**1. Introduction**

In tandem with human civilization's advancement and the rapid urbanization trend, urban crimes have always been a threat to urban dwellers [1]. Classic statistics reported an increasing trend in the crime rates of robbery, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and homicide in the United States from 1960 to 1975 [2]. However, more recent data by the United Nations O ffice on Drugs and Crime [3] showed a decreasing trend in 2003 to 2018 globally, particularly in the category of robbery, serious assault, and cities homicide paradox in sexual violence (Figure 1). Proposed solutions have been implemented to combat society disorders but still seem unable to prevent such from happening in safe city planning [4]. One of the explanations for this phenomenon from a criminology perspective is that crime is a by-product of human civilization, and incivility is a part of the nature of human behavior [5]. Thus, humans must admit and accept living in co-existence with these disorders or evil acts while deliberately finding ways to reduce crime and the fear of crime [6].

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**Figure 1.** The world crime rate, the selected category (source: plotted from [3]). Note: All data plotted on rates of police-recorded offenses per 100,000 population.

In the United States and most European countries such as the United Kingdom, combating crime has proven to be a long battle for governors, city officers, and police officials [7]. In 1996, the United Nations launched a safe city program due to the increasing crime trends in Africa and throughout the world [8]. Following that, ref [9] has published a guideline on crime prevention for governments. Emerging and developing countries, including Malaysia, have welcomed this idea and launched its Safe City Program in 2004, followed by a revision in 2009 [10,11]. Scholars who have studied the Malaysian case have shown that many local authorities have implemented such programs, but the programs' assessments are still lacking [12,13].

The Safe City Program in Malaysia refers to creating a crime-free environment using strategies under the scope of designing the physical environment, target hardening and management, community involvement, and public awareness [11]. Thus, from this perspective, the crime-free environment is threatened by human-made insecurity, which constitutes mainly property and violent crimes. It excludes the war and terrorism, health and environmental pollution issues, natural disasters, and digital security. This paper does not examine why crimes happen. Instead, it considers crimes as perceived by the respondents in the survey and examines how a safe city program helps people translate crime prevention into routine activities factors. Besides crime, the sense of fear of crime has frequently been highlighted in many studies, and some researchers have even commented that the inner fear of crime has caused more trouble in life than real crimes [14]. Thus, this study aims to identify the factors preventing crime and fear of crime by conducting a case study of the central business district in Kuala Lumpur.
