Towards Safe Streets: The relationships between Physical Attributes of Streets and Perceptions of Pedestrian Safety in Kandy, Sri Lanka

Each year, over 1,000 pedestrians on Sri Lankan streets and more than 270,000 on world’s streets lose their lives and some are left with permanent disabilities. Compared to other road traffic fatalities and injuries, pedestrian accidents are seen as significantly high. Therefore, the pedestrian safety is a major issue on streets, and it has to be addressed in a serious manner. Safety being a basic need of every human being, it is essential that the built environment facilitates the safety needs. In here, Architecture and Urban Design would play a vital role in ensuring both physical as well as psychological safety of users. Cities, being the containers of large populations, naturally involve with the gathering of large numbers of people on streets, hence it is crucial to guarantee the safety of the pedestrians in cities. This paper explores the links between perception of safety and physical attributes of pedestrian spaces. It identifies the legitimate physical attribute combinations that help to ensure the safety within pedestrian space with the aim of mitigating and preventing the pedestrian accidents. This reviews the significant theories related to the field of architecture and urban design and the key attributes such as built form, planning and layout, ambience and functions used to facilitate the safety. The study engages with examining of variables of perceived safety and physical attributes of pedestrian areas, by appropriately using qualitative and quantitative research methods and, studying the city of Kandy as a case. The study concludes that the perception of safety of a pedestrian depends not merely on the physical aspects of pedestrian space, but also on the positive combinations of physical and psychological attributes.