A tenet of crime pattern theory (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1993) is
that certain places may act as a crime attractor, crime generator, crime
detractor, or crime neutral area. Originally, it was postulated that places
which bring lots of people together, whereby an offender identifies an
opportunity for crime that was not pre-planned, can be considered as a
generator of crime; whereas some places are already known to offenders as
potentially good targets for crime will be an attractor of crime. Both can be
considered as risky places. In contrast, other places can be considered crime
neutral or crime detractors, and are therefore places of low risk of crime.
This lecture builds on the article by Kinney et al. (2008) and considered the
extent to which land use and urban design will influence crime generators and
attractors, crime concentration, and the composition of risky places.