Neighborhood Satisfaction and Safety

Abstract

The aims of this study were (1) to test theories related to neighborhood satisfaction and safety and (2) to address planning and policy questions raised by a proposal for controls on development in San Francisco's Chinatown. Findings of an interview sample survey supported the urban scale, compositional, quality of local conditions, and urban anonymity perspectives. Results revealed a relationship between high population density/commercial development and lowered levels of neighborhood satisfaction as well as a relationship between increased building density and lesser feelings of safety in one's neighborhood. Increased development would be expected to exacerbate undesirable environmental qualities of the area and potentially destroy the ethnic enclave nature of the community. The margin of "affordable error" was judged to be small given the following factors: (1) lack of alternatives for this low income, nonmobile, immigrant, and Chinese monolingual population, (2) lower level of neighborhood satisfaction among Chinatown residents than U.S. residents overall, and (3) the greater neighborhood satisfaction experienced by the older, poorer, and nonaspiring and those whose neighboring relations constitute a form of community.