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Urban Technology and Perceptions of Safety: A Participatory-Speculative Exploration among Gender Identities in University District

Urban Technology and Perceptions of Safety: A Participatory-Speculative Exploration among Gender Identities in University District

Priyanka Chowdhury
MFA Design Research and Development, 2025

Project Description:
This thesis explores how individuals across different gender identities perceive safety in urban public spaces, with a focus on the University District in Columbus, Ohio. Rooted in feminist urbanism and guided by participatory-speculative design, the study addresses two central questions: (1) How does the perception of safety vary across gender identities? and (2) What role can emerging urban technologies play in enhancing these perceptions?

The research engaged over 50 participants identifying across the gender spectrum. A phased approach helped surface grounded insights and culminated in speculative artifacts envisioning future safety interventions for the year 2050. The findings reveal significant disparities in perceived safety: cis women, as well as non-binary and agender individuals, expressed higher vulnerability and greater reliance on personal safety measures than cis and trans men. Participants identified multiple environmental, technological, and social factors influencing their sense of safety, ranging from adequate lighting and police presence to harassment, noise, and the design of public infrastructure.
The research contributes a spatio-temporal, socio-technical framework rooted in lived experiences that maps perceived safety as a dynamic and systemic condition, shaped by people, services, technologies, and infrastructure. It introduces a landscape of existing and speculative concepts that visualizes safety interventions along proactive-reactive and personal-environmental axes. The study advocates for shifting institutional safety strategies away from individualistic and reactive solutions toward inclusive, participatory, and systemic design responses. In doing so, it calls for urban technologies and proactive planning practices that center lived experiences, embrace complexity, and reimagine public safety as a shared, evolving process.
 

Committee Members:
Elizabeth B.N. Sanders (advisor), Matt Lewis, Harvey Miller, Marta Nowak

Keywords:
Urban Design, Perception of Safety, Feminist Urbanism, Speculative Design, Participatory Design, Socio-technical Systems, University District, Urban Technologies
 

 


 

Filters: 2025, Graduate Studies, Design Research and Development, MFA Thesis