Safe city planning principles, comprehension and methods of urban crime prevention: The case of the city of Ankara

Different factors that constitute security concerns in the city are in question. It is accepted that radical changes within the globalization process, from the global to the urban scale, increase the threats against security. In this process, with human mobility becoming easier, cities and/or urban districts transform into areas where social control is lessened, due to the rapid increase and change in population. This concept triggers the crimes committed against the society and the city. In other words, at the turn of the 21st century, the most significant problem of the cities is, as it was in the past, to ensure security. Nevertheless, until today, the ?safe city? has only been discussed conceptually as a part of healthy city theories, and its principles and basics within city planning have not been defined.To this end, in this thesis study, the prevention of crimes in the formation of the safe city is addressed as the primary tool and defined within the scope of city planning. In this approach, ?protected urban areas,? which are negatively dissociated due to failure in conservation-sustenance and/or alienated due to abandonment at the urban scale, are accepted as priority areas in relation to their being urban centers. With this orientation, the relation between crime geography and urban land utilization, or, to put it differently, physical space quality, has been established upon the study area (Ankara-Ulus Traditional City Center), by taking into consideration the mobility of crime and its variability according to location.As such, the scope, methodology and techniques of preventing urban crimes have been determined with the help of crime geography, and it is believed that the ?principles of safe city planning? will not only contribute to the literature but will also be directive in ensuring security in practice.