiated. By elimi
nating the functionless no-man’s land that no resident can control, we should
also reduce crime and fear of crime. Tenants should feel they now had the
right to impose social controls and pressures on strangers and neighbors.” I
could not have put it better myself.
■ Effectiveness of the modifications
The first year after the modifications took place at Clason Point, the resi
dents raked the topsoil of the grounds in front of their homes and planted
the grass seed that was made available to them by the housing authority.
74

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
To the surprise of many resi
dents, the grass came up in
abundance, and the ground
surface changed from
packed dirt to a carpet of
green.
Residents then began to
demarcate their own front
and rear yards by putting up
smaller, intervening fences—
in many instances, the better
to distinguish their patch of
success from their neighbors’
Figure III–13:
inadequate efforts. View of internal walk at
Clason Point before
modifications.
Not to be outdone, unsuccessful residents plowed up the hard ground

once again, added mulch which was again made available by the hous

ing authority, and reseeded more carefully. In fact, they had acquired the

knack of putting in seed,

watering, and fertilizing by

watching their successful

neighbors do it. To the

delight of those residents

new to gardening, the grass

came up by itself in the

spring of the second year and

was even more lush than the

year before. This prompted

residents to invest in small

shrubs, trees, flowers, and

garden furniture.

Now there may be those who

will wonder at what I have just described and, perhaps, take offense at it.

Was this whole effort no more than a gardening course for public hous

ing residents? I have even been accused of implying that low-income

African Americans don’t know how to grow grass. The whole exercise,

of course, has nothing to do with gardening; it has to do with providing

Figure III–14:
View of the same internal
walk as in figure III–13 after
modifications and
residents’ response with
planting and further
demarcation.
75

Creating Defensible Space
BEFORE
AFTER
people with the opportu
nity of taking control of
the space and activities
outside their dwellings,
with giving them an
environment to live in that
enhances their self-image
and evokes pride, and
finally to allow them the
opportunity to themselves
improve their space so that
their identity with it is re
inforced. The bottom line
is that by subdividing and
assigning all the previ
ously public grounds to
individual families, we
have removed it from the
gangs and drug dealers.
In the third year after the
modifications, the small
shrubs had grown a few
feet and the perennial
flowers had expanded
their root system and
Figure III–15:
come up in abundance.
Before and after Residents now began to expand their concerns beyond their own front
photographs of an area of
yard to the public sidewalks and concrete planter in the center of the
Clason Point. The original
layout provided no grounds
walk. On a systematic basis, residents began to sweep the public side-
in the front of units for
walks in front of their homes, particularly when it appeared as if the
individual residents. In our
authority’s maintenance staff were derelict in their duties. Residents had
site redesign, the central
green area, which was
begun to see the public sidewalks as an extension of their dwellings.
largely neglected, was
removed and residents were
We had anticipated that the residents’ new assumption of grounds care
given their own front yards,
which they quickly
would meet with a positive response from the housing authority mainte
improved. A play node is nance staff because it would decrease their workload. The opposite was
shown at front left.
the case. The staff complained that the new curbing, fencing, and
concrete planters prevented them from using their power equipment; too
76

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
much work would now have to be done by hand. A few months after the

completion of the modifications, the grounds supervisor at Clason Point

put in for additional manpower to handle his new workload. We were

informed of his request by an anxious director of housing management

who had also hoped that the grounds modifications would reduce their

workload. I suggested a site visit.

Following a site visit, the central office concluded that, if anything, the

grounds staff could be cut back. This decision was not implemented

immediately, however, for fear of antagonizing the union. The response

of the grounds staff was to slow down their performance and allow

garbage and litter to accumulate in the public walks and at the garbage

dumpsters. Residents responded by cleaning up some of the sidewalks

and dumpster areas themselves, for the first time in the history of the

project. The slowdown by

grounds maintenance person

nel continued for 6 months
and was finally resolved
when the housing authority
replaced the grounds staff
supervisor with one who felt
comfortable with a policy that
allowed residents to care for
the grounds themselves. The
supervisor, in turn, redirected
his staff’s activity toward the
maintenance of the public
walks and play facilities. The
following year, the project’s

grounds maintenance staff was cut in half and the extra men moved to a

neighboring project.

The overall crime rate in the development (including breach of housing

authority rules) dropped by 54 percent in the first year. The premodification

monthly average overall crime rate at Clason Point was 6.91 crimes per

1,000 residents and the postmodification average was 3.16 crimes per

1,000 residents. The average monthly burglary rate per year dropped

from 5.15 per 1,000 residents to 3.71, a 28 percent change. The average

monthly robbery rate dropped from 1.95 per 1,000 to 0.

Figure III–16:
The 6-foot fencing that
defined the collective rear
yards stimulated individual
residents to further define
their own individual rear
yards. This removed much
of the overall grounds of
the project from access by
criminals and gangs. It also
limited the movement of
those criminals who lived
within a rear yard cluster.
77

Creating Defensible Space
The average monthly assault rate dropped from 0.53 per 1,000 to 0.31,
a 42 percent change. The number of felonies during evening and night-
time hours decreased by more than one-half. For the serious crime
categories—burglary, robbery, and assault—the average crime rate
was reduced by 61.5 percent.
The percentage of people who felt they had a right to question strangers
on the project grounds increased from 27 to 50 percent. Residents’ fear
of crime was reduced even more dramatically than the actual crime rates
and, for the first time in years, most residents said they had little fear of
walking through the project grounds at night.
The project, which was 30 percent vacant before the modifications, not
only achieved full occupancy, it acquired a waiting list of hundreds of
applicants.
■ Learning from experience
Perhaps the most serious mistake I made was allowing the existing
arrangement of buildings to determine the size of the collective rear
yard groupings. Residents in the larger groupings had difficulty keeping
the gates to their collective rear yard area locked. There was also more
uniformity in the quality of maintenance of rear yards in the smaller
clusters than in the larger. Had I realized how much variation would oc
cur with the size of the cluster, I could have subdivided the larger clus
ters simply by running a 6-foot fence across them, and thus cut them in
two. Whether to save the cost of a fence or from oversight, I had forgot-
ten my own basic rule: the smaller the number of families that share an
area, the greater the felt responsibility for maintaining and securing it, and
the easier it is for people to agree on mutually acceptable rules for using it.
The most successful play and recreation areas proved to be the small
nodes I provided to serve a small and distinct group of residents. The
large central play area initially attracted a large population from all over
the project—adults, children, and the elderly—and they did succeed in
driving out the drug dealers. However, the large size of the area also pro
duced turf conflict between the residents living immediately adjacent to
it and those coming from the other end of the project. This soon resulted
in the vandalizing of equipment by the distant residents who, at times,
78

Chapter Three: The Clason Point Experiment
felt excluded. If they could
not use it, no one would. It
was also a mistake to try to
create three zones within the
one area to serve teenagers,
young children, and elderly.
The elderly soon found them-
selves overwhelmed and
threatened by teenagers, even
in the area specifically de-
signed for them: that is, the
one containing the formally
designed checker tables and
benches.
Figure III–17:
Play node for young children: a
The lesson to be learned from this is that if one has the opportunity of plac-
sandbox and a climber located to
serve a small cluster of families.
ing 10 pieces of play equipment in a housing development, it is better to put
Note how the new 6-foot fencing
1 piece of equipment in each of 10 areas so that it is there for the specific use has prompted residents to
of a particular group of residents, than to group all 10 pieces in 1 central
produce gardens in their rear
yards at left and the new curbing
public area for the use of all residents.
to create their own front yards.
Figure III–18:
Aerial view of a small portion of
Clason Point showing how 6-foot
fencing was installed to create
collective rear yards and curbing
to define front yards. Note the
location of the play node serving a
small cluster of families.
79

C H A P T E R
Dispersed, Scattered-Site
FOUR
Public Housing in Yonkers
In 1985, the city of Yonkers,
in a nationally prominent
civil rights case, was found
guilty by the Federal court
(Southern District of New
York) of severely segregating
its public and assisted hous
ing. Some 6,000 units had
been concentrated into the
city’s older, southwest sec
tion—an area one-eighth the
size of the entire city. Twenty
thousand people lived in this
housing; the remaining
seven-eighths of the city
housed only 80,000 people,
or four times as many.
The existing public housing
projects had been built as
large, high-density highrises
and walkups, ranging in size
from 278 units to 550 units.
They were located only a few
blocks away from each other,
producing a very high overall
concentration of low-income,
minority population. The

remedy, no more than a token

really, required that 200 new units be built in the white, middle-class areas

of the city that had previously excluded public housing.

Figure IV–1:
Map of Yonkers showing the
concentration of public and
assisted housing in downtown
southwest Yonkers and the
location of the seven new
scattered-site projects.
81

Creating Defensible Space
After stalling for much too
long, the city was told to
appoint an outsider to direct
the construction of the man-
dated housing. I was selected
in a process I will describe
shortly, and used the occasion
to apply the principles I had
evolved in the Clason Point
project to the construction of
the housing.
Yonkers is the first suburb one
encounters driving north from
New York City. It dates from the turn of the century when it functioned
as a factory town. Its older, urban downtown, situated on the cliffs over
the Hudson River, is where the public housing was
Figure IV–2:
Existing public housing in
Yonkers: the School Street
project.
concentrated. This urban core is surrounded by a
mix of suburban areas ranging from modest single-
family houses on small lots to large mansions on
one-half-acre lots. The entire city is only 6 miles
long by 3 miles wide and is interlaced with high-
ways serving the suburbs to the north. Sprinkled
along these highways are stretches of old and new,
privately owned highrise apartments occupied by
white working- and middle-class families.
During the period of the court case, Yonkers’ public
housing projects, like many throughout the country,
were known for housing drug dealers and prosti
tutes. The projects were also said to be the cause of
much of the crime in their surrounding communi
ties. Many of the criminals who lived in the
projects were little more than children. Teenagers
carried automatic weapons openly and were often
bold enough to screen people who came and went to make sure they
were not police.
Figure IV–3:
Map showing the location
of Yonkers relative to New
York City. Also shown is the
location of the Clason Point
project in the south Bronx.
82

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
The public housing residents
who were to move into these
200 new units were to have
the same profile as the exist
ing residents—that is, more
than half would have public
assistance as their source of
income, most of these being
AFDC families. The residents
of the new housing were to be
chosen by lottery on a 50/50
basis from existing public hous
ing tenants who wished to move

into the new housing and from

a waiting list of potential tenants.

After a 6-year trial and an additional 7 years of the city fighting me

every step of the way, the scattered-site housing is now in place without

any of the dire consequences predicted by its opponents. It did not intro

duce crime into the middle-

class neighborhoods, it did not

Figure IV–4:
Aerial view of east Yonkers
showing typical suburban
housing and the Catholic
seminary. The dense public
housing of southwest
Yonkers can be seen at
the back.
reduce property values, and it
did not produce white flight. It
is a solution that is already
becoming a model for cities
across the country who wish
either to voluntarily desegre
gate their public housing or are
under court order to do so.
Yonkers residents are a mix
ture of ethnic and religious
groups: Irish, Italian, Polish,
Jewish, African, and Hispanic

Americans—each of whom

wears their heritage proudly. This has produced a rich and exciting city

with a multitude of churches, social centers, ethnic restaurants, food stores,

and bars. Each ethnic group further reinforced its identity and political

strength by concentrating itself in its own distinctive geopolitical ward. In

Figure IV–5:
Existing public housing in
Yonkers: the Schlobohm
project.
83

Creating Defensible Space
the past, this ward structure
had proven useful in serving
the narrow interests of each
ethnic group. However, it
proved devastating by prevent
ing the city as a whole from
acting in its greater good by
quickly responding to the
original segregation complaint.
Much of the city’s resistance
to implementing the 200-unit
remedy stemmed from
Figure IV–6:
everyone’s assumption that it
Existing public housing in would be built along the lines of the existing public housing. Two years
Yonkers: Mulford Gardens.
after the Federal court decision was issued, the city had yet to locate a
single site or prepare a single housing plan. At that point, the plaintiffs
petitioned the court to inform the city that if it could not act on its own
behalf to implement the remedy, it would either face costly daily fines or
be required to appoint an outside housing advisor to do the work that no
politicians or city employees could allow themselves to do—that is, find
the sites and prepare the plans for the housing. Admitting, finally, that it
would be political or professional suicide for anyone to do this work, the
city, under a deadline from the court, set about finding a housing advisor.
They gave me the job, but not for reasons I cared for.
Prior to my appointment as housing advisor, the plaintiffs in the case
(the U.S. Justice Department and the Yonkers chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)) had
identified two former school sites they wanted used for the public hous
ing. A highrise complex was to be put on the larger of the two sites and a
three-story walkup on the other. The city objected, saying that this would
be a replication of the physical construct of the existing public housing
projects in southwest Yonkers and would serve to destabilize the sur
rounding neighborhoods. The plaintiffs replied that this was further
evidence of the city’s racism, and they did not care for the city’s notion
of what constituted destabilization.
84

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
After interviewing a dozen
candidates, the mayor and the
city council chose me to do
the work because in my plan
ning books, Defensible Space
and Community of Interest, I
had advocated an approach to
racial and economic integra
tion that would not destabilize
the host middle-income com
munity. Otherwise, I had
argued, what would be the
long-term benefits to the pub

lic housing residents? In my

interviews with the city I had stated that, on the basis of my past

research, I would advocate the use of townhouses in a scattered-site for-

mat. That is, I would scatter the units throughout the white, middle-class

areas of the city rather than concentrate them in one or two specific sites

as was proposed by the plaintiffs.

I had thought that this was why I was selected, but I later learned that the

city was secretly hoping that once I became familiar with the crime pro

blems in the existing public housing complexes in southwest Yonkers

and then saw the pastoral beauty of the middle-class suburban settings of

the rest of Yonkers, I would appeal to the court to modify its ruling. This

was, of course, not facing reality—a problem that plagued Yonkers from

the beginning of these proceedings. This delusion on the part of the city

was surprising, because in my interviews, I had made clear that although

I would ensure that the housing would be built using Defensible Space

principles, I also felt obligated to ensure that it would, in fact, be built.

When it became clear that I was making progress in selecting sites and

getting the housing built as promised, the city countered by refusing to

pay me. After three months of non-payment, the Federal court decided

that I would henceforth work for the court rather than the city, and

ordered the city to pay me on threat of contempt.

Figure IV–7:
Typical site plan for
a 12-unit site.
85

Creating Defensible Space
■ Design principles
By locating the 200 public housing
units on 7 sites in Yonkers, I had
hoped to limit the number of units
at any 1 site to a maximum of 24.
This decision came out of my re-
search that showed that crime in-
creased with the number of units in a
housing project. I also planned to de-
sign the housing to look like that of
the surrounding community so as to
make it unnoticeable.
The city had said it could not
implement the remedy because
Figure IV–8:
Typical site plan for
a 24-unit site.
there were no sites available. I used
a variety of techniques to tease out
new sites: I reviewed the city’s annual report to the State listing all tax
exempt property. This enabled me to identify all city, State, and Federal
owned land and buildings—including empty buildings, such as
schools—that might be used for housing. I used aerial photographs to lo
cate all empty parcels and then flew over the entire city with a helicopter
to view them for suitability. I examined listings of all State, city, and
county park land to determine which parks were not being used. With
these techniques, I was able to locate more than 20 sites that were suit-
able for the remedy. Most of these sites were owned by the city, enabling
me to avoid the purchase price and the delay of acquiring the land from
private owners. Private land is scarce and expensive in the middle-class
areas of Yonkers.
But the court made the error of allowing the city to reject some of my
sites, and the city rejected those that lay within the domain of the most
vociferous and demonstrative of opponent groups, the Save Yonkers
Federation. This was because no politician felt he would survive
re-election if he defied this group. As it was, a different mayor was
elected every 2 years during this period, with the hope that someone
would succeed in defying the court. During the heyday of its defiance,
the city went so far as to elect a mayor because he had promised to hire the
86

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
most expensive lawyers available and to lie down in front of the bulldozers
himself to stop the housing from being constructed. The city spent more
on attorneys’ fees to stop the housing than I spent on building it—more
than $20 million. The mayor put on a good show but succeeded in stop-
ping nothing. He was not re-elected.
The city was nevertheless successful in rejecting many of my sites, even
to the point of putting undue pressure on the Cardinal of New York to
get him to back down from a site I had selected on an outlying portion of
the seminary property. In the end, I was left with only seven sites. And
because of this, I was forced to put as many as 48 units on 1 site and 44
on another. Their comparatively large size meant that these two sites
would have to have their own internal street systems, at increased cost.
But more importantly, I would not be able to make them disappear into
the fabric of the city’s neighborhoods. I was also worried that their isola
tion from surrounding middle-class housing would allow a criminal
subculture to materialize and flourish that the public housing residents,
alone, could not control. Strangely, the city preferred that I choose a few
large, isolated sites rather than many, small sites that were integrated into
the community. That way, argued the city, fewer areas would be con
taminated by the contact. They could not understand my argument: the
smaller the site and the greater the contact, the more the middle-class
neighbors would be able to exert their values and control.
In an endeavor to win communities over to the scattered-site plan I was
advocating, I systematically met with community and religious leaders
in every affected neighborhood of Yonkers. This led to requests for me to
give formal presentations to general meetings of a few hundred resi
dents. Some of these meetings were rowdy, but many were quite civil
and allowed for a good exchange of ideas. I explained that I was there to
implement the remedy in the best way I could, and was seeking the
community’s assistance in doing so. But many residents attempted to
re-argue the court case in front of me. I told them the case could not be
reopened. At one meeting, feelings ran so high, I finally had to say:
“Hold it a second. Look!” I walked over to the nearest wall bordering the
auditorium stage, raised my fist, and pounded it three times as hard as I
could. The noise from the pounding thundered through the auditorium.
People went totally silent. I returned to the microphone and, holding my
87

Creating Defensible Space
hand in the air with obvious
pain, said: “That wall is the
Justice Department. And this
fist is you. All you are doing
with your high-priced lawyers
in revisiting the case, is injur
ing yourselves. It is time to let
it go and help me find a rem
edy that will work to every-
one’s benefit.”
I do not know how useful
these meetings were. After a
while, the vociferous ele
ments in the city made it a
practice to come and disrupt every such community meeting. In some
instances, the police had to escort me out for my own protection. I
stopped holding them.
Figure IV–9:
Typical site plan for a
48-unit site.
The second Defensible
Space design directive I
used was to insist that
the housing have no
indoor or outdoor areas
that were public. All
areas of each unit and
site would be assigned
for the specific, private
use of individual fami
lies. This is why I chose
two-story row houses as
our building type rather
than two-story walkups that have interior public areas. This decision in
volved a major dispute with the regional office of HUD that advocated
the use of walkups, if not highrises.
The grounds of each site were to be fully subdivided and assigned to
individual units. Each family was to have its own front and rear yard,
and the front entry to each unit was to be located directly off the street.
Figure IV–10:
Sketch of a group of row-
house units for Yonkers as
submitted by one of the
developers.
88

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
Each family’s rear yard was to be defined

by a small fence, and small clusters of rear

yards were to be collectively fenced-off

from the surrounding streets by a taller, 6-

foot fence.

It is interesting that when the judge I was

working for visited the housing when it

was completed, but not yet occupied, he

looked at the fenced-off rear yards and

said, “They look like pig sties; is it really

necessary to have the fencing?” I explained

that the rear yards would take on a very

different character once they were occu-
Figure IV–11:

pied. For the first time in their lives, residents would have a place imme- The fencing-off of the rear

diately outside their dwellings they could call their own: their own place
yards in the Yonkers

scattered-site housing.
in the sun where they could leave a young child to play by itself without
Individual yard fences are
fear of it being harmed. Once they realized that, they would begin to cus-
3 feet high. The 6-foot fences
tomize and manicure the yards. And they would become rich with flow-
defining the collective rear
yard area can be seen in the
ers and objects that reflected their personalities. The judge looked at the
foreground and at rear.
myriad of fencing again, shook his head and said, “I hope you know
what you’re doing.”
With this design, of course, I primarily hoped to eliminate all the
troublesome, crime-ridden areas typical of multifamily public housing
projects. There were no nebulous public grounds for gangs and drug
dealers to roam. There were to be no public lobbies, no corridors, no fire
stairs, no elevators. There were none of the spaces that typically charac
terized not only highrise public housing, but row-house developments as
well (see discussion of Defensible Space concepts in chapter I).
The principle used throughout is that residents will jealously guard and
maintain that which is theirs—even when they are renters rather than
owners. The second principle is that by dividing and assigning spaces to
individual families and to small collectives of families, we limit the operat
ing turf of the criminal element that may be living among the residents.
Developing this principle further, I decided to do away with the collec
tive garbage dumpsters that normally serve large groups of residents in
89

Creating Defensible Space
public housing projects. These
would be replaced with indi
vidual garbage cans, serving
each unit. Every family would
have its own garbage cans,
and they would be placed in
concrete pits in the ground
along the front walks leading
up to the entry door to their
own house. That way the gar
bage cans too would be within
the territorial domain of each
family, and their maintenance
would reflect on that family.
The large dumpsters that serve as garbage col
lectors for most public housing projects are lo-
Figure IV-12
Typical garbage dumpster
serving public housing.
cated in public areas where no one identifies
with them. They are always overflowing with
garbage and attract rats and roaches. Various
stratagems have been devised to make them
function better, but in the scattered-site housing
in Yonkers, I simply refused to allow them
to exist.
I have explained the garbage can decision as if
it were made by me, alone at my desk. But as
with most of my design decisions in Yonkers,
everyone became involved and there was a big
hullabaloo about it. The city objected vehe
mently that this would put an undue strain on its
sanitation department. I pointed out that we
were asking no more for the public residents
than the city provided to occupants of single-
family houses. The city backed down after it
was agreed that each family would be respon
sible for bringing its garbage to the curb on the morning of garbage day.
The HUD regional office objected to our garbage can decision on two
counts: one, that individual cans buried in concrete sleeves for each
Figure IV–13:
Individual garbage cans
along the walks leading up
to each unit in Yonkers’
scattered sites.
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
household would be far costlier than providing a collective dumpster;
and two, that the residents would be unable to look after their own gar
bage cans. HUD argued that these individual cans would have to be
pulled out eventually, at great cost, and replaced by dumpsters.
The housing authority’s consulting architect was also nervous about my
placing the garbage cans along the front walks. He suggested that maybe
the individual garbage cans could be stored in the back yards of the unit
and then brought out on garbage day. But to do this meant that the gar
bage cans would have to be stored in the already small rear yards, and,
furthermore, they would have to be brought through the house on gar
bage day. The housing authority architect suggested that we could avoid
the latter by providing a walk between the individual rear yards that led
to a gate that opened onto the street. A collective place would then be
provided at the street for all the garbage cans to be positioned for pick up
by the garbage trucks. I explained that this proposed solution introduced
three problems: (1) it meant introducing a public walk into the rear yard
areas which were now fully private; (2) it would compromise the secu
rity of the rear yard areas by introducing gates that opened to the public
streets (we had learned from our Clason Point experiment that it took
only one family to decide to leave this gate open for everyone’s security
to be affected); and (3) having all the garbage cans grouped in a desig
nated “public” spot, even if only on garbage day, would be creating the
same kind of problem produced by dumpsters. The operating rule was no
public spaces, and we would have to stick by it.
This dispute was settled by Pete Smith, the housing authority director
and my salvation in this entire effort. He said that he saw potential prob
lems with each proposal, but because we were gambling on the validity
of the Defensible Space hypothesis, we should be consistent throughout,
and go with what I had proposed. This was his polite way of also saying
that it would be on my head if it went wrong. I accepted that, appreciating
that these are the risks one must take to test the value of one’s convictions.
I went on to spell out that the design of each unit was to carefully echo
the style and materials of the surrounding middle-class single-family
houses. Brick, peaked roofs, bay windows, and staggered facades were
to be used to emphasize the individual units within a row-house cluster.
91

Creating Defensible Space
All of this was accomplished
within HUD’s cost guidelines
by using factory-built housing.
The use of factory-built housing
minimized onsite protests and
potential vandalism by oppo
nents of the housing by limiting
the onsite construction time.
The housing units arrived 95
percent complete from factories
approximately 100 miles away
Figure IV–14:
Completed scattered-site
units in Yonkers
(foreground). Existing,
privately owned, single-
family housing can be seen
in the background. The new
units seek to capture the
look and feel of the private
housing.
and were placed on foundations
(that had been prepared earlier)
during the course of a day. The ability of the local residents and politi
cians to complicate construction by influencing the unions was also
minimized by having most of the work done in communities distant
from Yonkers.
■ Problems in controlling the design process
The decisions to scatter the 200 units over 7 sites rather than concentrate
them on 2, to use row houses rather than highrises or walkups, and to
use Defensible Space principles in laying out the grounds may sound
rational, given the history of the case, but the process of getting these
decisions accepted by HUD and the plaintiffs proved difficult.
Much of the reason the Yonkers community bitterly resisted the court
order was their expectation that the new housing would be large,
highrise developments that would devastate their surrounding areas.
Even though I, as an officer of the Federal court, had promised to build
row houses on small sites scattered throughout the city, the community
did not believe me. My promise might be sincere, but neither HUD nor
the housing authority was able to inspire much trust among the local
residents. When trying to obtain housing sites, it is normal practice for
housing authorities to tell communities that they will only be putting up
a small number of units. But once a site is acquired and approved for the
use of public housing—a difficult process in itself—the number of units
somehow doubles or quadruples. It is not that housing authorities, or
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
HUD, are being intentionally deceptive, it is just that it is so difficult to
acquire a site, that once it is in place more money can usually be found
by HUD for additional units. Housing authorities are then unable to resist
increasing the number, even if it means constructing high-density
walkups or even highrises. Of course the price for such a breach of faith
is that the next site becomes even harder to find and get approved.
The New York City region is a very dense area. The HUD regional
Office in New York City, therefore, had very little history of building
anything but highrises and walkups. The notion that we would be propos
ing the construction of row houses in Yonkers was an anathema to them.
The plaintiffs in the case, the Justice Department and the Yonkers chapter
of the NAACP, also had problems with our decision to limit ourselves to
row houses. The Justice Department attorney in the case wanted to put
200 units in 2 highrise towers on the largest site. Her idea was to make
these an equal mix of public housing, moderate-income, and market-rate
units. That site would then serve 67 public housing units. I pointed out to the
plaintiffs that the history of such mixed-income developments (particularly in
Yonkers) was that they became fully occupied by low-income families in a
short period of time. This is because it is difficult to keep market-rate tenants
living among public housing residents when they have other options. When
management is then unable to attract new market-rate tenants to replace the
old, they have no option but to accept low-income tenants with Section 8 cer
tificates (Section 8 is HUD’s rent subsidy program) to fill the vacant units.
The end result would be a 200-unit low-income, highrise project located
within a middle-income community composed of single-family houses.
This would virtually guarantee destabilization. In fact, it would replicate
the situation in southwest Yonkers that led to the case to begin with. The
entire rationale for the court decision would then be undermined. For
what would be the purpose of enabling low-income families to enjoy the
benefits of living in a middle-income community if that community then
quickly turned into a low-income community?
The attorney for the Justice Department said that my argument was falla
cious: The issue was not the nature of the host community but the exclu
sion of public housing residents from an area that should have been open
to them. The NAACP attorney said that my arguments reflected the racist
93

Creating Defensible Space
attitudes of Yonkers residents—attitudes that had produced the case in
the first place. He, for one, had no problem with the entire 200 units
turning into a low-income project, and if the surrounding community
then wished to leave, so be it. The Justice Department attorney reasoned
that the decline of the community would just make available additional
lower cost housing for his client group.
The argument for the mixed-income development presented by the
Justice Department attorney was that it would guarantee a mix of income
groups, rather than a concentration of low-income families. My counter
to that was that the community surrounding the new public housing was
already middle-income and stable, so there was no need to create an arti
ficial mix within the new project—particularly if we could not sustain
that mix. If the proposed large, mixed-income development became all
low-income, the result could destabilize the surrounding middle-income
community. In informal discussions with all parties, the court accepted
my reasoning.
The next problem I encountered was getting the HUD regional office to
accept row houses as the building type rather than walkups. HUD pre
ferred walkups because it thought they would be less costly to build.
Regarding my Defensible Space rationale, HUD said that, as an agency, they
had never accepted it. I prepared a long memo to HUD and all the parties in
the case, pointing out the following, with documented references:
■ HUD’s manual for the construction of public housing had only two
books referenced in it: Defensible Space and Design Guidelines for
Achieving Defensible Space, both written by me. The second book
had been published jointly by HUD and Justice.
■ The history of walkup public housing throughout the country was
not much better than that of highrises, and walkups were being torn
down everywhere as frequently as highrises.
■ When calculating the cost of walkups versus row houses, HUD was
only using the initial construction costs, whereas the big savings in
the use of row housing was in the consequent reduction in mainte
nance, vandalism, and security costs. HUD spends millions of dol
lars per project every few years repairing the destruction wrought by
94

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
the residents in the public areas of highrise and walkup buildings:
Our housing would have no such public areas.
■ Finally, the New York State Building Code allowed two-story row
houses to be built of wood, without a second fire stair, and without
the multitude of fire walls required of walkups. These additional
requirements actually made walkups more costly than row houses.
City officials in Yonkers, who would have preferred that no housing be
built at all, certainly preferred row houses over walkups. They allowed
their building department to prepare its own memo supporting my posi
tion. These arguments were heard before the judge in the case, and he
reminded HUD (a defendant in the case) of the importance of getting the
remedy done right, that we had an opportunity to demonstrate that public
housing could be built to everyone’s benefit in middle-income communities.
The next obstacle we had to face grew out of the method the housing
authority and HUD would have to use in soliciting bids for the work.
There were two ways open to obtaining bids: the conventional route and
the turnkey route. In the conventional route, the housing authority would
have its architect prepare detailed construction drawings for the housing
on each site and then request bids on them. The problem with this method
is that New York State has the Wicks Law, which allows separate sub-
contractors to submit bids for small portions of the work. These bids
must be considered by the housing authority along with bids by general
contractors for the entire job. The housing authority would then have to
serve as the general coordinator in evaluating and accepting these small
bidders. Such projects have not only proven to be more costly, they are
difficult to administer and frequently stall in irreconcilable disputes
between subcontractors.
The turnkey route allows the housing authority simply to issue a request for
proposal (RFP) from developers in which only the sites and the number of
units per site are identified. The RFP also spells out HUD’s basic standards
for construction and site development. The use of the turnkey method
thus allows the authority to avoid the requirements of the Wicks Law.
With the conventional route the housing authority specifies exactly what
it wants in terms of design, but with the turnkey method it leaves all that
95

Creating Defensible Space
to the discretion of the developer. The purpose of the turnkey process is
to allow the developer to build what he knows how to do best and to turn
over the finished housing to the authority when it is ready for occupancy.
The housing authority and HUD both preferred the turnkey method, but
how could we be assured of getting the housing designs and site plans
we wanted? The authority and I proposed to HUD that we include a set
of written design guidelines in the RFP, along with schematic site plans
that illustrated how to produce Defensible Space plans for each of the
seven sites. The regional office of HUD objected, stating that this would
severely restrain the developer by keeping him from using his own
approach and finding the least expensive and, hence, the best solution.
After much argument, HUD agreed to allow a set of Defensible Space
guidelines to be introduced into the RFP, but totally vetoed the inclusion
of any schematic site plans. The Defensible Space design guidelines
issued in the RFP appear in addendum A, which also contains the criteria
to evaluate the responses from developers. These criteria place important
weight on incorporating Defensible Space principles.
The designs submitted by developers in response to the first issuance of
the RFP proved unacceptable. The housing authority chose not to make
any award. The developers and their architects did not seem to grasp
what we were after. The written design guidelines, alone, were not
enough to evoke either the image of the buildings or the site plan layouts
we desired. It was clear that the developers and their architects had to be
shown illustrations of what we wanted. Again, we asked HUD to allow
us to include schematic site plans and building sketches, with the expla
nation that they were there for the developers’ enlightenment only, and
that they need not be followed. But HUD replied that the developers
were not fools, they would soon guess that if they did not follow the
schematics, they would not win the award. HUD nixed the inclusion of
the schematics in the RFP once again.
The housing authority and I realized that we could not go on issuing
RFPs and turning the developers’ submissions down, or we would alien-
ate the few developers we could attract. As it was, we were only getting
bids from 2 out of 10 developers who had paid $100 for the bid package.
I had heard from local developers, many of whom I had gone out of my
96

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
way to attract, that because their names had been made public, they were
receiving calls from important people in the community, advising them
not to bid. The only bids we did, in fact, receive were from developers
whose operations were well away from Yonkers, whereas most of the
people who had picked up the bid package were experienced local builders.
We decided to employ the following strategy in this second round: When
the developers came to pick up their packages, they would find a pile of
schematic site plans next to the pile of packages. It was explained to
them that they could either pick up the site plans with their bid packages
or not. Most of them did. This time we got back three proposals that
came very close to giving us what we wanted.
■ Selection of residents
The public housing residents who would move into the new units were
expected to have the same socio-economic profile as those who lived in
the old highrises. This is because 50 percent would come from the exist
ing public housing projects and 50 percent from the housing authority’s
waiting list. The 200 families would be chosen by lottery from a list of
2,000 applicants. A comparison of the profile of the new tenants and
those living in the large projects shows that they are identical.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude that just because their profiles
were the same, that they were, in fact, identical. Although they had been
selected at random, they had first to select themselves as candidates for
the new housing. This is hardly random selection. It is self-selection
toward the adoption of a new opportunity and lifestyle. And this may not
be a desire that is universally held by all public housing residents.
■ Training of residents
Pete Smith, the housing authority director, believed that tenant training
was a critical ingredient to the success of the program: The residents had
to be prepared for the move. There were many things they did not know
about living in a single family house with its own heat and hot-water
system, and they were fearful. This move meant so much to them, they
were very anxious to get it right. Smith was overwhelmed by questions.
He suggested we bring in a professional trainer: someone who had done
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Creating Defensible Space
this before. He knew Bob Mayhawk of the Housing Education Reloca
tion Enterprise (H.E.R.E.) who had conducted training programs for a
public housing relocation program in Greenburgh, a community north of
Yonkers. He had a great deal of credibility within the African-American
community and even ran his own radio station. The training program
should be intensive, involve four or five sessions, include working with
maintenance people in the new units and meeting with the community
and the police, and provide the opportunity of going through various
procedures that would be followed in case of the need for major repairs
or other emergency responses. The training program would cost a bit,
and Smith wanted to ask HUD to pay for it.
HUD objected and asked my opinion. I thought that Smith’s housing
staff might be able to handle the counseling, including his own mainte
nance people. I was concerned about going overboard in what we were
asking HUD to do. But Smith disagreed: The tenants needed someone
from outside the housing authority they could trust and feel comfortable
with to provide a buffer between them and the complicated world they
were entering. They needed an advocate they could ask seemingly dumb
questions without feeling humiliated; someone to whom they could open
up about their fears and reservations; someone with authority in the
community who had been through this sort of thing in his own life.
Smith decided he would find the money for Mayhawk’s services from
the housing authority’s own budget.
A five-session program was given to all potential candidates for the
housing. The sessions dealt with relocation, home maintenance, interper
sonal relations, safety and security, and community resources. (An out-
line of these sessions appears in addendum B.) Mayhawk proved to be a
very effective educator. He understood what the future tenants were wor
ried about, knew what they were ignorant of, and knew how to explain
things to them simply and to lead them slowly to an understanding and
self-confidence. He said, “It was up to the tenants to make the program
work and up to me to train the tenants to do that.” Residents still keep in
touch with him, and refer to him at meetings. He spoke with different
leaders of the opposition in Yonkers and reached out to them. He even
hired some of them to help in the training, involving them in the process
of acclimatizing the tenants and the neighboring community to each
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
other. These former opposition leaders became liaisons in the commu
nity for the first 3 critical months. It was not by accident that the resi
dents received flowers and baskets of fruits when they first moved in.
After the tenants moved in, these trainers went door-to-door to help
orient them.
Mayhawk also held meetings among tenants, business people, and com
munity institutions: the latter including Sarah Lawrence College and
Yonkers Raceway. He introduced residents to business people who might
hire them. These meetings were closed, with only selected members of
the public present. Truly open meetings would have deteriorated because
the opposition groups would have descended on them, en masse, and dis
rupted them. The local media were intentionally kept away from both the
training sessions and the tenant/community orientation sessions because
inflammatory rhetoric had categorized much of their coverage of the case.
Police were also present at these orientation sessions and meetings with
the community. Mayhawk emphasized that the housing authority and the
police would be on top of everything going on, watching the community,
watching the tenants. It was made clear that any tenants involved in ille
gal activities would be evicted. There were many subsequent turndowns
by residents. Of the initial 2,000 applicants for the 200 available units,
about one-third dropped out of the process. Residents knew they were
moving into a fish bowl and would be under continual informal surveil-
lance. Those involved in drugs or other unsavory activities bowed out.
The teenage children of many applicants did not care for the move
because the dislocation meant some of their friendships and peer group
activity would end. The new developments were an hour bus ride away
from the concentration of projects in southwest Yonkers. Many of the fami
lies who dropped out said they did so because of their teenagers’ objections.
■ Results
Although none of the residents had any previous experience living in row
houses with private front and rear yards, to the surprise of the middle-
income residents of Yonkers the new residents quickly adopted the behavior
patterns of their suburban neighbors. They planted flowers, further defined
their grounds with low picket fences, and installed barbecues. They became
99

Creating Defensible Space
proud of their achievements
and jealous of their territorial
rights. They even went out
of their way to assist fellow
newcomers with lawn
maintenance.
The housing authority had
intended to maintain the front
yards of the units itself and,
therefore, had kept them free
of fences, but the residents set
about defining their front
yards with their own picket
fences and took on the further responsibility of maintaining these yards
as well. It must be admitted that these picket fences and, initially, some
of the flowers, were made of inexpensive plastic, but the spirit was
there, and with time they were replaced by the real thing.
The police found no increase in crime in the neighborhoods surrounding the
scattered-site units and no evidence that the gang or drug activity that was
prevalent in the old projects
Figure IV–15:
Residents’ initial
improvements to their
front yards.
had transferred to the new. In
an evaluation of adjacent hous
ing, the local newspaper found
that there was no decline in
property values and no white
flight. The Yonkers school
board says there is no decline
in the quality and performance
of children in the schools.
Residents of the scattered-site
units are now making requests
of the housing authority to
avail themselves of HUD pro-
grams that would allow them
to buy their units.
Figure IV–16:
Residents’ later
improvements to their
front yards.
100

Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
■ Evaluation
The following are excerpts
from my interviews with Bob
Olson, the chief of police,
during the time the housing
was put in and for 2 years
thereafter, and Pete Smith, the
executive director of the
housing authority during the
entire period up to the
present. In their own words:
Bob Olson, former chief of
police, Yonkers:
I was not part of the community mindset when I first came to
Yonkers to be chief of police. The remedy order had already
been issued, and I actually saw it as my job to change that
mindset.
I attended some of the orientation sessions for the future tenants
of the scattered-site projects—and their first meetings with small
groups from the surrounding community. I was at the lottery. I
saw how much they wanted to move in and do better for them-
selves. They were good people. I remember how excited they
got when they learned they had been selected by the lottery.
My job was to convince the white community that their world
wasn’t coming to an end. I went to speak to community groups
all over the east side, adjoining every site. I let them vent about
what they feared would happen, then reassured them I wouldn’t
let any of it occur. Extra patrols would be put in initially—and
on an as needed basis—I promised. The surrounding community
was made up of people who had moved into Yonkers 2 decades
ago and had bought their houses for $60,000 and $70,000; now
they were worth $250,000. Their houses were everything they
owned. They were worried that prices would plummet when the
public housing residents moved in. They knew about the drug
Figure IV–17:
Residents’ later
improvements to their
rear yards.
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Creating Defensible Space
scene and the prostitutes in the projects in the southwest—you
only had to drive by to see them hustling on the street corners.
My concern was to make sure that that wasn’t transplanted with
the residents. My presence, or the presence of my precinct cap
tains, at every orientation session and meeting with surrounding
residents and businessmen must have done a lot to show every-
one we were not going to tolerate any nonsense from either side.
During the move-in and immediately thereafter we provided
extra police presence—you know that, you specifically asked
for it.
The doomsday scenario never materialized. The stories that
were circulating before the moves took place were that the real
bad folks would get into the units and create gangs, peddle
drugs, women, etc. Then the neighborhood people would react by
screaming and yelling, and possibly demonstrating. The newspapers
would hype it all up as usual—accusing both sides of what they
themselves were doing. The politicos would then jump on the band-
wagon, and we would be national headlines again.
Some people were worried about how the police would react.
My men were all Yonkers residents, and some came from fami
lies that were in Yonkers for two and three generations. There is
no question that their views reflected the sentiment of the white
community. But they were a very professional bunch, reflecting
solid police values. Even if their personal sentiments went the
other way, I knew that when push came to shove, they would do
the right thing. Most of them liked things quiet around Yonkers.
They didn’t want a community in turmoil. They did not want to
see the level of risk increase for anyone. They viewed the whole
discrimination case as another pain in the butt—people feuding
and fighting. They used to say of the politicos: those dumb
SOBs could have been rid of this whole thing in the 1980s,
if they had only agreed to put 80 public housing units on the
east side.
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
We have had virtually no crime or crime problems from the
scattered-site units. After 2 1/2 years of occupancy, the only
complaints we have been getting are loud noise and music,
someone’s car broken into who lived in one of the sites, and kids
from the units taking shortcuts to ballfields across their neigh
bors’ property. When the neighbors came out and screamed at
them, the kids retaliated by coming back with M80s. That
needed some quick fence mending, schmoozing with the kids
and the neighbors, asking each to give more than was expected
of them in the way of politeness and tolerance. It worked.
You can’t blame the neighbors for being upset: six or seven
African-American kids with pants hanging below their butts,
baseball caps turned backwards, walking across their lawn. We
talked to the kids, asked them not to cuss, and not to tangle or
argue with the neighbors. I said: “Even if they insult you,
surprise them with politeness. That’ll defuse them real good.”
And we asked the neighbors to remember that as tough as they
looked, these were just kids. And if they yelled at kids, the kids
would yell back—and more. Most of the complaints we get now
are over an occasional wild party, and these complaints come
from the other housing residents just as frequently as from the
surrounding neighbors.
The lesson I learned from all this is that highrises shouldn’t be
used for anyone but elderly, and that elderly and kids don’t mix.
The other thing is don’t put the poor African Americans in large
concentrations. Boyfriends of welfare women come into town
from Detroit, or wherever, and set up their women in their own
apartments doing drugs and prostitution. And in a highrise, that
contaminates the whole building, sometimes the whole highrise
project. You have to be able to evict these people, quickly and
easily. HUD’s procedures take too long and go nowhere.
I like the idea of using women tenants as part of an in-house
security force. The housing authority should be allowed to pay
them five bucks an hour without HUD expecting to deduct that
amount from the rent subsidy they get.
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Creating Defensible Space
Pete Smith, Director of the Yonkers Housing Authority:
I don’t have to tell you the whole thing is a resounding success.
None of the anticipated nasty things happened. There was no
transfer of crime from the projects—in fact, there is no crime at
all in either the scattered sites or in the surrounding housing.
There is no decline in property values in neighboring housing—
as our newspaper’s own analysis found out—and there is no
white flight. Boy, did that newspaper want it to be different.
People in Yonkers expected a complete failure. Expectations
were so low, we couldn’t lose. Ironically, the local newspaper
helped us there. They were constantly saying that the scattered-
site units would introduce crime, reduce property values, and
send everybody running. When none of that happened, the pres
ence of low-income African Americans in their neighborhoods
didn’t seem all that important.
Actually, we began winning when the community saw the buildings
go up and the quality of the designs. They couldn’t believe it—
couldn’t believe that we and HUD had actually kept our word.
Then, when they saw the attitudes of residents who moved in—their
concern for their grounds, their own policing of each other, their
deference to their neighbors—the nightmare simply vanished.
There is still very little one-on-one social interaction between
tenants and surrounding residents at most of the sites, but then
we expected that. There are occasional community picnics when
they do interact, but that’s not what I mean. But they know that
each of them is there, and behave with respect accordingly, and
that’s what’s important.
There isn’t even minor theft among residents on the sites, and
you know what it can be like in public housing: people stealing
each others’ curtains. The residents now store their outdoor
things openly in their individual back yards: bicycles, barbecues,
lawn chairs, tents. These yards are only separated from each
other by low 3-foot fences. Yet nothing disappears. That’s
because everyone knows it would have to be an inside job.
You can’t get into the collective rear yard area from the outside
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
because of the high 6-foot fencing that encloses the collective of
individual rear yards.
Peer group pressure among the residents was the key. We set up
tenants to be leaders on each site. They were chosen at the orien
tation program by the tenants themselves. This was such an op
portunity for all the residents; they knew they had to make it
work. After they moved in, community meetings continued to
play an important part in the acclimatization process. Residents
kept encountering things they were not prepared for. They
wanted to know how far they could go in assuming control of the
grounds. There were complaints about neighbors misbehaving,
parking on neighboring streets, police not responding quickly
enough, [and] paint washing off the interior walls when they
cleaned them. These community meetings were held in parking
lots, peoples’ apartments, and community rooms. Each of the
seven sites had four or five meetings a year for the first 2 years:
until things settled down. Now the meetings are fewer, and the
big subject for them is, “When will we be able to buy our units?”
If drug dealing goes on in the scattered sites, it is not evident. It
is not in-your-face as it is in the large projects in the southwest. A
basic requirement of drug dealers is being able to blend in with
the scenery, so the dealers can spot a cop before the cop spots
them. There is no anonymity in the scattered-site projects and the
bordering streets. If a resident chooses to sell drugs from his
apartment, he becomes very vulnerable. If his neighbors see too
much traffic to his house, they catch on. And he never knows
who is going to drop a dime on him.
With the residents doing such a good job of maintaining their
own grounds, upkeep of the nonprivate areas of the scattered
sites becomes critically important. We can’t do less of a job than
they do. That’s why it was important that we select a good main
tenance man, one who would be conscientious and flexible. We
are all learning our way in this thing.
The only thing I’d do differently is not design any of the sites
with more than 20 to 24 units. I know we didn’t have a choice:
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Creating Defensible Space
God knows we struggled to get the seven sites we did. And at
one time we did have 10 sites and so could have put fewer units
on each. But the 2 big sites, with 48 units on 1 and 44 on the
other, will come back to haunt us. They’re too isolated from
their surrounding communities. They are so big, they form their
own place. They’re not totally integrated into an overall commu
nity, not supervised by the surrounding middle-class residents.
Down the road, I think we’re going to see a difference in the
way the big sites perform and in the kids that come out of them.
It was your modifications to the Clason Point public housing
project that sold me on Defensible Space. It’s not that the con
cept didn’t make sense intuitively, but seeing how the residents
there reacted to the opportunity, that’s what convinced me. You
know, for me the best test of the Defensible Space theory was
not the way the residents took over their own grounds and then
began to defend the entire project, I kind of expected that, but it
is the way they take care of their garbage cans next to their front
walks. I, frankly, didn’t think that would work. Making garbage
disposal an individual thing, and making it clear to the whole
world that if there was a mess on their front yard, it was the ten-
ants’ own doing, brought something out of the tenants that
showed the whole world how badly they had been prejudged.
I bump into residents on occasion when shopping. They are
finding jobs in local stores. They don’t always report that they
are working though, they’re afraid they’ll have to pay more rent.
A lot of people now have jobs in the local businesses and institu
tions—some admit it, some don’t. The residents’ self-esteem
really went up. I can’t quantify it, but there is something special
there, an amazing difference in their self-image. They seem so
much more sure of themselves. Their kids share in that; they will
do much better because of it.
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Chapter Four: Dispersed, Scattered-Site Public Housing in Yonkers
When we held the lottery, only one-third of our existing tenants
put their names on the list, that is 2,000 of our 6,000 households.
There was apprehension in not knowing what sort of reception
they would receive from their white suburban neighbors. But ev
erybody in the authority has been following this closely, tenants
and management, and if another lottery were held tomorrow, I
know for a fact that 60 percent of our households would put their
names on the list.
107

REFERENCES

City of Dayton, OMB. Evaluation of the Five Oaks Neighborhood
Stabilization Plan. City of Dayton: Dayton, OH. 1994.
Kimble, C. E. Report on the Five Oaks Neighborhood Surveys. Social
Science Research Center, University of Dayton: Dayton, OH. 1993.
Newman, O. Analysis of 50 Sites in Nine Competing CCP Cities, Report
to the U.S. Department of Justice on the suitability of applying Defen
sible Space technology. Institute for Community Design Analysis, Great
Neck, NY. 1994.
Newman, O. Improving the Viability of Two Dayton Communities: Five
Oaks and Dunbar Manor. Institute for Community Design Analysis:
Great Neck, NY. 1992.
Newman, O. Safe Neighborhood Redevelopment Plan for District 7, City
of Plantation, Florida. Institute for Community Design Analysis: Great
Neck, NY. 1989.
Newman, O. Long-Term Housing Plan to Achieve Integration in the City
of Yonkers. Institute for Community Design Analysis: Great Neck, NY.
1987.
Newman, O. “Fair Housing: The Conflict Between Integration and Non-
discrimination,” Issues in Housing Discrimination. A Consultation/
Hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, DC. Nov.
12–13, 1985. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Washington, DC. 1986.
Newman, O., et al. Reorganization Plan for the Chicago Housing
Authority. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development:
Washington, DC. 1982.
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Creating Defensible Space
Newman, O. Crime Prevention Techniques in Commercial Establish
ments. A preliminary evaluation prepared for the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development. Institute for Community Design
Analysis: New York. 1982.
Newman, O., and K. Franck. “The Effects of Building Size on Personal
Crime and Fear of Crime,” Population and Environment. No. 5. 1982.
Newman, O., and K. Franck. Housing Design and Children’s Anti-social
Behavior. A study for the National Institute of Mental Health. Institute
for Community Design Analysis: New York. 1981.
Newman, O. Design Standards for Homeless Men Shelters in New York
City. Expert testimony to the Supreme Court of the State of New York. A
study undertaken for the New York State Department of Social Services,
Division of Adult Services. Institute for Community Design Analysis:
New York. 1981.
Newman, O. Proposal for Improving the Amsterdam Bijlmermeer New
Town, The Netherlands. A plan for rescuing the 12,000-unit new town
outside Amsterdam. Gemeentelijke Dienst Volkshuisvesting,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 1980.
Newman, O., and K. Franck. Factors Influencing Crime and Instability
in Urban Housing Developments. U.S. Department of Justice: Washing-
ton, DC. 1980.
Newman, O. Community of Interest. Anchor Press/Doubleday: Garden
City, NY. 1980.
Newman, O. Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space. U.S.
Department of Justice, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington,
DC. 1976.
Newman, O., and S. Johnston. A Model Security Code for Residential
Areas. A study for the Ford Foundation providing security components
to be added to standard building codes. Institute for Community Design
Analysis: New York. 1975.
110

References
Newman, O., D. Grandin, and F. Wayno. The Private Streets of St. Louis.
A National Science Foundation study (summarized in Community of
Interest, Ch. 6, Doubleday, 1980). Institute for Community Design
Analysis: New York. 1974.
Newman, O. Architectural Design for Crime Prevention. U.S.
Government Printing Office: Washington, DC. 1973.
Newman, O. Design Guide for Improving Residential Security. U.S.
Government Printing Office: Washington, DC. 1973.
Newman, O. Defensible Space. New York: Macmillan. 1972.
Newman, O. Inventory of Space Availability in Four New York City
Detention Facilities. A study for the New York City Department of
Corrections directed at improving conditions following the prison riots.
Institute for Community Design Analysis: New York, 1971.
Newman, O. Park Mall: Lawndale. The reuse of public streets and re
dundant arterials in neighborhood rehabilitation. City of Chicago,
Department of Development and Planning: Chicago. 1968.
Newman, O. New Frontiers in Architecture. A summary of the 1959
International Congress of Modern Architects conference in Otterlo. An
early exploration of the effects of architectural design on perception and
behavior. Universe Books: New York. 1961.
111

Addendum A
Defensible Space Guidelines
Used in Yonkers RFP
(This edited and shortened version of the original RFP speaks primarily
to design guidelines concerning Defensible Space.)
■ Background
This is a request for proposals for the construction of public housing
units for families with children, to be built on seven preselected sites
in the eastern part of Yonkers. This housing is being built as a remedy
to a Federal Court judgment. Both the City of Yonkers and the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have entered
into Consent Decrees to further the construction of this housing. The
sites have been acquired by the City of Yonkers. The Court has ordered
the City to make them available at no cost for use by the turnkey devel
oper selected to develop the public housing units. The selection will
be made by the Yonkers Municipal Housing Authority (MHA) and
approved by HUD.
Two-story townhouse dwelling units have been chosen as the most
appropriate form of housing: (1) to best serve the future residents; and
(2) to fit into the single-family residential character of the existing
neighborhoods. The advantage of the townhouse design is that each unit
is its own entity, belonging to one single family. It has its own front and
back yard, and independent entrances serving only that family. The
townhouse has no public circulation spaces—no lobbies, stairways, or
corridors—which often create problems in low-income developments.
The cost of proposals that exceed HUD’s Total Development Cost
(TDC) guidelines (as found in Section C) will not be rejected by MHA
for that reason alone; however, HUD has made no commitment that it
will provide funds for any costs in excess of those cost guidelines, and
accordingly, has reserved the right to reject any proposals exceeding
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Creating Defensible Space
them. Sources of funds other than HUD’s may be made available to pro-
vide for costs in excess of the cost guidelines.
■ Definitions
1. Townhouse Units:
A townhouse unit is a two-story house serving only one family. It shares
common side walls with other townhouse units. Each townhouse will
have its own entry front and rear and its own front and rear yard. Refer
to the New York State Building Code for the maximum number of
townhouse units that can be grouped together under different fire
designations.
2. Units for the Handicapped:
A dwelling unit for the handicapped must be located entirely on the first
floor level. It must be designed to the Uniform Federal Accessibility
Standards. HUD requires that 5 percent of all units be provided for the
handicapped per site.
3. Dwelling Units above Handicapped Units:
A second floor walkup dwelling unit will be permitted above the handi
capped unit, but it must have a separate individual entrance at ground
level. That is to say, the family living on the second floor is to have its
own entry at street level which leads to a stair to the second floor. In
MHA’s definition there will be no interior areas common to more than
one family.
4. Units for the Visually and Hearing Impaired:
HUD requires that in addition, 2 percent of all units be provided for the
visually and hearing impaired. These units are to be designed to comply
with the Public Housing Development Accessibility Requirements (No
tice PIH 88-34) (attached to this RFP). These dwelling units shall be
distributed among the sites as shown.
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Addendum A
■ Selection of proposals
Proposals will be selected by MHA on the basis of free and open compe
tition. Evaluation will be objectively conducted in accordance with the
procedures and criteria set forth in the Proposal Evaluation Criteria,
which follow later.
All proposals must comply with the project planning, design and cost
criteria detailed in chapters 3, 6, 9, and 10 of the Public Housing
Development Handbook and applicable cost containment and modest
design requirements of HUD Notice PIH90–16 and Public Housing Cost
Guidelines.
■ Zoning
The Federal District Court has ordered that all sites are deemed to be
appropriately zoned for the housing called for in this RFP. The guide-
lines and constraints for the development of the sites are specified in the
Design Criteria paragraph and Design Parameters. Developers are spe
cifically asked to refer to the changes in the Yonkers Zoning Code al
lowed for in this RFP as regards to existing setback requirements and
parking ratios.
■ Design criteria
1. Building Design
All buildings shall have pitched shingle roofs for drainage and aesthetic
purposes.
In order to individualize the separate units, the Developer shall endeavor
where possible, and in compliance with HUD’s Cost Containment
Guidelines, to employ visual breaks, changes in plane or roof line, and/
or varied architectural expression (e.g. variation in window sizes, color,
texture, etc.), especially in the development of the building elevations.
The exterior walls shall have a brick veneer at the first story. The second
story should be a maintenance free material.
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Creating Defensible Space
2. Security:
Page 1 of HUD’s Manual of Acceptable Practices cites two references
for site design to achieve security: Architectural Design for Crime
Prevention (U.S. Government Printing Office) and Defensible Space
(Macmillan). Since security has become an increasingly important issue
for public housing and for the communities that surround them, security
should be given very serious consideration in the development of these
site plans. The parameters to be used are as follows: The front yards, the
fronts of buildings, and the main entries to units shall face existing
streets or new driveways so as to facilitate normal patrolling by police
cars and police response to residents’ request for assistance. This will
also enable residents across the street, whose units also face the street, to
survey their neighbors front doors.
To the extent that the site will allow, the rear yards serving individual
units should be backed onto the rear yards of other units so that a collec
tive grouping of rear yards can be easily fenced off together using a col
lective 6’0” high fence. This will serve to create a collective private zone
(consisting of a grouping of individual rear yards) that is inaccessible
from the public street but accessible from the interior of each unit.
The amount of collective fencing needed to enclose the collective group
ings of rear yard areas can be minimized through the judicious place
ment of buildings and rear yards.
3. Parking:
All parking areas are to be positioned a minimum distance of 10 feet
from any building and should be positioned to facilitate surveillance
from the units. Parking may be placed between the side walls of
townhouse groupings as long as the nearest automobile space is not
closer to the street than the front line of the building. Concrete wheel
stops at curbs are to be provided at every parking space.
4. Walks:
Walks shall be provided for safe convenient direct access to each unit
and for safe pedestrian circulation throughout a development between
facilities and locations where major need for pedestrian access can be
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Addendum A
anticipated. Walks shall be located so that they are easily surveyed from
the interior of units.
5. Garbage and Refuse Storage:
Individual, outdoor garbage storage areas are to be provided and posi
tioned to serve each dwelling unit. Inground garbage containers are the
preferred solution by MHA and shall be designed to hold two garbage
receptacles. The design treatment and construction of garbage and refuse
stations and containers should prevent access to them by pests or animals.
6. Lighting:
Lighting is to be provided for the entire developed site with concentra
tions at walks, ramps, parking lots, and entrances to units. The intensity
shall be 0.5 foot candles minimum for parking lots and walkways; and
4.0 foot candles for townhouse entrances, ramps, and steps. Parking
lighting poles shall have a minimum height of 25’0” and pedestrian walk
lighting poles a height of 12’0” to 15’0”.
7. Planting:
Planting should not be placed so as to screen the doors and windows of
dwelling units from the street or from walks leading from the street to
dwelling unit entries.
Plant material should be selected and arranged to permit full safe sight
distance between approaching vehicles at street intersections. Additional
attention is required where driveways enter streets, at crosswalks and
especially in areas of concentrated mixed pedestrian and vehicular
movement. Planting that hides the pedestrian from the motorist until he
steps out on the street should be avoided.
■ Selection of proposals
Proposals will be selected by the Municipal Housing Authority on the
basis of free and open competition. Proposals will be evaluated objec
tively in accordance with the procedures and criteria set forth in HUD
Handbook 7417.1 Rev. 1, dated October 1980, paragraphs 6–42 and
6–43, as amended by this RFP, as well as the following Evaluation
Criteria.
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Creating Defensible Space
In the event that all proposals are determined to be “nonresponsive,” i.e.,
require major corrections in order to conform to the requirements of the
RFP, MHA reserves the right to solicit a second round of proposals. Under
this procedure, each developer will be informed of the reasons his/her
proposal was determined nonresponsive, and be given an opportunity to
submit a redesigned proposal, which may involve a higher price. If all
resubmitted proposals are again found nonresponsive, MHA and HUD
reserve the right to negotiate with the developer of the proposal considered
most desirable to rectify deficiencies, permitting, if necessary, further
increases in price.
After MHA has made its official announcement of designation, it will
hold a meeting with those respondents who were not selected. This
meeting will be held to review the rating, ranking, and selection process.
■ Proposal evaluation criteria
Proposals will be evaluated on a point system based on the four criteria
below. The developer is asked to follow them as closely as possible.
A. Developer’s price ...................................................... 20 points max.
The total developer’s price as a percent of the median price for all
responsive turnkey proposals.
Superior = below 90 percent of median
Average = 90–100 percent of median
Poor = more than 100 percent of median
B. Developer’s qualifications ........................................ 20 points max.
Previous experience in successfully developing and completing similar
projects, perceived capability in completing this project, and financial
viability.
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Addendum A
C. Site development plan .............................................. 40 points max.
(i) Site development layout
The extent to which the site development plan conforms to the Design
Criteria regarding the layout of topography/grading, drainage, utility
plan, streets, parking, slope stability, planting design, and open space
development.
Maximum 15 points
(ii) Architectural treatment
The degree to which the exterior design of the dwelling units captures
the scale, materials, and character of the neighborhood.
Maximum 15 points
(iii) Unit layout
The extent to which the dwelling unit floor plans and layout provides
functional housing arrangements, allows residents to supervise activities
in the streets, and allows the unit front entries and windows to be ob
served from the street.
Maximum 10 points
D. Design and construction quality............................. 20 points max.
(i) Special design features
The degree to which the design incorporates features that provide for
efficient project operations and lower maintenance costs.
Maximum 5 points
(ii) Energy-saving features
The extent to which the design provides for long-term energy savings by
incorporating the use of energy conservation features.
Maximum 5 points
(iii) Material and equipment
The extent to which durable, low-maintenance, construction material
and equipment will be used.
Maximum 5 points
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Creating Defensible Space
(iv) Security
The extent to which the rear yards are backed onto other rear yards, so
that a collective grouping of rear yards can be fenced off together. This
will make the rear yards inaccessible from the public street but acces
sible from the interior of each dwelling.
Maximum 5 points
Total Maximum.......................... 100 points max.
Proposals will be evaluated based on the point system described above.
The rating will be a gradation of 100 points spread among the four crite
ria. Ratings will be, (1) Superior (value 70 percent to 100 percentage
points), Average (value 40 percent to 69 percentage points) and (3) Poor
(value 0 to 39 percentage points), for each criteria. If only one proposal
is submitted, the developer’s price criteria will be rated against HUD’s
latest TDC for townhouse construction in Westchester County.
120

Addendum B
Tenant Training Course Conducted by Housing
Education Relocation Enterprise
Tenants were given 2 hours of orientation and 2 hours of counseling in
the following five subjects:
Tenant relocation
1. What are leases? Tenant responsibilities; landlord responsibilities?
2. What are the three phases of relocation?
3. What is the relocation schedule/timetable?
4. How do tenants prepare for the move?
5. How do tenants move?
6. How do tenants adapt to their new community?
Home maintenance
1. What do tenants need to know about their new housing units?
2. What do tenants need to know about their utilities?
a) Telephone company (NYNEX, MCI, SPRINT)
b) Washer/dryer (Manufacturer)
c) Heating/air conditioning (CON-EDISON)
d) Stove/refrigerator (Manufacturer)
3. What do tenants need to know about trash/garbage removal?
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Creating Defensible Space
4. What do tenants need to know about parking?
5. What do tenants need to know about outdoor home recreation?
Interpersonal relations
1. What constitutes good tenant/landlord relations?
2. What constitutes good tenant/tenant relations?
3. What constitutes good tenant/neighbor relations?
4. What benefits do resident councils provide?
a) Methods or organization
b) Democratic processes
c) Problem solving
d) Conflict resolution
e) MHA grievance procedure
Safety/security
1. What is the MHA evacuation plan?
2. What constitutes good police/community relations?
3. How does a tenant identify and properly utilize public health services?
a) Department of public works
b) Fire department
c) City emergency services
d) Ambulance/medical services
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Addendum B
e) Hospitals/clinics
f) Night/neighborhood watch programs
Community resources
1. What family services are available to the tenants?
a) Youth services
b) Parks/recreation
c) Libraries
d) Cultural services
e) Shopping centers
f) Banking services
g) Postal services
h) Personal maintenance
2. Transportation
a) Buses
b) Trains
c) Cabs/private transportation
3. Religious services
123

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Office of Policy Development and Research

Washington, D.C. 20410–6000

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