The image of a safe/unsafe city district: the case of St. Petersburg

Abstract

Выпускная квалификационная работа посвящена актуальной теме - изучению существующих представлений о безопасности и небезопасности городской среды. В данной работе рассмотрены теоретические основы исследования образа безопасного и небезопасного района города и даны результаты эмпирического исследования, направленного на выявление способов конструирования образа безопасного и небезопасного района города на примере Санкт-Петербурга.

This paper demonstrates the potential interest for the sociological understanding of urban safety as social construct. The accelerating pace of urban development leads to a rapid change in entrenched patterns of behavior that organize the life of society. The loss of universal patterns of behavior, combined with the anonymity of urban space, leads to the fact that the problem of urban safety is becoming one of the most discussed, often intertwined with speculation and conjecture based on rumors and urban legends. Such a discourse forms an environment in which certain areas of the city are presented to their residents as more or less safe. This work is aimed at a theoretical and empirical study of the city residents’ perception of about real and potential threats to the urban environment, at the study of factors and conditions that allow residents of the city to mark certain districts of the city as safe or unsafe. The results of the study led to the conclusion that it is advisable to study the perception of safe and unsafe city district in the future.