Geography Colloquium: Loretta Lees, Boston University

In this talk, Professor Lees will discuss Defensible Space on the Move: Mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice co-authored with Elanor Warwick (RGS-IBG Book Series, Wiley, 2022). She will evaluate the geographical/spatial concept of Defensible Space, which has been influential in designing out crime and has been applied to housing estates in the UK, North America, Europe, and beyond.

Alice Coleman Obituary: Geographer who championed the idea of ‘defensible space’ in order to improve on the problematic designs of some high-rise estates

The geographer Alice Coleman, who has died aged 99, set out to prove that British modernist high-rise council estates were failing because their layout lacked “defensible space”, and that their problematic design reduced social interaction while encouraging crime and anti-social behaviour. In her book Utopia on Trial: Vision and Reality in Planned Housing (1985) Alice condemned such estates as failed idylls, criticising authoritarian and paternalistic planners within the Ministry of Housing, local government and the Department of the Environment. As an alternative she promoted modifications that she believed would tackle some of the problems inadvertently created by poor design.

Prof. Loretta Lees: Gentrification is Global, Revising the Definition and Borders of Gentrification (Interview)

Professor Loretta Lees is the current Faculty Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University and is an urban geographer and urbanist who is internationally known for her research on gentrification and urban regeneration. Emiliya Akhundova and Anna Jonczyk interview Professor Lees on her books “Gentrification” – the first textbook on gentrification – and “Planetary Gentrification.” In this interview, Professor Lees discusses how the term “gentrification” has been overburdened and that there are new, more specific terms that may better describe the changes occurring across various locations: classical, rural, new-build, and super-gentrification.

One to One with Suzy Wrack: The House I Grew Up In

Football writer Suzy Wrack talks to urban geographer and professor at Boston University, Loretta Lees, about how growing up on council estates shaped their lives, and led them to studying the impact of space and design.

Defensible Space on the Move by Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick (Book Review)

Newman’s core idea was that by designing segmented spaces that are easily controlled, we can create safer and more community-oriented housing. Lees and Warwick’s Defensible Space on the Move is highly recommended in this context for its forensic account of the evolution of Newman’s concept, as it influenced Alice Coleman’s Utopia on Trial, and how it was taken up by housing policy and practice in the UK. It is of especial interest to space syntax experts for its coverage of the interaction between Coleman’s ideas on the one hand, and early space syntax studies of housing and of crime, on the other. Indeed, Defensible Space coincides almost perfectly with Hillier’s earliest work at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, soon after he moved here from the RIBA’s Intelligence Unit.