The Association of Urban Environment Quality and Perceived Safety: Evidence From Seven Nationally Representative Samples

A majority of the world's population resides in urban environments. Findings from prospect refuge theory and broken windows theory suggest that specific environmental aspects and greater urban environment disorder influence how safe the people feel in that environment. In the current investigation, I sought to reevaluate the association between the perceived quality of an urban environment and residents' feelings of safety by utilizing a cross-national, multilevel approach. I obtained nationally representative data from five different surveys conducted by the Eurobarometer (N = 167,212). I estimated multilevel models which suggest that greater urban environment quality relates to increased perceived safety, explaining between 45% and 66% of the variance in perceived safety attributable to cities. Consequently, I provide robust cross-national support for the claim that the environment we live in directly relates to how safe we feel. Ensuring the satisfactory, and high-quality condition of urban environments could be a means of increasing feelings of safety in day-to-day life.