Recently, Malaysia has adopted the “Safe city program”, which is focused towards creating violence and crime free cities. To achieve this, it is important to address crimes and disorder in residential areas. So far studies identified that changes in built environment and modifications in space design can impact residents and offenders’ perceptions of criminality. Various CPTED measures are employed to create defensible space. This paper examines the effect of physical design on the occurrences of crime in Taman Melati residential area of Kuala Lumpur City and tests the effects of the built environment on the possibility of crime reduction through physical planning measures. Keywords: Crimes; Terrace housing; Environmental design; Safe city; CPTED. © 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, UniversitiTeknologi MARA, Malaysia.