Since 1 July 2009 the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) in Lower Saxony has been coordinating the EU project "Planning urban Security – PluS". The research project is based on the approach of preventing crime through urban planning -- a complex concept of interactions.

The project involves analysing and presenting the interrelation between crime prevention measures and urban development in the four partnering countries Germany, England, Austria and Poland.

"PluS" is based on the recognition that, for a variety of reasons, social disorder, e.g. due to poverty, unemployment, disintegration and delinquency, concentrates in deprived neighbourhoods. The not infrequent result is that deprived places can become depriving places for the people that live there. The "PluS" research project will contribute to the design of safer and therewith more liveable residential areas in order to counter, among other things, stigmatisation.

Thus influencing positively the built and living environments -- through the interplay between planning and police know-how and with the participation of the stakeholders -- with respect to the structures that may give opportunities to commit a crime and to the mediated quality of life, can have a significant impact on preventing crime.

The "Planning urban Security" research project draws on international and interdisciplinary aspects in the design of the research. The “leitmotif” winds its way through the thematic complex of “Safety and living in the urban context”.