We can see in these early studies (many of which were aligned with a form of environmental determinism, sometimes simplistic, sometimes more sophisticated) the origins of a wider quasi-scientific theory about crime and urban environments known as the ‘broken window theory’. Brought into prominence in the 1970s by George Kelling, this ‘theory’ is directed towards promoting a more localised (walking-the-beat) form of policing on the basis that indicators of neighbourhood disrepair (such as a broken window) foster criminality. The logic runs like this: signs of neighbourhood decay lead residents to withdraw from public life of the neighbourhood and thereby reduce the efficacy of informal social control, leaving the area open for more serious criminal misdemeanours. As Wilson and Kelling put it in their 1982 ‘Broken Windows’ article appearing in the Atlantic Monthly:

‘…at a community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken…one unrepaired window is a signal that no one cares… untended behavior…meads to the breakdown of community controls…residents…will use the streets less often…such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion’.

Just as the window was positioned as an indicator of highrise disorder, so too was it deemed to be an important part of the solution in problem estates. As an aperture, the window also allowed for all-important lines of sight in estates where building layout produced dangerous spaces (blind corners, corridors, stair wells). This was evidently so in Oscar Newman’s 1972 ‘defensible space’ thesis, which was built upon a detailed study of crime and environment in New York highrise housing projects [17]. From Newman’s point of view, crime was not simply reduced because of the arrangement of space (a simple environmental determinism) but the arrangement of space made it possible for residents to comprehend and become involved in what goes on in their building and surrounds. For Newman, windows and window-substitute technologies (what he called ‘glassless windows’ – apertures, acoustic openings, and wired listening devices linking interior and external spaces) were essential to producing what he called ‘surveillance opportunities’ for residents and ‘their agents’, such as the police [18].