View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Institutional Repository Received: 16 March 2018 The association between the Revised: 3 June 2018 Accepted: perception of crime and 30 July 2018 Cite as: Yasmeen Gul, walking in gated and non-gated Zahid Sultan, Gul Ahmed Jokhio. The association between the neighbourhoods of Asian perception of crime and walking in gated and non- gated neighbourhoods of developing countries Asian developing countries. Heliyon 4 (2018) e00715. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018. e00715 Yasmeen Gul a,∗, Zahid Sultan b, Gul Ahmed Jokhio c a Department of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (SCEE), National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan b Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia c Faculty of Civil Engineering and Earth Resources, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Gambang, Malaysia ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Gul). Abstract It has been reported in the literature that the perception of crime at the neighbourhood level inversely affects the walking behaviour of individuals. On the other hand, the gated neighbourhoods are considered safe from crime, however, there is a lack of research on the association of the perception of crime and walking in gated neighbourhoods. Therefore, the objectives of the study reported in this paper were to investigate the association between the perception of crime and walking in gated and non-gated neighbourhoods. A questionnaire was used to collect the data on walking and the perception of crime in 16 neighbourhoods of Karachi Pakistan, 8 out of which were gated. Independent sample t-test and gamma tests were used for the data analysis. The results show that although there is a lower perception of crime in the gated neighbourhoods, yet the inhabitants of gated neighbourhoods engage in less physical activity comprising of walking. In spite of a greater perception of crime in non-gated neighbourhoods, higher values of walking were reported by the residents of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00715 2405-8440/Ó 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Article Nowe00715 those neighbourhoods. Therefore, it has been concluded that there does not exist a definite relationship between the perception of crime and walking behaviour at the neighbourhood level and the perceived safety from crime claimed by the proponents of the gated neighbourhoods does not encourage walking among the residents. Keywords: Psychology, Public health, Law, Geography, Sociology 1. Introduction Walking is considered an integral part of physical activity, which is a necessary con- dition for attaining and maintaining physical health of humans (Bauman et al., 2011). Therefore, many guidelines for the necessary amount of walking one should engage in have been formulated, for example, an important guideline by the World Health Organization is that one should be considered physically active if one gets 150 minutes of walking or 600 MET minutes in a week (World Health Organization, 2010). The calculation of MET (metabolic equivalent of task) is based on differentiating the body in rest and doing some activity. There is a different MET value assigned to each physical activity and the value for walking ranges from 3-5 (Ainsworth et al., 2000). The neighbourhood environment is considered important for enhancing walking at the neighbourhood level and this has become a robust area of research investigation over the past couple of decades (Day and Cardinal, 2007). The neighbourhood envi- ronment has been broadly defined by transportation experts and urban planning pro- fessionals as to include the land use patterns, the accessibility, and the design features (Handy et al., 2002; National Research Council (US). Committee on Physical Activity and Land Use and Transportation Research Board and Institute of Medicine (2005); Gul et al., 2016), all of which can potentially affect walking. The health literature concludes that along with these neighbourhood environment as- pects, the availability of sports facilities also plays a vital role towards enhancing physical activity (Sallis et al., 2009). Moreover, there are a few social environment factors that also affect physical activity at the neighbourhood level as agreed by both the public health and the urban planning experts. It has been reported in the literature that the social environment factors, such as se- curity from crime, traffic safety, and physical disorder, are neighbourhood environ- ment variables that can affect people’s willingness to be physically active outdoors in their neighbourhoods (CDC, 1999; DiGuiseppi et al., 1998). The perception of crime (POC) is a very important social environment variable, which is measured subjectively by collecting data through appropriate questionnaires. The residents of a neighbourhood are asked how safe or vulnerable they feel with regards to crime 2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00715 2405-8440/Ó 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Article Nowe00715 in their neighbourhood. There are standard questionnaires available with certain seg- ments formulated to measure POC, such as Neighbourhood Environment Walkabil- ity Scale (NEWS). There are a few questions in NEWS for measuring POC, for example, people are asked if they feel safe while walking in their neighbourhoods at the day as well as night times and if they see other walkers or bikers in the streets while they walk. This walk can be for any utility or leisure purposes. The perceptions are then calculated by assigning numerical weightage to different answers, such as the Likert scale (Sallis et al., 2009). Sallis et al. (2009) showed a significant negative association between POC and walking. Similarly, a significant negative association between POC and walking was also found in developing countries (Oyeyemi et al., 2012). On the other hand, in a review of 18 studies examining environmental correlates of walking, traffic and pedestrian-related safety were positively associated with walking for ex- ercise, recreation, and transportation among children, but the same was not found to be associated with walking among adults (Owen et al., 2004). In some cases, the relationship between POC and walking has been found inconsistent (Bauman and Bull, 2007). Most of the studies focusing on adults, with some exceptions, have not found a significant association between crime-related safety and walking (Foster and Giles-Corti, 2008). Therefore, it can be said that the relationship between POC and walking is not conclusive because some researchers have reported a nega- tive relationship between these two, while several others have failed to identify any relationship thereof. A new trend in the neighbourhood design has come into being recently, claiming to provide more security from crime, in the shape of security zone gated neighbour- hoods (Blakely and Snyder, 1997). These gated neighbourhoods have gained popu- larity around the world among consumers (Blakely and Snyder, 1997; Grant and Mittelsteadt, 2004). It has been reported that these communities have low POC (Wilson-Doenges, 2000; Sakip et al., 2012; Gul et al., 2018), but no actual difference in the crime rate (Breitung, 2012). The available research is inconclusive about the crime in the gated neighbourhoods and there is a gap in the literature comparing the POC and its effects on walking in gated and non-gated neighbourhoods. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between POC and walking in gated and non-gated neighbourhoods. The methodology adopted for per- forming this study has been explained in the next section followed by a discussion and the conclusions drawn therefrom. 2. Methodology The methodology for the present study mainly consisted of the selection of the study area, the selection of the study sample, the collection of the data, the data analysis, 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00715 2405-8440/Ó 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Article Nowe00715 and the formulation of conclusions and recommendations. There was no need for ob- taining any Ethics Approval at any stage of this study. 2.1. Study area A cross-sectional study was conducted by matching gated neighbourhoods with their counterpart non-gated neighbourhoods located in the largest metropolis of Pakistan. Karachi was selected as the study area because it is one of the largest cities, with a total area of 3,527 km2 (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 1998), among Asian devel- oping countries (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2016), and has a heterogeneous population (Amer, 2013). This study is part of a gated communities physical activity study (GCs-PAS). There are two major types of developments in Karachi city: planned, and unplanned. The planned development has two sub-types: single family, and multifamily. The multifamily development in- cludes either walk-ups up to 5 stories or high-rises up to 16 stories. A new trend in neighbourhood development, a gated and guarded neighbourhood, is growing fast in Karachi city. It was reported in one study that by 2030, most of the neighbourhoods in the city will be gated for the sake of safety (Ahmad, 1993). There are 6 districts, 6 cantonments, 24 towns, 216 union councils, and 4 development authorities in the city. The districts are Karachi South, Karachi East, Karachi Central, Karachi West, and Malir. The Karachi South and West districts were not included in this study because there is not a noticeable number of gated neighbourhoods in those two districts.