Trygg stad : diskurser om kvinnors rädsla i forskning, policyutveckling och lokal praktik

Doctoral thesis, 2002

The city is loaded with mystique, expectations and dreams which are both utopian and dystopian. The city is exciting and scaring at the same time, it can protect us but at the same time contains dangerous places and situations. Fear and unsafety have been heavily discussed during the latter part of 1990s in relation to urban environments. This thesis for the doctoral degree of Architecture deals with depictions of fear and safety in the city, more specifically depictions of women's fear and need for safety. The objective of Safe City is to discuss the relationship between pictures of women's fear, safer cities projects and urban planning through a feminist perspective. How is women´s fear dealt with in the local safer cities programmes? The safety discourse is analysed through three parts: 1) academic discourses on fear, i.e. how researchers define and understand fear in relation to the built environment, 2) discourses of safety in policy and guidelines, i.e. how governments and planners who create safer cities- and crime prevention programs, picture the problems of crime and fear, 3) discourses on local practices to implement these safety issues. To accomplish this, I have analysed the underlying theories, the commonly used concepts and the policies that fall within the safety and crime prevention discourse and carried out a case study in Gothenburg, with specific focus on two suburbs, Bergsjön and Tynnered. Four major directions in the discourse have been found 1) women´s fear has been made visible, 2) the city is not only a place of fear but also an arena for emancipating women, 3) crime and social deviance could be solved through changes in the physical environment, 4) we need to accept to a certain degree insecurities, conflicts and unsafe environments in order not to develop segregated cities. I argue that all four perspectives need to be taken into account to reach the best results in safety work. The conclusion also highlights gaps between the different parts of the safety discourse and how these gaps are created and handled.