Developing a place-sensitive tool for park-safety management experiences from green-space managers and female park users in Oslo

Abstract

Fear of crime may restrict people’s use of urban green spaces and thus decrease those spaces’ potential public health benefits. Managerial measures in public green spaces that enhance perceived safety are therefore necessary. However, park managemnet in the Nordic countries seems to lack the knowledge and practice of assessing park users’ perceptions of safety. The objective of this paper was to develop a place-sensitive tool for park safety–management practice that combined park manager and user perspectives adapted to the Nordic context. Two empirical studies were conducted in Oslo to achieve this objective. Phase 1 included a focus-group interview with a team of municipal green-space managers to investigate challenges in their safety-related work. In phase 2 a multi-method field study was conducted in an urban park to assess female user's perceptions of safety in a place-sensitive manner and test methods to be included in a tool for managers. First, safety walks and interviews with ten female residents provided on-site information on how their local park was perceived in terms of safety. The walks also resulted in identification of problematic places. These places were then systematically assessed by twenty female non-residents using questionnaires exploring the relation between perceived environmental attributes and perceived safety. Based on the green-space managers’ experiences and addressed needs, as well as experinces from the field study, a place-sensitive method and accompanying tool—called SAFE—for assessing perceived safety in urban parks for managerial purposes is presented.

Introduction

Urban parks are important environments for recreation in cities (World Health Organisation WHO, 2016). However, several studies worldwide, show that fear of crime may restrict the benefits people accrue from using these urban green spaces (Foster et al., 2014; Lapham et al., 2016; Fleming et al., 2016; Root et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2020). United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 11 is to create inclusive, safe, resilient, sustainable cities (United Nations, 2015). Planning principles based on crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) have been widely applied to decrease crime in neighbourhoods but have not been used systematically to improve perceived safety in urban parks (Iqbal and Ceccato, 2015). By the time this study was conducted, the municipal plan for Oslo, Smart, Green and Safe (Oslo kommune, 2015) emphasised that city planning should promote the well-being and perceived safety of all citizens at all times. Still, the municipal master plan did not suggest how green space may enhance perceived safety nor any measures to promote the perceived safety of such spaces. Interestingly, the “Nordic Green Space Award” developed for assessing and promoting urban green-space qualities in the Nordic countries, notably also lacks perceived safety as a criterion (Lindholst et al., 2016). This paper therefore explores methods for enhancing perceived safety via green-space management to develop a place-sensitive tool for park-safety management that combines park managers and users (women) perspectives.

Perceived safety is a complex psychological phenomenon that emerges from the interaction between a place’s perceived social and physical attributes. Based on the empirical literature on the fear of crime in urban parks, Sreetheran and van den Bosch (2014) developed a socio-ecological framework for understanding what park characteristics relate to perceived safety (Fig. 1). The framework illustrates how the social attributes (e.g. social incivilities, such as drug use, lack of trust and social cohesion in neighbourhoods) and physical attributes (e.g. physical incivilities, such as graffiti, litter, poor lighting and unwanted vegetation) of a park influence users’ experience of it. It also shows how the park experience is moderated by individual characteristics of the user (age, gender, personal experience), as well as the park’s general image among the public, the time of day and season. The complexity of perceived safety in their framework also demonstrates the necessity of incorporating users’ perspectives in park management, as suggested by the concept of public-value management (Lindholst et al., 2016).

From a planning perspective, creating physical environments perceived as equally accessible to all genders are essential to support socially sustainable societies (Boverket, 2010). The field of criminology has discussed women’s fear of crime in public spaces for decades (Stanko, 1995). Studies in various cultural contexts worldwide have found that women perceive urban green spaces, such as parks, as potentially unsafe more often than men (e.g. Nasar and Jones, 1997; Johansson et al., 2012; Jorgensen et al., 2013; Mak and Jim, 2018), and some cultures try resolving the problem with women-only parks (e.g. Iqbal, 2018). Applying a socio-ecological perspective to green space–safety management focussing on women’s experience is thus relevant.

Green spaces have generally been found to promote social safety except in inner-city areas (Maas et al., 2009). However, dense or poorly maintained vegetation in urban parks may evoke the fear of crime and is thus the most investigated attributes of parks (Jansson et al., 2013; Sreetheran and van den Bosch, 2014). Vegetation can obstruct views, decreasing park users’ visual access and perceived control, therewith, evoking fear (Nasar and Jones, 1997; Jorgensen et al., 2013). Designs that improve legibility can enhance perceived safety (e.g. Fisher and Nasar, 1992; Blöbaum and Hunecke, 2005), well-being and even mental restoration (Gatersleben and Andrews, 2013). Such findings also resonate with the prospect-refuge theory (Appleton, 1996), which holds that people prefer places that provide both prospect—creating an overview—and refuge—offering opportunities to hide or withdraw. However, an environment with opportunities to hide may also evoke fear because it can be experienced as a potential hiding place for criminals (Lindgren and Nilsen, 2012). Hence, in relation to perceived safety, providing physical shelter has the paradoxical effect of being perceived as both positive and negative. Wang et al. (2017) who studied, urban woodland understory characteristics, found that a vegetative understory of middle height was preferred over low and high vegetation, confirming the paradoxical effect of refuge. However, they did not directly assess perceived safety.

In addition to the landscape attributes of perceived prospect and refuge, attributes that tend to generate a perception of entrapment are negatively related to perceived safety (e.g. Nasar and Jones, 1997; Herzog and Kutzli, 2002; Blöbaum and Hunecke, 2005). Hence, park design that provides the possibility of escape from any given area is expected to enhance perceived safety. In a study of perceived enclosure and safety a gender difference only appeared in moderately and highly enclosed park areas, where women reported lower perceived safety than men (Baran et al., 2018). In a study in Hong Kong, Mak and Jim (2018) found that park design and management issues were more associated with the fear of crime than visitor-related concerns and inherent park characteristics, further supporting the application of a broad socio-ecological perspective to understanding perceived safety in urban parks.

Research on public environmental health and safety programmes has called for more direct measurements of perceived safety in public spaces (e.g. Kondo et al., 2015). Reviewing the literature, Jansson et al. (2013) and Sreetheran and van den Bosch (2014) found that the field is largely built on landscape-preference studies using photos or videos to explore the effects of various physical attributes on perceived safety. Such studies provide basic knowledge about how people respond to various physical features, which can be useful in developing general design guidelines. However, parks may vary considerably in, for example, topography and social attributes, requiring site-specific adaptations of safety measures. This requires systematic mapping of park attributes and user experiences. Fieldwork protocols comprising many methods to assess perceived safety in public spaces, including safety walks and using data from geographic information systems, have been developed and tested (i.e. Ceccato and Hanson, 2013; Ceccato, 2019). These capture the complexity of assessing perceived safety in urban parks and contribute to the field of research but may still not be useful for the practice of green-space management.

The construction of valid assessment instruments of perceived safety is also debated in the field of research. The main critique is that the way questions are asked may itself induce fear or feelings of unsafety (Fotios et al., 2015). Therefore, further studies are needed for methodological development in this field. As Sreetheran and van den Bosch (2014) socio-ecological framework for perceived safety in urban parks shows, perceived safety seems especially influenced by context. Ceccato (2019) has also called for more place-sensitive methods for mapping perceived safety in urban parks. Hence, enhancing perceived safety in parks requires green-space managers to take more context-specific measures.

The objective of this paper is to uncover the needs of park management regarding safety enhancement, to explore and test various ways to assess perceived safety and to develop a place-sensitive tool for park-safety management that combines manager and user perspectives adapted to the urban Nordic context. The tool builds on experiences from two empirical studies conducted in Oslo; on managerial urban-park safety practices and from assessing perceived safety among female park users.