Feeling of safety and fear in a city : a comparison study between two city districts in Tehran and Stockholm

Abstract: The present study is designed to compare the feeling of safety and fear in two capital cities of Iran and Sweden. According to the studies which have done in recent decades, some features of residential environment at the street block and neighborhood are relevant to increasing the feeling of safety and reducing crime rates and crime-related outcomes, such as fear of crime and neighborhood confidence. Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED/DOC) is a multi-disciplinary approach to deter criminal behavior through environmental design. The strategies of this guideline focus on the settings in which crimes occur and on techniques for reducing vulnerability in these settings. Therefore in this study to compare the feeling of safety and fear in two sample districts of Tehran and Stockholm, it has been tried to evaluate the safety feeling of inhabitants in relation with some physical characteristics which have crime-preventive or fear-reducing effects. In this purpose several environmental factors that have been mentioned in CPTED and function to allow inhabitants feel secure and something about the fear of crime, rate of crime, and experience of crime were assessed. The research instrument in this study was a questionnaire consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information from 200 Iranian and 100 Swedish respondents from two sample districts of Stockholm and Tehran. In the next step the data were extracted and analyzed by computer software. The results showed the safety feelings between Tehran and Stockholm are different. Statistical hypothesis tests confirmed that feeling of safety was significantly different between the people who lived in Stockholm and Tehran. All indicators demonstrate Stockholm inhabitants were feeling more secure rather than people who lived in Tehran. According to the results of this study, fear of crime, crime experience and rate of crime may be influenced by factors in the built environment. In other words the physical characteristics of neighborhood found to be associated with the fear of crime, experience of crime and rate of crime. As this comparison study concluded, in two communities with various designs based upon CPTED inhabitants have different feeling of safety and fear, therefore in Iran it should be given much more attention by government and city planners.