Sandpit: VoiceYourView -- Making Public Spaces Safer

个体因害怕犯罪而感受到的压力比直接经历犯罪而感受到的压力要大得多。加拿大卫生部等资料来源认为，自然环境（如未使用和空旷的空间、光线不足的地区、树木和灌木遮挡的地区）助长了这些经历。例如，在大学校园里，袭击者躲藏的机会会增加学生的恐惧。然而，如何设计公共空间来充分缓解公众对其安全的担忧是极具挑战性的。这是由以下几个原因造成的：(i)即使是最好的设计过程也不能完全预测用户群体的需求；（ii）公众在使用该公共空间一段时间后才完全了解该公共空间的使用模式；（iii）随着空间在社区中角色的演变，使用模式自然会随时间而改变。因此，尽管在公共环境设计中考虑了安全因素的显著尝试（例如，“2020年的活力”），但先验的设计永远无法完全满足公众的需求。该提案认为，公共空间的使用者最了解空间。它进一步认为，目前在设计过程中只考虑了一小部分用户的观点。设计过程通常包括施工前的公众咨询和入住后的评估调查。然而，相对而言，很少有用户为这些过程提供输入。另一方面，所有用户对他们生活和工作的空间都有自己的看法。举个例子，一个工人可能会在心里注意到在繁忙的十字路口需要一个人行横道，但现代生活的压力意味着他/她不太可能把这个评论反馈给当地议会。这种知识——人们拥有但可能没有意识到它对他人的重要性——被称为隐性知识。VoiceYourView项目旨在调动社区的隐性知识，将公共空间转变为更安全、更具包容性的空间。VoiceYourView概念最好通过示例来说明。想象一下英格兰中部的一个公园。玛丽72岁了，她每天都遛狗。在黄昏的路上，当她走过一大片灌木时，她犹豫了一下，担心后面有什么。朱迪26岁。她的慢跑路线把她带到了公园里光线很暗的地方，她很害怕。43岁的保罗带着他的孩子们去公园，但他担心演奏台会成为青少年饮酒聚会的磁石。今天，玛丽、朱迪和保罗各自都有有限的方式将他们的隐性知识传达给合适的人。他们需要写一封信——考虑到他们日常生活的时间压力，这是不太可能的。VoiceYourView的目标是为Mary， Judy和Paul提供一种实时记录他们在公园里出现的反馈的方法，而不是等到他们忘记了。通过这种方式，VoiceYourView将收集实时信息，然后将其结构化，存储在在线存储库中，并与适当的利益相关者交换：其他用户，当地社区团体，地方当局等。假设是，通过这样做，VoiceYourView将导致公共空间设计更符合用户的需求，特别是在减轻他们的安全担忧方面做得更好。我们将为公共空间的隐性知识收集设计包容性输入设备，并将实现一个存储库，该存储库将使用人工智能（AI）技术对这些知识进行过滤、结构和分类。我们将在主要公共区域进行一系列试验，包括德里城墙和考文垂地下通道，以推动和评估VoiceYourView研究。我们将进行基础研究，以了解VoiceYourView需求如何受到现有犯罪趋势的影响，以及VoiceYourView如何适应和影响现有的设计过程。VoiceYourView是五所大学和相关合作伙伴之间的合作项目，将在三年的时间内开展。

Individuals experience significantly more stress from the fear of crime than from any direct experience of it. Sources such as Health Canada maintain that the physical environment (e.g. unused and empty spaces, poorly lit areas, areas obscured with trees and shrubs) contributes to these experiences. As an example, on university campuses, opportunities for attackers to hide can increase student fears. It is extremely challenging, however, to design public spaces that fully alleviate the public's concerns over their safety. This is due to a number of reasons: (i) even the best design processes cannot fully anticipate a user group's needs; (ii) usage patterns by the public are not fully known until the public space has been in use for some time; (iii) usage patterns naturally change over time as the role of the space in the community evolves. As a consequence, despite notable attempts at considering safety in the design of public environments - e.g., Vivacity 2020 - a priori design will never be able to fully satisfy the public's needs.This proposal argues that users of a public space know the space best. It further contends that, at present, only a small proportion of users' views are taken into account during design. Design processes typically include public consultations before construction and post-occupancy evaluation surveys. However, relatively speaking, very few users provide input into these processes. On the other hand, all users have opinions about the spaces in which they live and work. As an example, a worker may mentally note that a pedestrian crossing is required at a busy intersection, but the pressures of modern life mean that s/he is unlikely ever to feed back this comment to the local council. This kind of knowledge - which people possess but may not realize its importance to others - is termed tacit knowledge. The VoiceYourView project aims to mobilise the tacit knowledge of a community to transform public spaces to be safer and more inclusive. The VoiceYourView concept is best illustrated by example. Imagine a park in central England. Mary is 72 years old and walks her dog every day. On her route, at dusk, she hesitates as she walks past a large shrub, fearing what is behind. Judy is 26. Her jogging route takes her into areas of the park that are poorly lit and she is afraid. Paul is 43 and takes his children to the park but is concerned that the bandstand is becoming a magnet for teenage drinking parties. Today, Mary, Judy and Paul each have limited ways of communicating their tacit knowledge to the appropriate people. They would need to compose a letter - which is unlikely given the time stresses on their daily lives. The goal of VoiceYourView is to provide Mary, Judy and Paul with a way to record their feedback in real-time at the moment it occurs to them in the park rather than having to wait until it is forgotten about. In this way, VoiceYourView will collect real-time information that can then be structured, stored in an online repository, and exchanged with appropriate stakeholders: other users, local community groups, local authorities, etc. The hypothesis is that, by so doing, VoiceYourView will lead to public space designs that are more attuned to the needs of their users and, in particular, do a better job at alleviating their safety concerns.We will design inclusive input devices for the collection of tacit knowledge in public spaces and will implement a repository that will use techniques from artificial intelligence (AI) to filter, structure and classify this knowledge. We will conduct a series of trials in key public areas - including Derry city walls and Coventry underpass - to drive and evaluate VoiceYourView research. We will undertake basic research to understand how VoiceYourView requirements are impacted by existing crime trends and how VoiceYourView fits into and influences existing design processes. VoiceYourView is a partnership between five universities and associated partners and will take place over a three year period.