Urban environments, safety, and crimes
Journal Artical
A dose of nature to reduce sexual crimes in public outdoor spaces: Proposing the Landscape-Sexual Crime Model
Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning, 2024, IF= 8.119
Sexual crime is a critical global social problem. There remains a critical knowledge gap concerning whether and to what extent sexual crimes in public outdoor spaces can be influenced by landscape morphology of green spaces. This missing knowledge hinders the effective use of green spaces to reduce sexual crimes in these public settings. To address this issue, we collected a dataset comprising 5,155 cases of sexual crimes that occurred in public outdoor spaces in the United States from August 2021 to July 2022. A random forest model was employed to examine the statistical relationships between landscape morphology and sexual crimes. Additionally, we utilized the Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) model to quantify the interaction effects of landscape morphology with socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. This study yields three key findings: (1) Both the proportion and configuration factors of landscape morphology may significantly influence the sexual crime probability. (2) The relationships between landscape morphology and sexual crimes are nonlinear, and threshold values for the satisfactory dose and the preferred dose of green spaces can be identified. (3) There are significant interaction effects between landscape morphology with socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing green space interventions in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Lastly, through summarizing the findings of this study and previous research, we propose the Landscape-Sexual Crime Model (LSCM), which advocates for further research to explore effective strategies for using green spaces to reduce sexual crimes.
Minimizing the Gender Difference in Perceived Safety: Comparing the Effects of Urban Back Alley Interventions
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2017, IF= 7.649
Urban alleys are perceived as unsafe, especially by women. We conducted a photograph-questionnaire survey to examine gender difference in perceived safety of alley scenes. Photograph simulation tech-nology was used to create three categories of intervention scenes: Cleaning, Vegetation, and Urban Function & Vegetation. For the existing (Baseline) and Cleaning scenes, perceived safety remained low for both genders, though men’s perceived safety was significantly higher than women’s. Vegetation scenes were perceived as moderately safe for both genders, but men’s ratings were still significantly
higher. For Urban Function & Vegetation scenes, perceived safety was high for both genders, and the gender difference largely disappeared. Geometric vegetation yielded higher perceived safety than naturalistic vegetation for both genders. These findings provide clear evidence to support the efforts of policy makers, environmental designers, and community associations seeking to create safe and vital back alley environments for men and women in high-density cities across the world.
From Broken Windows to Perceived Routine Activities: Examining Impacts of Environmental Interventions on Perceived Safety of Urban Alleys
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018, IF= 4.232
In high-density cities around the world, alleys are common but neglected spaces that are perceived as unsafe. While cities have invested resources in environmental interventions to improve safety in urban allies, it is not clear how these interventions impact perceived safety. We review two important criminology theories that discuss the environmental and social factors that lead to crime: the Broken Windows Theory and the Routine Activity Theory. We argue that these theories can also be used to explain safety perceptions of urban environments, and then develop urban alley interventions based on these theories.
We test people’s perceived safety of these interventions through a photograph survey. Results show that all interventions yielded higher perceived safety than existing alley scenes. Interventions based on the Broken Windows Theory (cleaning or vegetation interventions) yielded only modest improvements in perceived safety, while interventions based on the Routine Activity Theory (urban function interventions) yielded higher ratings.
Our findings question the dominant use of the Broken Windows Theory in environmental interventions to promote perceived safety and argue for a more effective approach: urban function interventions inspired by the Routine Activity Theory.