Priyanka Chowdhury

Gendered Perceptions of Safety

This project explores how people of different gender identities perceive safety in urban public spaces and how emerging urban technologies might reshape those perceptions. It is conducted in the University District of Columbus, Ohio, and combines participatory design, speculative design, and auto-ethnography to surface lived experiences and co-create visions of safer futures.

The study is rooted in feminist urbanism and personal experience, it reframes safety as not merely the absence of danger, but as a systemic condition, the presence of dignity, autonomy, and belonging.

Methodology

Phase 1 participant board: Phase 1 participant board combining written reflections with mapped locations perceived as safe and unsafe in the University District.
Phase 1 overview: Phase 1 participant boards grouped by self-identified gender for cross-group comparison.
Phase 3 overview: Phase 3 responses clustered by safety theme and participant gender identity.
Empty-street analysis: Cross-group thematic clustering of responses about traveling alone and navigating empty streets.
Socio-technical layers: Phase 3 themes mapped across four sociotechnical system layers: People, Services, Digital, and Infrastructure.

Findings

What makes people feel safe?

What makes people feel unsafe?

Where do people feel unsafe?

Why do people feel unsafe?

How do cis and trans women address unsafe environments?

How do cis and trans men address unsafe environments?

How do non-binary and agender individuals address unsafe environments?

Comparison by Gender Identities

What if people have the chance to design the space?

Speculative Artifacts

  • An urban system with illuminated paths (i.e., the straws) to increase nighttime visibility and reduce fear of dark pockets. It also has small, mobile robots that individuals can summon on demand to walk with them. It falls within the Environmental- Proactive quadrant.
  • A porcupine-inspired wearable accessory, the PorcuHat is a self- defense hat attachment that releases deterrent spikes when a threat is detected. It falls within the Personal-Reactive quadrant.
  • A temporary, swipe-activated pop-up bus shelter, called the Sprout Stop, designed to appear only when needed and then retract back into the ground to avoid misuse or loitering.
  • An AI-Enabled Urban System with sound-detection walls, threat-assessing AI, GPS tracking and emergency dispatch capabilities to deter noise disturbances. It falls within the Environmental-Reactive quadrant.
  • A pair of stylish glasses equipped with AI capabilities to detect, identify, and communicate threats related to sound and visibility.
  • A pocket-sized device that projects hyper-realistic holograms of friends to accompany someone walking alone. It falls within the Personal-Proactive quadrant.

The horizontal axis moves from personal to environmental, indicating where responsibility is located. The vertical axis moves from reactive to proactive, showing whether a concept responds to an immediate concern or anticipates conditions before harm occurs.

System Structure

Framework for Spatio-Temporal Socio-Technical Systems

This framework visualizes how safety is experienced as a layered system, shaped by people, services, technologies, and infrastructure, over both space and time. Together, these dimensions reveal safety as a dynamic, evolving condition rather than a fixed state, helping designers identify where interventions can have the most meaningful impact.