The gated community: residents' crime experience and perception of safety behind gates and fences in the urban area

摘要

The primary purpose of the study is to explore the connections between residents'perception of safety and their crime experience, and the existence of gates and fences inmulti-family housing communities in urban areas. For cultivating discussions regardingthe connections between gated community territory, safety, and crime experience, thisstudy classifies apartment communities according to the conditions of their gating andfencing: gated communities, perceived gated communities, and non-gated communities.It investigates residents' perceptions of safety and their opinions and managers' opinionson gated territory and safety.The major findings from the surveys are: Residents felt safer in gated communitiesthan in non-gated communities. Residents' perceptions of safety in perceived gatedcommunities were similar to those in gated communities. These results reflected theterritoriality issue for improving residents' perceived safety in apartment communities.Residents' perceptions of safety in architectural spaces showed that residents' fear of crime in public and semi-public spaces must first be addressed in order to ease residents'fear of crime in an apartment territory.The reality of crime in apartment communities differed from residents'perceptions of safety. Gated community residents reported a higher crime rate than nongatedcommunity residents. In addition to gates and fences that define apartmentterritory, such elements as patrol services, bright lighting, direct emergency buttons, andvisual access to the local police were indicated as the important factors for improvingresidents' perceived safety.Some architectural factors and demographic factors exhibited statisticalcorrelations with residents' perceptions of safety. Those were types of communities,dwelling floor level, educational attainment, family size, and annual income. Forpredicting residents' perceptions of safety in their apartment territory, multipleregression models were obtained and residents' neighborhood attachment was alsoconsidered in the multiple regression models. The apartment community managersemphasized direct maintenance issues and residents' social contact with neighbors forimproving residents' perceived safety.In conclusion, design and managerial suggestions for safer communities wereproposed. For creating safer multi-family housing communities, territoriality and relatedarchitectural conditions and managerial considerations and residents' participations areemphasized. The concept of community programming for safer multi-family housingcommunities is suggested.