Gambling with the future

The shape of digital thinking - not always what it seems - Stockphoto 

Techno-solutionism 

(noun) tech·no·so·lu·tion·ism |ˈtek-nō-sə-ˈlü-shə-ˌni-zəm *
1: The idea that every social problem has a technical fix — a mindset that often bypasses community input, local culture, and lived experience in favor of data-driven shortcuts. 

by Gregory Saville

Do you know what’s happening in Las Vegas next month?

More gambling and fantasy — except this time, it’s not about blackjack or slot machines. It’s about our future.

The Ai4 Conference is next month — one of the biggest gatherings of AI developers, investors, and corporate clients in the world. It’s packed with major institutional players: banks, financial giants, data brokers, and tech developers. They’re not there to sound alarms. They’re there to map the future — one algorithm at a time.

But not everyone is buying in.

One of the voices at this year’s event is Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the godfather of deep learning. He’s a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, and he resigned from Google in May 2023 — not in protest of bad engineering, but in alarm over what his own research might unleash.

He’s not there to sell. He’s there to warn.

And if even Hinton is nervous about the direction of AI — especially when it comes to ethics, autonomy, and control — we should all be paying attention.

That includes those of us working in urban safety and crime prevention.

Geoffrey Hinton at his Nobel Prize ceremony
Photo by Jennifer 8. Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

AI AND CPTED - THE SILENT CONVERGENCE

Artificial Intelligence is already reshaping how cities think about safety. I described this convergence in detail during my keynote address on AI and CPTED at the 2021 CPTED Conference in Sweden. It’s happening in ways both subtle and systemic: facial recognition networks quietly expanding in public places; real-time surveillance feeding data into centralized dashboards; algorithms determining who is suspicious and who is "safe".

We’ve raised alarms about these trends before on the SafeGrowth blog — in posts like:

• What 1980s Weather Models Taught Me About AI 
• Summoning the Demon: AI in Law Enforcement 
• The Pros and Cons of Using AI to Prevent Crime 

My keynote at the 2021 conference was titled: Artificial Intelligence, Smart Cities, and CPTED. A Threat to the ICA.

Keynote address at the 2021 ICA CPTED Conference - Sweden 

Much of this unfolds behind the scenes. And yet, it touches our daily lives, our neighborhoods, and the very public spaces that CPTED  seeks to protect.

The problem? These AI tools are often built through a corporate techno-optimist lens. One that:

• Prioritizes efficiency over ethics
• Amplifies surveillance capitalism
• Ignores spatial injustice
• Replicates systemic bias in code causing algorithmic harm

If we’re not careful, we risk building cities that feel more like open-air data farms than thriving communities.

Marriotte Hotel at the Las Vegas convention Center - location of the 2025 AI conference - photo by Marriotte

THE RESPONSE? ETHICS BEFORE ALGORITHMS

That’s why the International CPTED Association (ICA) has convened a new AI and CPTED Subcommittee — a global collaboration of criminologists, computer scientists, planners, ethicists, and practitioners (myself included) working to confront these challenges head-on.

I’m chairing this subcommittee, and after months of research and reflection, the ethical questions have crept into my consciousness like invasive roots spreading beneath the roadways of our communities. You don’t see them right away. But they’re there — widening the cracks.

We’re now finalizing a white paper to guide the CPTED field — a direction-setting document for how to responsibly navigate this new terrain.

RECLAIMING SAFETY IN THE AGE OF AI

This isn’t just a matter for data scientists or tech firms. There is a message shaping up for CPTED practitioners and residents alike. To me, that message goes like this:

We must call for oversight, ethical scrutiny, and community-driven approaches over digital or predictive models that falsely claim certainty without embracing uncertainty and probability. 

And above all - techno-solutionism must not prevail. Cities are not math problems to be solved by code. They are ecosystems of people, stories, and space — deserving of care, not automation. Despite what some experts claim, sustainable crime prevention is not a simple matter of quick situational fixes. Livability too is important.

We’ll be sharing more soon in our ICA white paper.

For now, the dice may be rolling in Vegas. But the rest of us?
We’re not gambling with our future.

The mastery of tradecraft in crime prevention - Why quick fixes fail

Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia

by Gregory Saville

On this July 4 Independence Day, I discovered something worth celebrating emerging from Philadelphia. And it wasn't the Declaration of Independence. 

Last week, I was dealing with a failed air conditioner during a brutal heatwave. Calling an A/C technician was fascinating. He was energetic, hurried, and confident (overconfident – it turns out). He glanced at the unit and announced it was too old to repair. He didn’t test the refrigerant, didn’t run diagnostics. He jumped quickly to a simple conclusion - it likely had a Freon leak requiring a full system replacement. The going rate? Over $8,000!

That was declined.

The next day, I called in a different HVAC technician — someone calm, experienced, and focused. He listened carefully as I explained the background of the A/C issue, then got to work. In under an hour, he had diagnosed the real problem, tested the system, checked the wiring, bypassed a strange connection, and replaced the dirty filter. The result? Cool air again — and all for under $200.

Something worth celebrating on July 4 - it all started with an air con

He also went a step further – he pointed to a website that ships replacement filters automatically, provided some education on how to self-diagnose simple AC problems, and made sure other parts of the system were not at risk. “That way, you can prevent future problems and self-repair when necessary.” 

That is mastery of tradecraft.

PRACTICING CRIME PREVENTION

It made me think, too often in CPTED, we meet the first kind of technician — fast talkers selling quick fixes at a high cost. What we need are more like the second — grounded pros who diagnose carefully, teach as they go, and work with the client, not around them.

Nowhere is the contrast between shallow fixes versus deep tradecraft more visible than in Philadelphia — between the neighborhoods of Kensington and Fairhill/St. Hugh.

Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood remains among the highest
crime communities in the city 

Kensington is infamous — a high-crime zone marked by open-air drug markets, encampments, and a long history of short-term government crackdowns. One of the most aggressive was Operation Sunrise, a year-long police campaign launched in 1998 that promised zero-tolerance enforcement aimed at gangs and drugs. Authorities were confident (overconfident, as it turned out).

The effort made headlines. It felt bold, but it didn’t last.

Early criminology research praised Operation Sunrise and its “place-based policing” model, highlighting short-term drops in crime and minimal displacement. But later analysis challenged the no-displacement finding and warned of widespread unintended consequences. One study concluded the operation failed to sustain lower crime rates and instead produced a “generation of fugitives” and widespread collateral harm.

Today, government research concludes that Operation Sunshine’s zero-tolerance policing and hotspot crackdowns failed to deliver sustainable safety.

The business towers of downtown Philadelphia.
Not far away, some of the nation's highest crime neighborhoods. 

MASTERFUL CRAFTSMANSHIP MISSING

There’s nothing masterful about these strategies. They are the equivalent of replacing the entire HVAC system when the real problem is a dirty filter, a lack of client knowledge and no self-capacity to resolve problems.

When you leave Kensington and travel a half mile north, you arrive at Fairhill/St. Hugh, a primarily Hispanic neighborhood anchored by the vibrant El Centro de Oro commercial corridor. 

In contrast to Kensington, the St. Hugh neighborhood has been growing and improving for a while and, while Fairhill has some crime and disorder challenges similar to Kensington, there is something very different happening. 

It is difficult to get the full picture from stats, and violent crime rates are notoriously difficult to measure, much less calculate. But by at least some estimates, the violent crime rate in Fairhill/St. Hugh is lower than in Kensington.

For example, one source claims Kensington's violent crime rate of 9.3 per 1,000 residents is 55% higher than the 5.9 rate in Fairhill/St. Hugh. Unfortunately, stats like this are bound to be imperfect and imperfect stats rarely tell the full story.

2023 Crime Density map for Philadelphia - Map from GIS Geography

Kensington and Fairhill neighborhoods overlay onto crime density map
- crime stats are notoriously difficult to calculate and tell only a small part of the story. In this version the dark red suggests higher crime rates in Kensington 

THE HACE STORY

Enter HACE, a community development corporation working in Fairhill/St. Hugh for over three decades. HACE was formed to combat disinvestment and preserve community culture. Their approach? Place-based strategies not limited to law enforcement. Instead, they use long-term investment, community leadership, neighborhood planning and strategies grounded in SafeGrowth.

Long before HACE adopted SafeGrowth, their results were stunning:

• Over $100 million in local investment
• More than 450 new housing units built
• 400+ vacant lots rehabbed and greened
• A community-run food distribution center
• Housing counseling programs that build generational wealth

Even more impressive, HACE now adopts SafeGrowth and crime prevention principles within their ten-year Goodlands 2025 plan — not as add-ons, but as core pillars of community design.

The neighborhood plan focuses on major areas of development activity, including housing, commercial corridor revitalization, improving the quality of life, and crime and safety. 

Celebrating the birthday of a Livability Academy member - a local police officer

They also train residents through SafeGrowth Livability Academies, helping locals become leaders in problem-solving, safety design, and civic engagement.

Academy classes lead local projects — clearing encampments, building safe walking trails, and working with police. Cops don’t arrest their way out of crime; communities and police build their way out, together.

PREVENTION TRADECRAFT

Masterful prevention tradecraft has a look: practical, visible, and led by the people who live there. It is grounded in self-help, local knowledge, rooted in evidence, and police are partners, not enforcers of one-size-fits-all solutions.

It’s patient work, unlikely to reveal itself to 6-month evaluations. Instead, it requires patience like slowly melting ice from frozen A/C lines. Like tracing faulty wiring until the real problem is clear.

And in neighborhoods, as in A/C systems, the difference between a temporary fix and a long-term solution is rarely visible at first glance — but unmistakable over time.