Physical attributes of pedestrian space that facilitate the perception of safety: with special reference to kandy grid city

Abstract

This paper explores a link between pedestrian space based safety facilitating strategies formulated for urban settlements. Pedestrian spaces which can be simply address as streets and alleys are major elements of a city. City image and the level of city functionality depend on frequency of these pedestrian spaces. Perception of ‘safety’, which is the physical and psychological feel of protection, is a key factor that attracts human being into spaces to behave among them. Positive physical attributes of the pedestrian spaces are extremely effective in ensuring the safety within them. Most architectural and urban design theorists discuss the independent physical attributes that facilitate the safety but usually there is combination of a set of attributes contributing towards the term. The research systematically reviews these attributes to formulate the legitimate combinations to facilitate the safety. The study was launched in Kandy grid city that contains several streets and alleys network. Kandy city is an ancient city with a significant culture, tradition and ethnic. Study results the least combinations of set of attributes to facilitate the perception of safety as representing all four key attributes extracted from literature search strategy which are built-form, planning and layout, ambience and functions.