Examining property and neighborhood effects on perceived safety in urban environments: Proximity to square and heights of buildings

Residents' perceived safety is key to improving livelihoods and reducing disparities between neighborhoods in Sweden. Neighborhood interventions may be more cost-effective than individual-level interventions in addressing major societal issues such as unequal levels of safety between neighborhoods. However, most studies investigating the impact of neighborhood characteristics on perceived safety suffer from either poor data quality, too few respondents per statistical unit, large units of analysis, or a lack of longitudinally collected data. This study aims to fill this gap by combining property-specific longitudinal sociodemographic data with customer satisfaction survey data (N = 147,965) collected between 2013–2014 and 2016–2021 in Gothenburg. Using two multilevel models, we examined the relationship between perceived safety and both property-level and area-level structural characteristics, testing three hypotheses. Consistent with prior research, we find that sociodemographic and urban environmental characteristics influenced perceptions of safety. The multilevel analyses reveal that proximity to the square is associated with lower levels of perceived safety, particularly among residents living within 0–100 m of the square in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Moreover, the results show that living in taller buildings of 10–16 floors is associated with lower levels of safety. • Investigate the relationship between property-level and area-level characteristics on perceived safety. • Estimate how the environmental and neighborhood factors influence perceived safety in different socioeconomic urban environments. • The built environment matters for perceived safety. • Living closer to a square, within 0-100 m, is significantly associated with lower levels of perceived safety. • Living in taller buildings of 10–16 floors is significantly associated with lower levels of perceived safety.