Violência percebida, coesão social e qualidade de vida em duas vilas de Belo Horizonte: Projeto BH-Viva

Abstract

Introduction: The objective violence, marked by agressions and homicides in Brazil and in the whole world, is increasing the violence perception and the fear of crimes, changing people's routine on how they use the urban space and forms of socialization. Both the perceived violence and the real violence are influenced by the environment. Via social determinants, urban requalification policies have the potential to change the community perception about violence perception and social cohesion with possible direct spill overs onto the inhabitants' quality of life and health in this urban space. Objective: Compare the violence perceived by the inhabitants of two villages in Belo Horizonte, one with the intervention of the Programa Vila Viva and another without any intervention, as well as their surroundings, aiming at understanding how urban requalification policies change these territories and the possible benefits it brings to decreasing the violence perception. Methods: This is a transverse observational study which analysed the violence perception and its association with demographic, social and health variables arising from the Projeto BH-Viva household survey conducted in 2017 and 2018 in two villages in Belo Horizonte, one with a urban requalification intervention and the another without any intervention, as well as their respective surroundings. Results: The villages presented an increase in the violence perception compared to their surrounds, except in the safety to walk in the streets during the day and night as the inhabitants reported feeling safer than the surrounding inhabitants. In descending order, the inhabitants of the village without intervention reported the perception of greater violence, with higher value in the score of perception of violence (35,8), following by the village with the intervention (32.3), and the surroundings of the villages without any intervention (28,1) and with intervention (23,9). Although the villages presented similar social features and violence perceptions, the comparison between them showed that the village with intervention presented lower occurrence of violence (32,3) than the village without intervention (35,8). Conclusion: the results suggest protective effect of the urban requalification in the violence perception. The urban requalification with its wide range of interventions in the big urban centers, promoting citizenship and aiming at better social and health indicators, may have contributed in the reduction of the violence perception of the village with intervention. Keywords: violence; violence perception; urban requalification.