Abstract
Many processes and phenomena that occur in the natural and social environment have a complex character, and the interdependencies between social and economic phenomena are most often analyzed by identifying the relationships between multiple factors that shape urban space. Decisions concerning the visual attributes of cities are usually made by urban planners and civil officers, whereas social preferences are rarely considered in the planning process. The latest research indicates that urban planners should account for the needs and expectations of local residents who are the users of public spaces in cities. This paper discusses the results of selected research studies investigating the impact of geospatial attributes on perceptions of safety in urban areas. The theories that are used to improve safety in cities and selected methods for analyzing spatial data were presented. The analyzed attributes were selected by brainstorming, a heuristic technique for solving research problems. The selected attributes were ranked in a survey performed on an accidental (convenience) sample. In this study, Grey Relational Analysis (GRA), a type of Grey Systems Theory (GST) which supports the use of incomplete, uncertain and scarce data, was applied. The advantages of grey systems over statistical methods in analyses of spatial data were presented. Grey system analyses generate sequences of significant geospatial attributes and indicate which factors exert the greatest influence on the examined phenomenon. The results can be used to solve practical problems related to the shaping of space.
Highlights
This study proposes a Grey Relational Analysis (GRA)-type grey system to determine which of the analyzed attributes exert the greatest influence on perceptions of insecurity for potential users of space
20 model with 20 observations is similar to the line representing models with to observations. These observations is similar to the line representing models with 25 to 60 observations. These results indicate that for 17 evaluated attributes, the Grey Relational Analysis supports the generation of a stable model—a sequence of the values of the similarity coefficient ε denoting the strength of relationships for 25 observations
Recent research and practical applications have demonstrated that unlike statistical methods, grey systems do not require the formulation of theoretical assumptions, and that the generated results are reliable despite a small number of observations
Summary
Decisions concerning the visual attributes of cities are usually made by urban planners who generally focus on functional attributes and rarely consider the preferences and expectations of the users of space. The communication between urban planners and local residents who are users of the designed urban spaces is generally poor. Urban projects are rarely preceded by social debate to identify solutions that meet the expectations of community members. Urban solutions proposed by the local residents focus on immediate social needs, most of them are highly realistic and practical, and some are innovative. Participatory planning adds new value to urban design because the proposed scenarios offer a much broader vision than the solutions developed by individual experts or agencies [1]
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