Street morphology as a starting point for understanding sexual harassment

Incidents of sexual harassment are unequally distributed in the Greater Cairo Region because cities, generally speaking, have uneven patterns of movement and activity with higher rates of pedestrian and vehicular movement and activities in some quarters than others. Central areas usually have concentrations of people and activity, hence higher crime opportunities. However, simplistic explanations of urban crime patterns will be misleading and will imply that people are a source of danger. Furthermore, previous research attempted to interpret the phenomenon of sexual harassment based on social effects, but failed to address the problem from a wider approach.Instead, the purpose of this research is to identify built environment features related to sexual harassment occurrence in the context of Cairo, to suggest different ways to create safer urban environments, based on a design-based approach. Consequently, Space syntax is used to provide evidence-based explanations and conclusions. Analysis is done at two different, yet interrelated scales: city scale and urban block scale. That is, to provide a holistic understanding of the influence of built forms on sexual harassmentThe results show that touching incidents take place along globally accessible street segments, where local territoriality and social control are missing.