关键词: 建成环境, 居住安全感, 多层线性模型

Abstract:

In the discipline of criminal geography, there always exists opposite theoretical views of the impact of urban built-up environment on sense of residential security. James Jocabs proposed the concept of ‘street eyes’ and appreciated its surveillance role in enhancing the sense of security, while the defensible space theory proposed by Newman regarded large flow of human traffic as public safety risk. This conflicting theoretical explanation incurred hesitation and confusion between aggregated design approach and segregated design approach. The different empirical findings and planning ideas stemmed from significant divergent built environment and social environment in various regions throughout the world. Owing to the existing research only carried out in European and American cities, it needs to be reexamined which theory has more explanatory power in Chinese context. Via Chinese General Social Survey data in the year of 2010, point of interest and road network data, this article analyzed the influence of urban built environment and its interaction role with social environment on sense of residential security in 278 Chinese urban communities through hierarchical linear modeling for the first time. This research demonstrated that mixed-used land measured by entropy index of POI functional types, compact road network measured by road density or proportion of secondary and slip road area, and high utilizing density measured by population density or POI density had a significant negative effect on sense of residential security overall. On the contrary, when built environment was relatively sparse, and had single land use and large block size, people would have a higher sense of security. It should be noted that the impact of urban built environment on sense of security is not invariable, and the ‘street eyes’ would not spontaneously play their defending roles until the community had strong cohesion, abundant social capital or homogenously composed. With the increase of community cohesion and population homogeneity, the positive role of "narrow road, dense network and open block" would gradually play on minimizing the resident’s sense of fear. However, according to the critical value in model, compact, permeable and diverse space still had negative effect on sense of security in most case communities in 2010. In other words, the theory of defense space is more applicable to most of sample communities in our country, and the function of street eyes is only played in a small number of sample communities with strong social cohesion and demographic homogeneity. To sum up, we should gradually and conditionally promote the planning work of "narrow road, dense network and open block", understand residents’ concerns about the sense of security, and avoid adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. Simultaneously, planners should combine the guiding ideology of urban design and the process of community development together in order to reach street eyes’ full potential and construct safe communities.

Key words: built-up environment, sense of security, hierarchical linear modeling