Impact of social and environmental factors on child safety in gated vs. conventional areas

Abstract

The gated community’s condition concerning safety and environmental considerations, security elements, the status of the play areas, and social features is typically a source of anxiety for parents. Improving safety is the priority for enhancing children’s presence in communities, and achieving a child-friendly environment requires creating a safe and secure space for children. The empirical literature that has been conducted on this subject is limited. Therefore, more evaluative studies must be carried out on this topic. The hypotheses in this study were that parents’ perceptions of child safety are affected by perceived social cohesion, disorder, territoriality, and natural surveillance in gated communities and conventional communities. To test the hypotheses, data were elicited from structured interviews with 118 family household residents living in Al-Mafraq, Jordan, which contains two newly developed neighborhoods, the Villa Jordan Compound (gated) and the University District (conventional). The methodology involved quantitative analysis of survey data and qualitative insights from interview responses. The findings demonstrate that perceived social cohesion and disorder significantly impact parents’ perceptions of child safety across both types of communities, with p-values less than 0.05 indicating strong statistical significance. In contrast, perceived territoriality did not show a significant relationship with child safety perceptions (p>0.05). Interestingly, natural surveillance significantly influenced child safety perceptions in conventional communities (p<0.05) but not in gated communities. These results highlight the varied roles that social and physical environmental factors play in shaping safety perceptions and underscore the need for targeted urban planning strategies to enhance child safety in different community settings.