Identifying the urban design qualities that affect the pedestrians' sense of safety in an urban street at night ; special reference to streets surrounding in the Beira lake, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The street is an integral part of the city and it stands out as a predominantly meaningful location of everyday life for people. Many streets have pedestrians and motorists. A safe walkable street is a key factor in creating a more productive city. That safety should be felt physically and mentally by every person walking through a street. The "sense of safety" of the urban street is vital to the social and psychological well-being of its users. Every city has several basic urban design qualities that are present in the planning and construction of that city. This study mainly focuses on identifying the urban design qualities that affect pedestrians’ sense of safety at night time -special reference to streets adjacent to Beira Lake in Colombo. The main objective of this research is to find out what urban design qualities effect the perception of pedestrians’ sense of safety. Six urban design qualities and theories of human behavior have been selected for the subsequent study. Selected urban design qualities are Visibility, Enclosure, Human scale, Complexity, Tidiness and Transparency. The first part of the study is designated for "Literature Review," which will establish a theoretical foundation review by making reference to pertinent books, journals, new research articles, and dissertations. The second stage is the ‘Data Collection’ stage which is done by using field visits, and on-field observations using plans, sections, diagrams, interviews and together with photograph analysis. The final part of the study was carried out by using case studies. Qualitative records of human perception of safety in urban streets were collected by using questionnaires and field observation. These qualitative data were converted into sets of quantitative data by using data processing programs (Excel).