Perception of Personal Safety in Urban Recreation Sites

ABSTRACT: Photograph of 1 7 urban recreation sites in Chicago and Atlanta were evaluated by college students (n = 6 8) in Illinois, Georgia, and Michigan, for either perceived securig, scenic qualily, or both. For most raters, high visibilig and developed park features significantly enhanced per-ceived securily. Scenic qualily, on the other hand, was enhanced for the major-ily of evaluators by a high degree of naturalness and vegetation. For both per-ceived safely and scenic qualily, a small minorig of raters held prefeences quite diJierent from the majorily.