Construction of a Safe City Model, Based on Residents’ Behavioral Characteristics: A Case Stud on Saadi Neighborhood of Sari

The rapid urbanization trend in developing countries has been accompanied with increasing number of crimes. Similar to other developing countries, Iran is in a difficult situation regarding the number of crimes. One of the newest approaches to confront the city safety crisis and study the urban structure is addressing the link between environment and practices, as well as hypotheses and processes through Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) Approach. It seems essential to examine the effect of behavioral patterns of residents (isolation, affinity, tolerance and anonymity) on security as well as the relationship between physical environment features and behavioral characteristics of residents based on CPTED approach in favor of environmental security. The present quantitative research is methodologically in the category of descriptive-exploratory research and tries to investigate the association between physical environment and residents’ behavior to provide determinant factors in designing safe residential environment and using factor analysis model, inferential statistics (using GOF index and F-value), and descriptive statistics to accept or reject research variables. In this regard, Kolmogorov-Smrinov Test has been employed to analyze the data obtained through distributing 384 questionnaires during 2019-2020. Saadi Neighborhood in Sari has been one of the safe places with environmental security, which is unfortunately becoming insecure. The output GOF obtained was 0.64, indicating the high robust fit of the model. Dependent and independent variables of the study were on an average level while behavioral patterns of residents were placed on a high level. The results showed that Saadi Neighborhood inhabitants' behavior component was the main indicator of safety in this neighborhood. All research hypotheses were confirmed and CPTED conceptual models along with challenges in the next generations were presented.