The effects of passive and active street interfaces on users' perceived safety

Abstract

Perceived safety at the street interface is directly related to a set of factors that define the activeness and passiveness levels. However, there is ambiguity concerning the amount of the desired activeness and passiveness at the street interface for it to be perceived as safe by its users. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap, by first classifying the street interface into different types of active and passive relying on the factors that affect perceived safety, then testing the effect of these classified types on users' perceived safety. The Individual factors that affect perceived safety were kept constant throughout the study to avoid complexity. The diagnostic observation was performed to classify the street interfaces into different types and choose the appropriate case study areas from the city of Istanbul. These chosen interfaces were then used to test each type's effect on the users' perceived safety. This study employed a quantitative research method using a questionnaire containing photographs of the selected interfaces, to test each type's effect on the users' perceived safety. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and Tukey's HSD test in SPSS were then applied to the data to understand whether the perceived safety created by each type is significantly different from the other. The results show that a certain level of activeness defined by certain factors is desired to create a safe street interface. Too much activeness or passiveness at the street interface was perceived unsafe by the users. This study also revealed which of the factors that were used to classify the street interface into passive and active types had the most influence on perceived safety in each of the case study areas. These results can be applied to streets to determine which part of the street interfaces are considered safe in relation to their activeness and passiveness levels. Consequently, this approach aims to aid urban designers in creating street interfaces that are perceived as safe by their users.