The Relationship between Urban form and Perceived Security; An Empirical Analysis; Case Syudy: Shiraz City

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Urbanism, School of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 M.A. of Urban Planning, School of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

3 Professor of Urbanism, School of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

4 Assistant Professor of Urbanism, School of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

Abstract

In many of today’s cities, neighborhoods face a variety of social problems, the most important of which is the lack of social security. On the one hand, this is related to social and demographic characteristics and on the other hand, it is undeniably associated with place. The study of concepts related to urban crime is often carried out under a subfield of criminology called “environmental criminology”. In this area, the impact of the surroundings on crime rate is investigated by identifying the relationships between urban form and neighborhood security. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between the main aspects of urban form (density and land-use mix) and the level of security perceived by residents on the scale of an urban block in the neighborhoods of Shiraz Metropolitan. The data are collected from the 2011 Iranian Population and Housing Census report, Geographical Information System (GIS) databases and household questionnaire and quantitative indices. The perceived security indicator is defined and measured based on five variables: fear of crime, experience of crime occurrence, having trusted neighbors, social solidarity and incivilities. According to the results of one-way analysis of variance, there is a significant difference between blocks formed in different time periods (1966 backward, between 1966 and 1989 and from 1989 onwards) in “fear of crime” and “experience of crime occurrence” variables as in the newly developed neighborhoods, the averages of these two variables are less. So in the newly developed zone, the average of these two variables is lower than the other neighborhoods. The results of Pearson’s correlation test also indicate that the “experience of crime occurrence” variable is correlated with building density and population density inversely and directly, respectively. Moreover, the share of non-residential land-uses in the studied blocks is directly correlated with the experience of crime occurrence and the fear of crime among residents.

Keywords


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