The societal requirement for safety and security in Japanese living environments has recently increased due to a declining sense of community, a growing number of marginal villages and other factors. Meanwhile, there have been very few safe-community (SC) studies in the fields of architecture and town management, and no studies have addressed the intentions of self, community or public help.
Against such a background, this paper is intended to highlight the activity status, awareness and characteristics of residents in the pre-SC certification acquaintance/promotion period and in the post-certification activity period to clarify awareness structure concerning self, community and public help before and after certification.
The main achievements are as follows:
1) The awareness of SC activities for self-help that improved after the certification than before certification were (2) Safety in educational facilities, (3) Agriculture and forestry safety, (5) Prevention of suicide etc., (6) Security and safety of children, (8) Security and safety of people with disabilities, (9) Crime prevention, (10) Disaster control and (11) Fire control. Particularly, the awareness of (9) Crime prevention and (11) Fire control were increase about 20%.
2) Although awareness levels for (6) Security and safety of children, (9) Crime prevention, (10) Disaster control, and (11) Fire control were lower, awareness of community help was higher than that of self-help and public help, indicating a need for subjects to help one another in communities both before and after certification.
To improve community help awareness before any further decline, it is considered necessary for neighborhood associations and other entities to implement initiatives toward new activities and contribute to existing activities. While many current efforts and programs are for individuals, it may be possible to start with efforts enabling neighborhood associations to participate as implementing bodies once their sense of community as residents' autonomous organizations has been fostered.
SC activities support the prevention of external injuries and the promotion of safety and security; the promotion of self-help and community help is not a major purpose of such work. However, in terms of the promotion of safe and secure town development based on collaboration among residents, communities and government bodies in Japan, where mutual support within communities is an issue, the outcomes of this study are considered significant because they help to clarify the structure of awareness among locals before and after SC certification based on the determination of their intentions regarding self, community and public support from an SC perspective. The findings of the study include the observation that the intention of SC activities was not uniform and differed for individual types of activities, and that the needs of high-risk households for activities related to community safety and security were clarified by analyzing the attributes of such households and their intentions by activity types.
