Cognitive Mapping of the City Center: Comparative Perceptions of Dangerous Places

Preconceived notions can affect the job performance of community service recruits. In this investigation, the knowledge and perception of relative safety of recruits being trained to patrol central Philadelphia are compared with actual locations and safety levels of these neighborhoods to determine which communities were not perceived accurately. Results demonstrate that knowledge of the area did not translate into perceptions of safety. Rather, preconceived notions of the ethnic composition of the neighborhoods translated into notions of relative safety. These faulty impressions need to be corrected before recruits are assigned to serve this community. The ability to store and access information about the environment generally is taken for granted. We also take for granted that our perceptions of the environment are correct. After all, we perceived them — that is, we saw, heard, touched, or smelled them. Or, we heard others we trust describe the environmental elements to us. Therefore, we feel we have a good idea of what varying places we have experiAddress correspondence to: George F. Rengert, Department of Criminal Justice, Gladfelter Hall, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122. 1Q4 — George F. Rengert and William V. Pelfrey, Jr. enced either first or second hand are like. But do we? There is a vast literature on how we perceive the environment centered in the multi-disciplinary field of environmental cognition. This focus can be traced back to cognitive psychology (Tolman, 1948), from which geographers developed much of their pioneering work (Downs and Stea, 1973; Golledge, 1976; Golledge and Spector, 1978; Gould and White, 1974; Lloyd, 1976). From geography, several environmental criminologists have applied this research to the study of crime and fear of crime (Brantingham et al., 1977; Carter and Hill, 1979; McPherson, 1978; Pyle, 1980). One of the key questions asked by these scholars is, How accurate are our perceptions of crime and how justified are our fears of crime (Pelfrey and Pelfrey, 1995)? These are important questions since our behavior is governed not by what objectively exists in the environment, but by what we perceive to exist. Therefore, environmental perception governs our dayto-day behavior. For example, Pyle (1980) points out that lack of use of the shopping, cultural, and recreation facilities within central parts of Akron, OH by suburban residents may be due to an unjustified fear of crime. Not all parts of central Akron are high-crime areas, although most suburban residents perceive them as such. Pyle (1980) demonstrates that, objectively, certain suburban locations have a more serious crime problem than central Akron. In a study of two neighborhoods in west Philadelphia, Mattson and Rengert (1995) demonstrated that residents perceived actual distances as longer in neighborhoods perceived as dangerous than in those perceived as safe. Since one of the determinants of whether we use a facility is perceived distance from the potential user, a desirable facility located in an environment viewed as dangerous (a public zoo) was not only underutilized because of the perceived danger, but also because of the inaccurately perceived distance from potential users. In fact, the perception of danger was so pervasive that objectively experienced problems did not add to the distance perception in the perceived dangerous neighborhood, but significantly increased perceived distance in the relatively safe neighborhood. In other words, bad experiences did not add to the perception of fear and distance in the neighborhood perceived as dangerous to begin with, while they did in the neighborhood perceived as safe. Quite clearly, the perception was more important than the objective reality in determining the use of the contrasting environments. This is just another example of the relationship between environmental perception and individual behavior, there are many more. This chapter illustrates how environCognitive Mapping of the City Center— 195 mental cognition and spatial behavior are related in conceptual terms. We begin with a discussion of the formation of mental maps.