A Study of women’s preference and safety perception in the walkway of park by Prospect-Refuge Theory.

• Main Authors: Ye-rim Nam, 南藝琳
• Other Authors: Chung-Heng Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/we2amj

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 景觀設計學系碩士班 === 107 === In a dense urban area, a park is a type of outdoor recreation sites that urban residents often make use of in their daily lives. However, due to them being open to all citizens, parks have gradually become a location where wanderers and criminals may choose to stay. Many studies show that women's fear of crime is greater than men's fear because of their physiological characteristics, and current urban parks are filled with designs of "male chauvinism" or "standard human body". However, in terms of gender equality, a more female-friendly design is crucial for a modern park. The main purposes of this study are to discuss how characteristics of a prospect and refuge environment affect women’s preferences and provide security for female vistors, and to understand how women’s preferences and sense of security may vary with different landscape scenes in a park with prospect and refuge features. In view of the above research purposes, through revisiting relevant literature in connection with the prospect-refuge theory, this study induces that characteristics of such a prospect and refuge environment may include the degree of visual penetration, the visual extent and the properties of lighting and familiarity. These characteristics are used as research variables to focus on women's preferences and their sense of safety in a park. The research methods tend to visually simulate the above variables and conduct surveys, which were targeted on women. Furtermore, the research subjects’ responses were based on their observations on the simulated natural landscapes. The results show that the most favorable simulated landscape scene for women is a space with certain environmental features including “trees”, “the view from inside the walkway”, “daytime” and “native Korean trees”. Half of these environmental features are prospect attributes, and the other half are refuge attributes. Environmental features resulting in a high level of fear bear prospect attributes, and environmental features resulting in a low level of fear have refuge attributes. It can be concluded that fear and preference can affect each other, although the environment with the lowest level of fear is not necessarily the most preferred environment by women. The study results will be helpful for future public space planning processes to consider further aspects of women-friendliness.