Researchers conducted seven semi-structured interviews and two focus groups as part of a broader project on violence experienced by LGBTIQA+ people in Chile. The Talca sample comprised seven individual interviews and one focus group with seven participants, while the Santiago comparison consisted of one focus group with five participants. All participants were over 18, lived in one of the two cities and reported subjective experiences of violence. Recruitment combined purposive and snowball sampling through LGBTIQA+ organizations and social networks.

The analysis used reflexive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke, with reporting guided by the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research. The researchers selected cases from the broader corpus according to predefined criteria: a high density of explicit territorial references and representation of both study sites. Coding was conducted collaboratively through repeated discussion, but the team did not calculate inter-coder agreement, consistent with the reflexive approach. The selection was not intended to represent all LGBTIQA+ residents of Talca or Santiago statistically.

The first theme was described as an “infrastructure of possibility”: access to information, support references, social networks and spaces affected whether LGBTIQA+ life appeared practicable or precarious. Participants associated territorial context with differences in the language available to describe their experiences and with the ability to identify organizations or people to approach for help. Where formal references were absent, participants described turning to friends or forming self-organized support groups. Accounts also showed that access was stratified within metropolitan Santiago, indicating that administrative boundaries did not necessarily correspond to equal availability of information or support.

The second theme concerned surveillance and reputation. Participants linked conditions in Talca and nearby rural environments with being recognized, observed or subjected to rumor, which narrowed the scope for everyday expression and help-seeking. These accounts included pressure to alter gender expression, voice or conduct in family and professional settings. The authors also describe identity-based mistreatment within LGBTIQA+ environments, including the use of deadnaming by peers or relatives. The analysis treats such behavior as an extension of surveillance rather than as an effect external to community life.

The third theme concerned mobility and education as partial openings. Moving for study and traveling through urban circuits exposed participants to people, events and spaces that were less available in their places of residence, expanding possible futures and social networks. The opening was described as incomplete and reversible: capabilities encountered in Santiago did not necessarily become available after returning to Talca. Messaging groups and locally organized gatherings also functioned as alternative infrastructures of connection in the smaller city, complicating any simple depiction of Talca as lacking solidarity.

The comparison does not establish that territorial scale alone causes violence or determines outcomes. Class, educational position, family relationships, professional environments and community connections shaped participants’ possibilities within the same territory. The authors therefore describe the infrastructure of possibility as jointly produced rather than as a pure effect of city size. A participant’s educational trajectory, for example, could provide access to information and new social contexts, while educational and socioeconomic position also stratified recognition within LGBTIQA+ spaces.

Several limitations constrain the findings. The sample was confined to people aged 19 to 35 who had completed or were pursuing university studies, and it included no trans women. Talca contributed seven interviews and one focus group, whereas Santiago contributed only a focus group; because individual interviews and group discussions can elicit different accounts, some apparent differences between sites may reflect data type rather than place. Recruitment through organizations may also have favored participants with stronger community connections. Rurality appeared mainly through participants’ biographies and movements from rural areas, rather than through sustained comparison with people currently residing in rural localities.

No official Chilean statistical source reported violence or discrimination by sexual orientation or gender identity with the regional disaggregation needed for a direct incidence comparison. The study also used only one focus group for Santiago and treated that city as a contrasting horizon through which participants narrated Talca. Within these limits, the qualitative analysis concludes that urban scale, network density, social legibility and information access operate as conditions shaping LGBTIQA+ violence and survival. The authors say the findings point toward responses addressing territorial conditions, including connectivity, information circulation, community spaces, recognizable support routes and confidentiality safeguards adapted to medium-sized cities and rural environments.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of territorial conditions shaping LGBTIQA+ violence and survival in Talca and Santiago, Chile

Article Title: Talca no es Santiago: Moral geography, rurality, and infrastructure of possibility in LGBTIQA+ violence and survival

Article References: Albornoz Fuentes, W. O., Valenzuela Gajardo, C. D. P., & Cid Ramírez, T. A. (2026). Talca no es Santiago: Moral geography, rurality, and infrastructure of possibility in LGBTIQA+ violence and survival. PLOS One, 21(10), e0360622. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360622

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0360622

Keywords: LGBTIQA+ violence, qualitative research, Talca, Santiago, territorial inequality, social surveillance, support networks, rurality, education and mobility, Moral, geography, infrastructure

The research team set out to test a proposition that urbanists have debated for decades: does changing the built environment actually change how safe people feel, and does it do so equitably across genders? Rather than relying on a single case study, the investigators synthesized evidence on design interventions, ranging from improved lighting and sightline management to the activation of vacant spaces and the redesign of pedestrian routes, and evaluated how these measures influenced reported fear of crime among men and women. Their analysis points to a consistent pattern: well-executed interventions reduce fear, but the size and character of that reduction depend on the specific needs and experiences of the users being considered.

At the technical heart of the study lies the distinction between crime itself and the perception of crime. Official victimization statistics capture only a fraction of the ways in which insecurity structures urban life. Fear of crime operates continuously, altering route choices, compressing the hours during which people feel comfortable outside, and imposing what researchers call a mobility tax, an invisible cost paid disproportionately by women. The study emphasizes that fear is not irrational; it is shaped by cues in the environment, including darkness, enclosure, visual isolation, signs of neglect, and the absence of other people. Because fear responds to environmental cues, it is, in principle, modifiable through design.

Lighting emerges as one of the most robust levers. The evidence reviewed indicates that improvements to the quality, uniformity, and placement of lighting can substantially lower fear, particularly along walking routes, transit access points, and underpasses where darkness compounds other stressors. But the authors caution against treating lighting as a panacea. Uniformly bright floodlighting can create glare, deepen shadows at their edges, and signal that a space is dangerous enough to require fortification. Gender-sensitive design, by contrast, treats lighting as part of a broader legibility strategy: illuminating the paths people actually take, lighting entrances and vertical circulation in parking structures and stations, and ensuring that light reaches eye level, where faces become recognizable and social presence becomes perceptible.

Sightlines and spatial configuration form a second pillar of the findings. Enclosed, convoluted spaces with limited visibility, under bridges, behind walls, along blank facades, reliably generate higher fear scores, especially among women respondents. Interventions that open up views, remove visual obstructions, introduce passive surveillance through overlooking windows and active street frontages, and avoid dead-end configurations reduce the sense of being trapped or unobserved. The study frames this in the language of prospect and refuge: people feel safest where they can see and be seen, while potential threats thrive in spaces that offer concealment. Design that maximizes prospect while minimizing anonymous refuge aligns the geometry of a place with the psychology of its users.

A third strand concerns activity and social presence. Vacant lots, boarded storefronts, and empty plazas communicate abandonment, and abandonment is read as risk. Interventions that activate space, through markets, food vendors, community programming, or simply through design that invites lingering, such as seating, shade, and accessible amenities, populate places with the ordinary social traffic that reassures passersby. The study notes that this mechanism is deeply gendered: women’s fear often centers on social disorder and the absence of help rather than on the statistical probability of assault, so interventions that increase the visible presence of other people, and especially of people likely to intervene, deliver fear reduction that lighting alone cannot achieve.

What distinguishes this analysis is its insistence that interventions be evaluated through a gender lens rather than assumed to be gender-neutral. Women and men report fear of crime at different intensities, in different locations, and in response to different cues. Men’s fear tends to concentrate around specific hotspots and nighttime contexts, whereas women report a more diffuse, ambient insecurity that shapes everyday routines, including during daylight hours. Interventions that reduce fear for men may leave this ambient anxiety untouched if they address only the most conspicuous hazards. The study therefore advocates participatory safety audits, in which women residents walk routes, identify stress points, and co-produce design responses, as a methodological complement to top-down planning. Gender-sensitive urbanism, in this framing, is not a niche concern but a diagnostic discipline that reveals where generic design fails.

The policy implications are considerable. Fear of crime suppresses the use of public transport, discourages walking and cycling, and depresses the economic life of streets after dusk. Because fear concentrates along predictable spatial patterns, poorly lit transit approaches, isolated underpasses, blank-walled corridors, municipalities can target investments with precision, achieving fear reduction at costs far below those of major infrastructure projects. The study’s gender-sensitive framing also gives cities a defensible basis for prioritizing interventions: if women’s mobility is constrained more severely than men’s, then design that disproportionately benefits women’s freedom of movement produces the largest gains in aggregate urban access and equity.

The authors are careful to delineate limits. Fear reduction is not crime reduction, and the two must not be conflated. Design interventions can redistribute offending toward less protected targets, a displacement effect that requires monitoring, and they cannot substitute for policing, social services, or the structural reforms that address violence at its roots. Moreover, perception studies must be interpreted with care, since reported fear reflects cultural context, media exposure, and personal history as much as physical environment. Yet the core result stands: when cities change the cues that environments emit, the people who move through them report feeling measurably safer, and the benefits can be tracked and differentiated by gender.

Ultimately, the study reframes fear of crime as a designable variable rather than a fixed feature of urban life. Streets that are lit where people walk, legible where they turn, watched where they linger, and animated where they pass through are not merely more pleasant; they extend the practical freedom of the people, and especially the women, who have long paid the mobility tax of urban insecurity. In an era when cities compete for density, sustainability, and livability, the evidence assembled here makes the case that gender-sensitive urban design is one of the most cost-effective instruments available for reclaiming the public realm for everyone.

Subject of Research: Gender-sensitive effects of urban design interventions on fear of crime in public spaces

Article Title: Urban design interventions reduce fear of crime in public spaces in gender-sensitive ways

Article References: Navarrete-Hernandez, P., Schlesser, T., & Luca, D. (2026). Urban design interventions reduce fear of crime in public spaces in gender-sensitive ways. Nature Cities. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00494-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44284-026-00494-0

Keywords: urban design, fear of crime, public spaces, gender-sensitive design, urban lighting, perceived safety, women's mobility, sightlines, placemaking, Nature Cities, urban planning, social surveillance