Evaluation of urban resilience to crime (A case study of theft crimes in Varamin)

The resilience of people to an adverse event in their city, community or environment reflects their flexibility in coping with or absorbing the incident. Achieving a resilient community requires attention to both physical and social aspects of resilience. In this quantitative survey, the spatial distribution of theft crimes in the districts of the city of Varamin were analyzed with the help of nearest neighbor index (NNI) and kernel density estimation (KDE) methods, and the social and physical aspects of resilience were evaluated by the use of questionnaires, official reports, and public records. The results showed a relationship, with a correlation coefficient of -0.344, between crime rate and resilience, which indicates that the communities that enjoy a higher resilience have a significantly lower crime rate. The rate of crimes varied with social, economic and physical characteristics of districts, and while the crime vulnerability indicators of peripheral districts were mostly physical-objective and were formed based on the concept of crime prevention through environmental design, the vulnerability indicators of the central districts were both objective and subjective and belonged to the social dimension of resilience.