An Evaluation of factors affecting women's safety in urban environments

Safety in urban environments is considered to be one of requirements of life quality. Safety improvement has a direct relationship with mental calmness and also with sense of belonging to life environment. Although safety factors are important for everybody, research show that sensitivity to safety level is different for different age and sex groups and also for people with different social and physical capabilities. Considering urban public places, especially with regards to the need of various groups, social dimensions have more importance. This study investigates the safety of urban environments focusing on gender. The main point of this study is distinguishing between Subjective and objective aspects when evaluating the concept of safety, analyzing it and offering suggested solutions regarding women. The Study includes collecting theories and related experiences and adopting them with cultural conditions of the country. The next step is to conceptualize and draw out aspects and indices and variables. The data is collected through a questionnaire. Considering the social capacity of public urban spaces, the Study zone selected for the research is south of Imam Khomaini avenue, between Naser Khosro street to Vahdat Eslami street. The study aims to survey people's perception of safety level of the environment. It also examines the rate of traffic and space use and the relationship between them. The results show that there is direct relationship between people's sense of safety from a place and traffic amount and place use. Considering the indices of social-physical dimensions, the study also probes into the degree of familiarity, and reputation of the urban environment. Regarding social dimension, social equity of urban space and importance of sexual proficiency in women’s sense of safety have been studied.