+ BACKGROUND, CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES
Issues of urban safety don’t affect everyone equally. The design of our built environment does not by itself cause crimes, it does play a significant role in creating opportunities for them, especially for groups such as the elderly, women, disabled, migrants, or children. Everyone has a right to use, experience and enjoy the city freely and confidently, however, city development rarely acknowledges, instead we tend to plan and provide for the imaginary average citizen – the able-bodied man. This results in a city that feels hostile for the groups whose needs are unidentified, unaccounted for, and unmet. It’s possible, through deliberate planning and assessment, to make our cities safe and friendly for all.
Greater JB (Johor Bahru), the capital city of the state of Johor, hosts today Malaysia’s third largest urban agglomeration. Rapid urbanisation has brought the city to an estimated population density of 2,051 people per square kilometre as per 2019.
Such rapid expansion of the city centre can pose challenges to the inclusive urban planning of public infrastructure, but it is also an opportunity to rewrite the way planning is undertaken to ensure that future development and urbanisation is done in consultation with excluded groups. By assessing and evaluating JB’s current situation and recognizing improvements that can be made, actions can be taken to reconstruct a safer, more inclusive city.
Through a collaboration with Safetipin, a social organisation that uses an innovative technological platform to collect data and measure safety parameters in public spaces for more resilient, liveable, and inclusive cities, Think City carried out a pilot safety audit project in JB to collect data on the inclusive safety of the city’s public spaces. This data was then analysed and evaluated by each audit point according to a designated set of key parameters associated with perceived safety. Results are made available for use to city governments, urban planners, and other stakeholders.
This approach was chosen for its accessibility, replicability, and streamlined nature.
The key objectives of this project were to:
+ To identify exclusions in urban spaces from a vulnerable or excluded group’s perspective
+ To provide tailored insights and recommendations to JB to make public areas feel safer and more inclusive
+ Create innovative solutions to address urban safety issues in cities
+ ACTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION
The Safetipin-Think City JB safety audits can be divided into two sections: Safetipin Nite, which utilises an application to collect street-view images of the city that reconstruct a pedestrian’s safety conditions, and Safetipin Site, which consists of more extensive, on-site assessments of select areas.
1. Safetipin Nite audit methodology:
The Safetipin Nite application is used to collect images along the main streets of the city, as well as key public spaces. A phone with the Safetipin Nite app installed was mounted on the screen of a car. When the car is being driven, the app automatically takes photos of the street in landscape mode at regular intervals.
Images were collected during the day and night-time to collect well-lit images of infrastructure conditions and to measure safety parameters at night.
Using Safetipin Nite, the entire city road network was mapped with approximately 9,000 geo-coordinate assigned images that were then assessed on the Safetipin back-end technology platform and used to generate safety audits and a parameter map.
2. Safetipin Site audit methodology:
The Safetipin Site is a web application tool for gathering qualitative spatial data of a public space through detailed questionnaires and pictures . After the public spaces to assess are identified, a rubric of questions is created, and a team on-ground goes to each public space to gather the required data.
All data collected was then analysed according to 8 key parameters: lighting, walk path, openness, visibility, public transport, security, people and gender usage. Each parameter is rated on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 being a poor rating and 3 being good. With this data, a Safety Score is calculated from the weighted aggregated ratings of the parameter. Lighting, Gender Usage and Visibility had been given high weightage in terms of their impact on perceived safety. Some key parameters also had sub-parameter ratings that were assessed.
The Safetipin Site audit section also had additional parameters for a more extensive assessment of the selected areas.
+ OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS
The collected results of the completed Safetipin Nite and Site audits provided JB with safety assessments and ratings for the whole city and for specific public spaces. The ratings covered in detail each of the key safety parameters.
Think City also provided observations and recommendations to improve the safety, accessibility, and inclusivity of JB. These recommendations included specific necessities for safe streets as well as general audit conclusions of public areas like public parks and public transport stops.
Please refer to the full report for details.
A challenge to consider in this audit is the need to collect representative data of each audit point, considering local situations like monsoon seasons, social distancing, or simply when the area is busiest.
+ REPLICABILITY AND SCALABILITY
The Safetipin-Think City safety audit pilot project in JB showed the effectiveness of the audit in assessing the safety of both the whole city and specific neighbourhoods. This project’s methodology and parameters can be replicated in various urban contexts to provide an assessment of the inclusive safety of urban areas at a low cost. Cities looking to improve existing public infrastructure or plan new, inclusive areas would benefit from this case. Urban areas similar to JB could also benefit from the recommendations made in this pilot safety audit.
