Safety and sustainability in a city in transition: The case of Vilnius, Lithuania

Urban experts have long recognised crime and fear of crime as dominant challenges to sustainable cities. A sustainable community is a place free from the fear of crime, where a feeling of security underpins a wider sense of place attachment and place attractiveness. In this article, we follow the recent strand of Western research and suggest a framework for assessing safety, which includes the analysis of the geography of crime, fear of crime and crime prevention. Empirical evidence is based on Vilnius, Lithuania. Findings show that whilst Vilnius’ geography of crime shows patterns similar to those found in Western cities, fear of crime shows a complex pattern, playing a minor role when citizens judge their residential quality. Crime prevention incorporates top-down features as well as approaches previously adopted by Western cities. The article concludes with an assessment of the proposed framework and directions for future work.