Feeling safe enough to go out

The public health researcher Angela Curl surveyed adults aged 50 and over in Greater Christchurch using a mapping tool, and asked about falling outdoors and about the fear of it. Of 174 responses, 129 were usable. 43% reported a fear of falling. Split by sex it was 50% of women against 17% of men. Having fallen separated people less than sex did: 52% of those who had fallen reported the fear, against 38% of those who had not. Perceived accessibility and the condition of the neighbourhood were each independently associated with the fear, after controlling for how often someone had actually fallen.

The landscape researcher Hyung-Sook Lee and Mardelle Shepley put numbers on the chain in 2012, surveying 424 Korean adults. A model combining the theory of planned behaviour with perceived safety from crime explained 45.6% of the variance in the intention to walk and 19.4% of the walking itself. Perceived safety did not predict walking directly. It worked through the intention.

The landscape researcher Bin Jiang tested which interventions raise perceived safety. Jiang showed 218 adults photographs of alleys in a high-density city with different treatments applied, and every treatment beat the untouched alley. Naturalistic planting on the alley floor raised perceived safety by 9% over cleaning alone, and geometric planting by 14%, both at p below 0.001. But all four vegetation treatments came 7th, 8th, 12th and 13th overall. The order is what Jiang is reporting: what ranked above them was giving the alley a function, so that people had a reason to be in it. Jiang’s conclusion is that the Broken Windows approach, which the paper says dominates environmental practice, is the weaker of the two.

The urban planning researcher Kostas Mouratidis worked at the scale of a city region, across 45 neighbourhoods of greater Oslo, combining survey data with mapping and municipal records. More tree canopy went with more perceived safety, and it held after controlling for deprivation, urban form and individual characteristics. Once deprivation was in the model, dense neighbourhoods were seen as no less safe than low-density ones. The abstract reports the 45 neighbourhoods and not how many people answered the survey.

The design researcher Xiaorui Wang set the street against sleep. Among 1,089 employed adults aged 40 to 59 living on the third floor or below in a megacity, streets that felt enclosed went with less insomnia and longer sleep, apparently through perceived safety and liveliness. Greenness went the same way. Walkability went the other way: more of it went with lower perceived safety and shorter sleep.

Curl’s sample was a convenience sample with women over-represented, and the paper says the numbers in some groups are low enough that the results are indicative only. Jiang worked with photographs rather than places, Mouratidis and Wang with cross-sections, and Lee and Shepley with a survey from 2008.