Moving Safely

A sustainable city enables the fulfillment of the mobility needs of its citizens via accessible, reliable and safe transportation systems. Safety is one of many factors influencing the mobility of individuals in urban environments. Moving Safely: Crime and Perceived Safety in Stockholm’s Subway Stations aims to provide both theoretical and empirical perspectives on safety conditions at subway stations. The book adopts an approach that is place-centered, looking upon those who travel through the system and who may become a victim of crime. Safety at transportation nodes is not a field for one science only; it demands the combination of cross-disciplinary theories (urban criminology, architecture, geography, transportation and urban planning) as well as integrated methods that are capable of dealing with an ever-increasing volume of data. Adopting a whole journey approach to safety, the book offers suggestions on how to plan safety at subway stations with a variety of passengers’ needs. Although these suggestions are not the first ones in the literature, certainly they are new in terms of relying on findings from hypothesis testing and spatial data from a Scandinavian city. Moving Safely is relevant for experts in safety and transportation research, including criminologists, planners, transportation engineers, architects as well as professionals dealing directly with safety interventions.

Moving Safely: Crime and Perceived Safety In Stockholm's Subway Stations provides important and additional support for the introduction of measures designed to reduce crime and disorder and make people feel safer using transit. As safety is likely the primary factor in the decision of a non-transit dependent person to take or not to take transit, knowledge of crime and how to prevent it is essential for transit professionals., This is a book of substance and depth, pushing beyond the current literature to help us understand transit crime and local crime in general. Ceccato covers and links multiple literatures and helps us relate crime to the flows of daily life. These principles apply beyond any one city or country., Focusing on Stockholm subway system, this comprehensive and thought-provoking book explores almost every aspect of safety at transport nodes—the very places where people enter and exit the underground network. Being safe and feeling safe is affected not only by the physical characteristics of the stations themselves but also by what surrounds them and where they are located in the city. As well as presenting an evidence-based analysis of safety on a subway system, this book also suggests how practical measures can alter crime risks and perceptions of safety to improve the quality of the passenger experience. Although Stockholm-centered, the book clearly has relevance to subway systems in large metropolitan areas, particularly in North America and Europe. It is essential reading for criminologists, architects, transport planners, and geographers but most importantly, passengers, for whom subways should offer a chance to move freely around the city and to go about their daily lives in safety, comfort, and with peace of mind., A welcome addition to the literature on safety and security in public spaces, Ceccato draws on her intensive field-based research into the Stockholm subway system to craft a book that will appeal to academics for its conceptual robustness and to planners for the practical insights it offers.

Vania Ceccato is associate professor of urban safety at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. She is editor of The Urban Fabric of Crime and Fear (2012).