Flexible Cities, Rigid Minds? Integrating Cognitive, Decision, and Criminological Sciences to Study Feature Prevalence in Urban Safety Perception Across the Adult Lifespan

People use rapid judgments about perceived safety of urban environments to adjust their chosen paths and modes for travel. Understanding these judgments is crucial for designing safe, inclusive, walkable cities, yet little is known about the decision dynamics, particularly how safety judgments vary with environmental changes and across age groups amid demographic shifts.

This project examines whether (1) the prevalence of features of the built environment (e.g., lighting, decay) influences safety judgments, and (2) feature prevalence interacts with age to shape judgments.

We will conduct two studies. First, we will create a validated dataset of naturalistic, context-specific urban images, coded for criminologically relevant features and rated for perceived safety. This dataset will be shared openly for multidisciplinary research. Second, we will conduct an online study using the images in a novel behavioral paradigm to model how adults across the lifespan adjust their safety judgments as feature prevalence varies, specifically testing how rarity influences decision boundaries.

This research will advance our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying safety judgment, its flexibility, and the role of age. To maximize impact, we will convene a local stakeholder event to share findings and promote evidence-based guidance to enhance safety, equity, and informal guardianship through inclusive urban design.