Inclusive, Safe and Resilient Public Spaces: Gateway to Sustainable Cities?

The rapid urbanization process of cities is majorly coupled with extreme climate change, housing shortage and urban safety issues. These issues are raising new challenges to address the capability of urban resilience. Enhancing Urban Safety and Security is one of the major principles addressed by UN-Habitat in Sustainable Development Goal number 11. Making cities safe and sustainable means ensuring access to safe and affordable public spaces for all. This book chapter aims to highlight how do the city’s public spaces are linked and affected by crime and fear of crime? How do crime and fear of crime interconnect to the built environment in cities while promoting positive urban transitions in terms of safe and sustainable cities? This book chapter explores answers to these questions through the parks and public spaces of the city as a case study. In other words, the book chapter deals with the issue of safety and security by (1) showing links between parks and public spaces, and crime and fear of crime, (2) highlighting how different attributes in the built environment can affect people’s perception of safety, (3) understanding socio-technical perspectives i.e., how technological systems and equipment’s (such as lighting sensors, security alarms, security electronic devices, closed-circuit television (CCTV), smartphones or other technological instruments) are influencing safety/security and sustainability, (4) demonstrating the issues and challenges found in Stockholm, Sweden, and, (5) providing recommendations on how these places can be planned and designed to become more sustainable