Digital Architecture as Crime Control

The first generation of cyberlaw was about what regulates cyberspace. Led by Larry Lessig’s path-breaking scholarship isolating architecture as a constraint on behavior online, a wide body of work has flourished. In a recent article, I took those insights and reverse-engineered them to show how attention to architecture in real space (such as our city streets, parks, houses, and other buildings) constrains crime. It is time to begin a new generation of work, one that applies the lessons of real space study back to the cybernetic realm.