This contribution describes the tool Social Safe Urban Design (SSUD), seen together with socio-spatial and linguistic challenges when applying space syntax in the regenerating of problem urban areas. The Space Syntax jargon is technical and needs to be translated into a language understandable and acceptable to stakeholders who are responsible for the implementation of improvement strategies acceptable for the users of a neighbourhood. Moreover, the degree of public-private interface between buildings and streets needs to be incorporated in the Space Syntax analyses. As it turns out from spatial analyses and crime registrations, there is a correlation between crime and anti-social behaviour and the spatial layout of built environments in the investigated eight pilot cases. Simultaneously, there is also a challenge to come up with locally and globally functioning spatial solutions for reducing opportunities for crime and anti-social behaviour for the neighbourhoods. Proposed solutions for three of these neighbourhoods are presented in this contribution.@en

In haar kritiek op de hedendaagse stedenbouw en architectuur, pleitte Jane Jacobs voor intensief gebruikte straten en gebouwen die de mogelijkheid bieden voor sociale controle ofwel (zoalszij dat noemde) ogen op straat. Maar hoe kwantificeren we nu precies vitaal straatleven en ogen op straat? Om deze vraag te beantwoorden, is een ruimtelijke analysemethode ontwikkeld waarmee de relatie tussen openbare en private ruimten kan worden gekwantificeerd.@en

One of Jane Jacob’s key observations was that we need “eyes on the streets” from buildings to ensure safety. How can it be quantified? Research on urban environment by means of space syntax methods tend to focus on macro scale spatial conditions. However, micro scale conditions should not be neglected. In research on dispersal of burglaries in urban areas, spatial analyses methods as regards topological relationships between private and public space was developed and tested out. The following issues were taken into account: Degree of inter-visibility of windows and doors and their inter-relationship to street segments, the density of entrances of private houses connected to streets, the number of semi-private or semi-public spaces between various kinds of private and public space, the degree of constitutedness of streets and the degree of visibility from windows to parking lots. As these results show, measuring the private-public interface offers knowledge about the spatial conditions for vital street life, urban safety, social interactions and their interdependence. Quantifying a built environment’s spatial layout can therefore provide understandings on how urban space shape possibilities for social integration and exclusion. All seems to depend on various degrees of adjacency, permeability and inter-visibility taken into account on different scale levels.@en