CONFLICTING FORCES Changing the Dynamics of Crime and Community on a 'Problem' Estate

For more than two decades, the 'problem' council (public) housing estate has received a great deal of attention from researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers. Rock (1988) noted that descriptions emanating from enquiries and initiatives turn repeat edly around the same features: large estates built to confused and unpopular designs with inadequate facilities; neglected and poorly-maintained dwellings and public spaces; and a high turnover of disparate populations with concentrations of social and economic disadvantage. These features create, and are themselves a consequence of, an adverse reputation which such estates come to acquire, making them unpopular among existing and prospective tenants. The residential community becomes demoralized, fragmented, and determined to leave. The outcome for the estates is a self-fuelling spiral of deterioration, characterized by worsening concentrations of social problems, vandalism, crime, and drug use, with which local authority housing departments are unable to cope. Unfortunately, research shows that it is very difficult to describe the sequences of cause and effect linking the deterioration of urban neighbourhoods to changes in their crime levels, because their many adverse characteristics are likely to interact over time in the process of decline or renewal (cf. Skogan 1990; Hope and Shaw 1988; Taylor and Gottfredson 1986; Taub et al. 1984). Nevertheless, three distinct strands of thought have been deployed to explain or remedy the deterioration of the problem estate. First, a set of explanations has focused on the role of estate design in fostering defensive or territorial behaviour among residents (Newman 1973), creating opportunities for the commission of offences (Clarke and Mayhew 1980), or in encouraging general 'social malaise' (Coleman 1985). Second, the decentralization of housing services and management, and the creation of a partnership between landlord and tenant in running estates, has been advocated to tackle the various interlocking problems in a pragmatic way from the ground up (Power 1984, 1987a, b\ Bright and Petterson 1984). Third, a concentration of social disadvantage has been linked to a growth in social problems in residential communities (Wilson 1987; Crane 1991) and there is renewed interest in their causal relationship (Heseltine 1991; Wilson 1991; Murray 1990). Evidence linking these explanations with crime has been marshalled but is of variable quality and there are difficulties in substantiating any particular view. As