An Analysis of Rasht Mehr Housing Project in Environmental Crime Prevention

One of the facilitating factors of offence is environmental factor specially housing issue in contemporary society. Unsuitable housing can cause an insecure environment with high level of crime by preparing criminal opportunities. This anxiety is notable especially in case of public housing. So it is necessary to examine Mehr housing as the greatest project of the history of urban designing in Iran which has affected lots of lives, with the view of crime-proneness and prevention potential. In this study, Rasht′s Mehr housing was compared with the fundamental principles of three theories of CPTED, defensible space and broken windows i.e territoriality, surveillance and maintenance and to prove the theoretical findings, practical investigations have done through questioners and photos. Generally, the statistics imply that there are dissatisfactory, lack of enthusiasm and sense of insecurity which show the ignorance of known principles of environmental prevention by administrators of the project of Mehr housing, non-comprehensive study in housing issues and not using of the knowledge and skills of criminologists, environment psychologists, urban designer, etc.