Safety in Urban Spaces using Urban Planning: a Comparative Study in Bogotá, Colombia

Sammanfattning: Many cities around the world are facing the same challenges when it comes to the ability for women to move around and feel safe in public spaces. For women, using public spaces entails fear of sexual violence and of being attacked, which forces them to always be vigilant and reduces their quality of life. Throughout history, cities have consisted of mainly male planners, designers and government leaders who have created urban spaces that perpetuate outdated gender norms and inequalities. Cities, as they are today, prioritise men’s health, mobility, safety, leisure, and economic well-being over women. This heritage of inequalities has been aggravated by the lack of participatory urban design, and especially of the failure to involve women in urban planning and renewal processes. The purpose of this thesis is to identify what factors in urban spaces can be characterised as unsafe and to analyse if public space can become safer for women by implementing different planning theories. The thesis aims to answer how adequate urban planning can make public spaces feel safer for women. The focus on women was chosen because gender transcends all other social relations such as class, age, ethnicity, and religion, and it also transcends all socioeconomic factors such as education, employment, and income. The focus was also chosen because women make up for more than half of the humankind and are still thought of as a minority. Even though this thesis has been limited to being about safety for women in cities, a lot that is stated about women in this thesis, also is the case for LGBTQIA+ people. They also experience discrimination in cities which leads to decreased quality of life. The research was carried out as a case study in Bogotá, Colombia. With the rapid, uncontrolled urban development of Bogotá, there is a high probability that the urban spaces have been neglected and resulted in feeling unsafe, unwelcoming, and insecure. Which is why there is a need for analysing urban spaces in Bogotá and perhaps being able to reach their full potential. Three different areas were chosen in Bogotá which through site visits were observed, compared, and analysed with relevant theories. The chosen areas are called Las Nieves, Quinta Camacho, and Bella Suiza, and they are all areas mainly containing housing. The theories chosen for the thesis are based on the work from two major urban planners, Jan Gehl and Jane Jacobs. Gehl believes that for an area to be safe it must be well adapted for human scale and feel welcoming. To be able to analyse this he presents the 12 Quality Criteria an urban space should possess. To be able to analyse if a public place is safe for women, three criteria were added to the 12 Quality Criteria in this thesis. The Modified Quality Criteria is used when referring to Gehl’s adjusted 12 Quality Criteria. According to Jacobs, diversity is the most important factor a city must have to be safe. A homogeneous visitor audience together with an at least equally homogeneous surrounding environment results in empty streets during certain times of the day, and it is important that the street is never completely empty. To get diversity in a city there are four aspects that should be accommodated at the same time: mix of functions, short blocks, mix of houses and high concentration of people. According to the results from both the Modified Quality Criteria and Jacobs theory about diversity, the area with most restaurants, low buildings and well-maintained streets was the safest one. The results from Jacobs’ theory about diversity, shows that none of the other two areas can be perceived as safe since they do not meet the criteria for being diverse. The second safest neighbourhood according to the Modified Quality Criteria was the one with well-maintained streets, nice parks but both gated communities and similar functions located in the same area. The least safe neighbourhood was the poorly maintained one with broken sidewalks, bars on windows and scribblings on houses. This neighbourhood also had similar functions taking up large space, like parking lots and universities. The conclusion of the thesis is that there are many aspects that can make an area perceived as unsafe and to make an urban space feel safer for women with urban planning it is important that a woman’s perspective must be implemented to the planning process. Three aspects, with associated sub-aspects, were developed through the study to create safer urban environments for women. These can be summarised as follows: - Presence of human life o Diversity o Different functions o Comfort, Protection, Delight - Overview o See-through greenery o No dark spaces o Short blocks o No barriers - Lighting o Streetlights o No narrow streets combined with tall buildings o No dense greenery