central government housing resources to estate refurbishment: from £45million in 1986-7 to £373 million in 1994-5 (Lund, 1996: 128). In DICE a team led by Coleman was to work closely with architects and embed her ‘corrective measures’ for design disadvantagement into the physical fabric of seven selected estates in London (see Coleman et al., 1988, Coleman; 1992). The first estate to undergo design improvement was the Mozart Estate in Westminster, where four overhead walkways were removed in order to break up a string of 23 linked blocks. According to DICE, the local beat police reported that this change ‘resulted in a sudden 55% drop in the burglary rate’ (Stage 111 Design Improvement proposals, 1992, DICE Consultancy, King’s College London, Alice Coleman’s team, see ). The emergence of DICE marked an irrefutable institutional and material instantiation of Coleman’s translation of Newman’s urban design methods. Yet this happened in a sceptical, even resistant, bureaucratic context and most certainly against the advice of the then Secretary of State (George Younger) who, one academic commentator suggests, got ‘handbagged’ by Thatcher (excerpted from interview undertaken by Elanor Warwick, 2011, with Paul Wiles, Professor of Criminology at Sheffield University at the time). Certainly, the final sum to come to Coleman was somewhat short of initial promises suggesting that Whitehall had some moderating effect. Furthermore, although Thatcher had promised Coleman access to crime statistics, so that her science could better replicate that of Newman’s, these were never forthcoming from the Police. As
central government housing resources to estate refurbishment: from £45million in 1986-7 to £373 million in 1994-5 (Lund, 1996: 128). In DICE a team led by Coleman was to work closely with architects and embed her ‘corrective measures’ for design disadvantagement into the physical fabric of seven selected estates in London (see Coleman et al., 1988, Coleman; 1992). The first estate to undergo design improvement was the Mozart Estate in Westminster, where four overhead walkways were removed in order to break up a string of 23 linked blocks. According to DICE, the local beat police reported that this change ‘resulted in a sudden 55% drop in the burglary rate’ (Stage 111 Design Improvement proposals, 1992, DICE Consultancy, King’s College London, Alice Coleman’s team, see ). The emergence of DICE marked an irrefutable institutional and material instantiation of Coleman’s translation of Newman’s urban design methods. Yet this happened in a sceptical, even resistant, bureaucratic context and most certainly against the advice of the then Secretary of State (George Younger) who, one academic commentator suggests, got ‘handbagged’ by Thatcher (excerpted from interview undertaken by Elanor Warwick, 2011, with Paul Wiles, Professor of Criminology at Sheffield University at the time). Certainly, the final sum to come to Coleman was somewhat short of initial promises suggesting that Whitehall had some moderating effect. Furthermore, although Thatcher had promised Coleman access to crime statistics, so that her science could better replicate that of Newman’s, these were never forthcoming from the Police. As
Final_revised_March_2012_Jacobs_and_Lees_IJURR.docx