Reducing fear of crime through spatial configuration analysis for urban sustainability in mixed-use neighbourhood
Paper Details
Reducing fear of crime through spatial configuration analysis for urban sustainability in mixed-use neighbourhood
Abstract
Fear of crime is an important social problem which has the negative impact on sociability and quality of life. The isolated streets are defined as urban spaces where fear of crime is highly perceived. Feeling safe depends on the knowledge about the environment which needs the awareness of where you are in the space. Thus, it is considered that spatial knowledge is crucial to evaluate feeling of safety. This study aims to investigate the relationship between fear of crime and space configuration in Mixed-use neighbourhood. The study focused on accessibility measures based on the axial line street model in order to define safe spaces and fearsome in urban street space. The main method and procedures used include: space syntax method to analyze space configuration characteristics of the study areas and questionnaire to examine the fearsome and safe places. Axial analysis, as the analytical tool, is applied to provide the opportunity for exploration of accessibility patterns of a space network. Furthermore, integration value, level of connectivity, and choice level as the accessibility measures are calculated by Depthmap software. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to investigate the relationship between syntactical variables and safe and fearsome place. Taman Universiti neighbourhood in Malaysia is chosen as the case study. The findings show that to have a safe walkable space is essential to consider integration values, connectivity and choice value in planning and designing the urban street networks.
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