The Perception of Urban Insecurity and Its Implications for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The phenomenon of the increasing violence has intensified the perception of urban insecurity, generating diverse manifestations ranging from social, economic, and institutional categories and those related to the urban environment. The concept of urban safety and its relationship with the quality of life has awakened interest and vision about the sustainability of cities, as seen in the sustainable development objectives of the United Nations Agenda 2030 which seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, significantly reduce the forms of violence, and guarantee equal access to justice, among others. The study of the perception of insecurity is very important for the sustainable development of the cities as the perception of insecurity affects the coexistence and implications on the quality of life of the inhabitants of vulnerable areas because it constitutes an obstacle to the sustainable development of the city. According to the above, this research deals with the perception of insecurity to intra-urban scale in the city of San Luis Potosi, in order to know the current situation and trends of urban insecurity, and identify vulnerable areas as a basis for the design of preventive policies and urban design. The method applied is the model: Generation, Demonstration and Attention (GMA); It includes quantitative and qualitative indicators that make up the proposed information system and register according to the census information with reference to scale AGEB polygons, used as a unit of space. Different patterns of perception were obtained that exhibit a different reality in each sector of the city as data obtained do not correspond with official statistics on urban insecurity. Therefore, it may be concluded that there are gaps in the levels of inequality and attention to safety that reflect conflicts of social coexistence and generating areas of increased incidence of violence threatening the urban sustainability.