The Effects of Built Environment Landscaping on Site Security: Reviews on Selected Shopping Centers

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A B S T R A C T In recent years, the global increase in security concerns made it inevitable to develop new action plans in planning processes. Security concerns come with the necessity of considering building architecture processes together with environmental and landscape design processes.This study aims identification of which measures can be taken into account safely built environment design. It was made a safety checklist which can be adapted for every open spaces. Five shopping malls around the İstanbul were evaluated and some result have been achieved for their site security.

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The Effects of Built Environment Landscaping on Site Security: Reviews on Selected Shopping Centers in İstanbul * Dr.GökçenFirdevsYücel Caymaz1 1Department of Industrial Product Design, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Istanbul, Turkey A B S T R A C T In recent years, the global increase in security concerns made it inevitable to develop new action plans in planning processes. Security concerns come with the necessity of considering building architecture processes together with environmental and landscape design processes.This study aims identification of which measures can be taken into account safely built environment design. It was made a safety checklist which can be adapted for every open spaces. Five shopping malls around the İstanbul were evaluated and some result have been achieved for their site security. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019), 3(1), 191-201. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4730 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The security issue plays an important role in making urban design decisions and determining quality of life criteria. Security is ranked after physiological and biological needs in the hierarchy of vital needs of human beings (Maslow, 1943). Presence of other people makes one feel safer (the concept of “eyes on the street”: the more people, the safer the environment is) (Jacobs, 1961),and people living in the city need safe environments in their daily life cycle. Project for Public Space, and the studies carried out by Lang, Gehl and Turkoglu, which emphasize the importance of safety and trust for the space quality and healthy cities, are important (Lang, 1994; URL 1, Gehl, 2002; URL 2). Positive security perception enhances the urban senses of belonging and ownership. Improvement of social, economic and cultural living conditions besides the improvement of the design conditions of the physical environments influences the perception of positive security (Bal, 2012). Using durable materials such as steel and concrete in urban furniture, expanding the coverage of pedestrian zones, providing dense afforestation, constructing barriers, distributing transfer points of public transportation to multiple locations, and limiting vehicle access to the city center are important actions within the scope of the mentioned action plans (URL 3). In urban outdoor designing, safe physical planning is important for being able to provide people with psychological comfort. Security planning requires considering the building’s location in the city, its position on the land, its form, landscape design, car park and infrastructure facilities as well as the pedestrian and vehicle access as a whole. In addition to planning studies, security design of the building perimeter also includes the efforts to restrain the sources of unwanted external threats by means of artificial or natural restrictive means such as walls and fences. This kind of security restrictions are intended for keeping potential threat elements away from buildings. Despite all precautions, there may still be a risk of danger due to physical factors as well as budget and personnel restrictions (Hopper and Droge, 2005). Today, building perimeter security is an issue that concerns all buildings. This study examines the security of shopping centers and their perimeters, as environments with intensive human use that city-dwellers use to carry out their social, cultural and economic activities. According to the definition of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC); “shopping centers are public commercial buildings covering a minimum gross leasable area (GLA) of 5,000 square meters and at least 15 independent departments, which are managed as a single entity. The terrorism threat in commercial shopping centers is an important source of concern due to the fact that 21 countries have had more than 60 terrorist attacks since 1998. According to the analysis results of the statistical data about these attacks, 17 of the terrorist attacks were carried out around and outside the shopping centers; and therefore, security planning is needed for the outdoor spaces of such public buildings (Figure 1) (LaTourrette et al., 2006, URL-2). The same concerns are shared in Turkey as well, regarding the modern shopping center buildings taking the place of traditional shopping centers, the number of which reached 299 in consequence of the increase in their number, experienced especiallyafter the 1980s. Figure 1. Images of damaged shopping center surroundings: Harrods; Corporation Street: Manchester; Karrada: Bagdad (URL 4) The result of the investigation made within the scope of this study, on the laws and regulations applicable for building construction processes in our country, showed that no application provision and design criteria for site or urban security has been included in legislations, apart from several laws and regulations such as Construction Zoning Law No.194 enacted in 1985, the Regulation on Occupational Health and Safety in Constructional Works enacted in 2012, the Regulation on Making Spatial Plans enacted in 2014, and the Regulation on Shopping Centers enacted in 2014 (URL 5). At this point, it is important to define site security of shopping centers besides security of all urban buildings, and establish their legal regulations as well as their planning and design standards. In this study, it is intended to define appropriate site planning principles by establishing standards for site security design. 2. Method Of The Study In this study, an effort is made to form a checklist intended for measuring the security design processes of building perimeters. The checklist titles were taken by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) from the “Security Design and Landscape Architecture” titled study of the Landscape Architecture Technical Information Series/LATIS, and the “Risk Management Series” titled study of the Federal Emergency Management Agency/FEMA (LATIS, 2016; FEMA, 2003, 2007).

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