From collapse to renewal - Building community in a time of chaos

The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules by Cid Martinez

by Gregory Saville

By popular accounts, South-Central Los Angeles is a chaotic place – a place where the community has collapsed and people live in fear. A quarter-million people suffer poverty rates over 30%. Half of the city’s murders and hundreds of gang shootings emerge from South-Central. Popular films, like South-Central and Colors paint a bleak picture.

This year alone LAPD reports 100 homicides in South-Central, a homicide rate of 40 per 100,000, eight times higher than the national average and more than any other country in the world, except El Salvador.

The fact that there is gang violence and racial conflict is not news. The more interesting questions are: If neighborhood culture has collapsed, why isn’t it so much worse? How does a family even survive in such a place? Why has it been getting better over the past few decades (notwithstanding increases in homicide this past year)?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Enlightenment philosopher,
anti-slavery activist, and humanitarian 
- Maurice de La Tour's painting of Rousseau, 1753 

Do conditions in South-Central simply reflect basic human behavior in our natural state? When the chips are down, do we just become beasts? If so, how does South-Central still survive?

Thomas Hobbes wrote that our natural state was self-serving and violent. At the moment of collapse, for example following a catastrophe, people revert to their natural “solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short” lives. 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the other hand, argued the opposite – humans are basically good and, following a cultural collapse, we will end up finding ways to cohabitate. “Nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state,” he wrote in 1754.

What does history suggest?

COLLAPSE IS NORMAL

The Golden Age of Ancient Greece lasted for centuries. That remarkable, but fatally flawed, Hellenistic society never managed to eliminate slavery or internecine conflict and they eventually gave way to the Romans. Of course, Greek city-states did not vanish and their citizens did not perish. They continued on under Roman rule until, eventually, the Roman empire collapsed. 

The Romans absorbed Greek culture, technology, and engineering, advancements we still use today. In fact, we base our contemporary democracy, science, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy on some of those early Greco-Roman discoveries.

The Acropolis in Greece
- photo by Aaron Logan, Creative Commons

People imagine the fall of the Roman empire as some cataclysmic war or conquering marauders burning Rome as Emperor Nero watched. In fact, after the Western Roman Empire faded, the Eastern Roman Empire transformed into the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). And the ancestors of the Byzantine Empire became the Ottoman Empire. Today 80 million people, the progeny of those empires, live comfortably as citizens of the modern nation of Turkey.

It’s the same all over the world. Societies emerge, thrive, and collapse, but their demise does not signal a return to permanent chaos under a violent short life. Human nature is not permanently brutish.

THE PROGRESSION OF HISTORY 

Life may be brutish for a while, but history suggests Rousseau was onto something. Life doesn’t remain brutish – actually the opposite. People find a way forward. 

Consider the treatise of Harvard’s Pulitzer-winning author Steven Pinker, arguably the leading American scholar today on matters of mind and culture. His widely heralded book, Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined studies the history of violence and civilization from one era to another. In each subsequent era, he discovers the persistent decline of violence through history and the emerging civilizing effect of rational thought. 

Even today, when rational thought seems a distant dream, collapse from social chaos rarely lasts. Human nature, he says, is both brutish and beneficent at the same time. Rousseau and Hobbes were both right and wrong. 

South-central Los Angeles
- photo by Alfred Twu, Creative Commons

SOUTH-CENTRAL

That brings us back to South-Central and a marvellous book by Cid Martinez,  The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African-Americans in South Los Angeles. Martinez studied the social disorganization (and ultimately, re-organization) of cultural life in South-Central ten years following the infamous Rodney King riots. 

FLASHBACK: If you don’t recall the 1992 LA Riots, they followed video coverage of a police beating of motorist Rodney King, and the subsequent acquittal of the officers responsible. It led to days of rioting, 63 deaths, and 2,000 injuries. Hundreds of stores burned and over 12,000 people were arrested. By all accounts, society collapsed in South Central.

1992 Rodney King riots, Los Angeles
- photo by Rodney Bonilla, Creative Commons

Matinez spent a year living in South Central studying the culture and his conclusions echoed both our findings during our SafeGrowth programming and the conclusions of Pinker in Better Angels. 

He found order within the disorder. People discovered a way to be civilized when some of those around them could not. Says one reviewer: 

“Despite the many divisions that South Los Angeles residents have from each other…Martinez finds unexpected commonalities among Latin American and African-American residents. Because residents do not perceive state actors as legitimate, they turn to each other to provide social organization.” 

Martinez calls this special ordering “alternative governance” and, while it is certainly not an ideal way to run a society, as elsewhere when enough people cultivate the beneficient side to human nature they can make their community function. 

We retain this Rousseau-style lesson as a central philosophy of SafeGrowth programming. We call it the To/For/With principle and time and time again, we see people turn their own community back from the brink of crime. 

Life isn’t always, or even mostly, brutish and short. As they always have, people find a way forward.

A New Hope - America 2021

 

Post-election sentiments in America

by Tarah Hodgkinson

We are often asked why we focus our crime prevention work so intensely on small-is-beautiful versus large scale transformation. We have learned that small scale neighbourhoods, particularly disadvantaged or high crime neighbourhoods, offer the greatest potential for creating safe, cohesive, and liveable places that show how to rebuild cities in the future. 

That doesn’t mean large scale transformation isn’t possible. It just means it can be far more difficult, turbulent, and unproductive.

Consider the political, social, and cultural upheaval of the last few years in the United States. Over 400,000 people are dead due to coronavirus. Children are in cages. Domestic terrorists attacked and entered the capitol building and five people were killed. Muslims from certain countries have been banned. Rights for all kinds of groups have been reeled back. 

It has been a few weeks since America inaugurated a new leader. A subdued celebration ensued in order to keep people COVID-safe and the world went wild over a pair of handmade mittens.  

And, by most accounts, Americans let out a sigh of relief. Within hours, policy after racist policy was rolled back, with 17 executive actions signed in the first day and over 40 as of this week.

AS DIVIDED AS EVER

Nonetheless, America is as divided now as ever. This division is not new. Read back only a few decades and you will find the exact same sentiment. 

In fact, those exact words, have been written again and again over the last century. But what does this mean for America? And how do people move forward? 

We have discovered through many years of our SafeGrowth project work that progress only happens when people truly listen to each other. 

Police, residents, property owners, experts of all political stripes
collaborating in a recent SafeGrowth program

There are thousands of books, articles, and critiques on the rise of “populism.” However, these accounts often ignore the original tenets of populism: real democracy for all people. Real democracy is messy. It doesn’t involve scapegoating or hatred, but a recognition of the rights of all people. 

It seems obvious that Americans also need to take a hard look at themselves. There is an excellent scene in the HBO Series, The Newsroom when Jeff Daniels' news anchor character, Will McAvoy, is on a public stage and is asked: “Why is America the greatest country in the world?” He stuns the audience when he replies, “It isn’t! But it sure used to be”. 

McAvoy cites a myriad of statistics on how America fails to compete with other countries on literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality, health care, economic equality, and more (all of which - while spoken by an actor in a fictional show - are true). 

Finding solutions and common ground through small teams,
real-life problems, diverse groups and SafeGrowth skills. 

What this scene suggests is that the warnings of a crumbling American empire are also true, sentiments found in Niall Ferguson's book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire and Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. 

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope. 

HOPE FOR 2021

America has always been one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial countries in the world and it can innovate again. As famed American historian, Howard Zinn suggested in his book Passionate Declarations Americans need to see themselves the way much of the world does. Self-reflection is the first step in the journey of self-improvement. 

Finally, Americans need to take that reflection and get to work. This starts with the demands coming from the populists: health and education reform, economic reform, policing reform, and others. 

This will require that neighbourhood residents and leaders, like the incredible people we have met in our SafeGrowth network, continue their hard work and demand better for themselves and their communities. 

A new leader might mean new hope. But unlike the world of Star Wars, we can’t put that new hope on one Jedi’s shoulders or the magic of The Force. This must be done by people themselves. A new hope for America comes from the voices of all Americans being heard. And that starts with a small-is-beautiful approach in local neighbourhoods in the cities and towns all over the nation. 

Community Supported Shelters - the latest for the homeless

Community Supported Shelters in Eugene, Oregon

GUEST BLOG: Tod Schneider is an old friend and has posted blogs here on CPTED in schools. Since then we have posted many blogs on homeless issues such as homeless reduction and tactical urbanism in Portland. Here, Tod shares his latest innovative work on homeless shelters. 

Tod Schneider, Executive Director, Community Homeless Shelters

Most homeless camps have a bad rap for good reasons: they’re poorly designed, if designed at all; they’re under-funded if they’re funded at all; they’re managed by people unequipped to manage at all; and they’re sheltering primarily people who are wrestling with severe life crises. 

Community Supported Shelters is different. We have an approach that works. We shelter people with few resources who would like help pulling their lives back together. Our effectiveness is reflected in the widespread support we receive from the homeless population, the advocate community, the police, and the local government. 

Although NIMBY continues to be a challenge, we even have widespread support from the general public, reflected in the $350,000 in private donations we received last year. Here are the key ingredients that work for us: 

The homeless have a place for their animal friends

• The Conestoga Hut. It looks decent, which is important if you don’t want to offend the neighbors, as well as if you want to feel happy coming home at the end of the day. The raw materials cost under $1500. It can be built in a matter of hours. We sell hundreds of hut manuals and templates every month to motivated advocates handy with tools. The hut is attractive, well insulated and lockable. Residents feel safe locking their stuff up so they can go live their lives during the day. 

• Camps. We cluster the huts into camps. Camps include port-a-potties, trash service, recycling, kitchen sheds, wood-heated commons sheds, solar recharging stations for cell phones, and 6 to 20 huts. Gardens usually sprout up as well. The camps are fenced and locked. Many homeless camps consist of tents that can’t be locked, in clusters that can’t be protected. This allows the severely disturbed, intoxicated, or dangerous homeless to terrorize everyone else. Camps need securable huts and fences, just like the housed need lockable doors and solid walls. 

• Communities. Equally essential is how a camp is managed. Everyone we welcome is screened, but not in the usual way. We’re not doing background checks. We don’t bar people with criminal convictions or bad credit histories. Our applicants mostly self-screen. We explain that they are applying to be part of a mutually supportive community. They have up to a year of free rent, mutual support, staff support recovering from trauma, and navigation assistance in connecting with essential services as part of their life-improvement plans. 

Home should not be a street - photo Kate Harnedy

Many people start out needing help with basic needs: replacing lost I.D., lost teeth, and lost dignity, making supportive friends or finding a decent meal, getting used to people looking them in the eye, or calling them by name. 

Two out of three of our campers move on to better circumstances in less than a year. We started with one hut, next to a church, in a wary community. We added three camps over the next half dozen years, and support started to grow. In September 2020, the local government, having seen our effectiveness, came to us with enthusiasm, pulled out their checkbooks and funded five new camps. We’ll be sheltering 160 people in 8 camps by somewhere around Valentine’s Day. 

To learn more about CSS, visit our website, or email: tod.csseugene@gmail.com

"Crime is common - logic is rare"

Solving community problems through diagnosis and logic

by Mateja Mihinjac

The above quote from Sherlock Holmes brings to mind a question we ask municipal leaders: How do you most often respond to crime? They typically describe hiring more police or installing CCTV. They are mystified why these cookie-cutter solutions work so rarely to ensure safety. 

I've recently gone down a rabbit hole, binge-watching the Netflix docuseries Diagnosis. The main premise of the series is crowdsourcing diagnoses for rare medical conditions to help investigate their root causes. It sounds logical – to effectively address the ailments, we need to understand the causes that lead to symptoms and their unique manifestation in an individual and not simply suppress the symptoms with common drugs.

In crime prevention, we often draw parallels with the medical approach to problem-solving. Yet, in practice, we rarely enact this as we don’t give sufficient emphasis to diagnosing the problem – instead, we often apply quick generic solutions.

Complicated problems like homelessness require diagnosis 

DIAGNOSING PROBLEMS

Consider this: Recently one of our SafeGrowth practitioners experienced an influx of homelessness in his community. The number of thefts and burglaries increased in the homes around his street. He thought it was connected to the homelessness situation, but he was uncertain. He didn’t want to blame disadvantaged people, but he had no idea how to proceed.

Too often we see knee-jerk responses to complex problems. Arrest the homeless? The police tell you they cannot simply arrest without cause and arrest is not the solution. Move the homeless away? But where do they go, where did they come from, and why are the numbers increasing now? 

Install security lighting, cameras, and target hardened fences? Quick generic “solutions” like these move the problem from one house to another. Further, it makes the neighbourhood look like an armed camp.

Simple, generic solutions can create neighbourhood fortresses

WHAT IS THE ANSWER? 

In SafeGrowth we diagnose the problem before we develop solutions. We’ve previously written about simplistic approaches to crime prevention and the need for an integrative approach.

We recognize that each neighbourhood needs an individually tailored approach to identify problems and apply solutions, such as in the homelessness problem above.

We use neighbourhood teams and train them about the importance of understanding the problem before developing solutions. Generic, one-size-fits-all, solutions (like security cameras), are no guarantee of a safe community.

Our approach is scientific and investigative. Our stepwise problem-solving process starts with Problem Identification and Problem Analysis.

Digging at the roots of a problem, not hacking at the branches

IDENTIFICATION

Problem identification is an essential step, yet it is often rushed or ignored. Teams identify what they already know about the underlying problems and what they still need to learn. For example, is the homeless problem above related to drug abuse, mental illness, lack of affordable housing, or poor home security? 

Teams formulate a series of hypotheses which they then test as they collect and analyse the information. For example: The reason homelessness has increased is due to increases in rents and a lack of affordable housing. Another example: Homeless increases result from an influx of street drugs in our city and the activities of a local street gang.

ANALYSIS

Problem analysis allows teams to collect and analyse information against each of the hypotheses, integrate the findings and then either accept or disprove the hypotheses. 

This systematic and evidence-based investigative process sounds complicated and time-consuming. But it is essential for the team to gain an in-depth understanding of the problems and their causes. That is why SafeGrowth teams are so successful in developing solutions that are tailored to neighbourhood needs. 

This is the best path to improve the quality of life for residents in which residents themselves feel they have a role. It is how we avoid ineffective cookie-cutter solutions that don’t work. It is also how we avoid building neighbourhoods that look like fortresses and reduce fear at the same time.

Our 21st Century neighbourhoods deserve no less. 

Laneways - dreadful enclosures or neighbourhood assets?

by Mateja Mihinjac

Winter influences how we use our neighbourhood. Because of short daylight hours and cold weather, walking the neighbourhood is often an isolating experience. Current COVID lockdowns all across the world make these changes even more pronounced. All this affects the perception of safety of local residents, especially regarding residential laneways that may become risky movement predictors.

RESIDENTIAL LANEWAYS

Residential laneways, also called alleys, back lanes or catwalks, are a welcome addition to the neighbourhood when they provide accessibility, shorten travel paths, and enhance walkability. They can serve as positive places for interaction.

Some blame these micro-places for increasing opportunities for crime. Research suggests that laneways can facilitate crime opportunities by contributing to increased levels of noise, property crime, antisocial behaviour and fear.

Yet others argue that laneway research shows improvements in social and environmental sustainability, which lead to better safety and perception of safety outcomes. Positive laneway design has a buffering effect on crime and vulnerable targets due to increased informal social controls stemming from higher levels of social cohesion.

Therefore, the question is not whether laneways have a place in the neighbourhood because they might trigger crime opportunities – laneways have many positive attributes that contribute to walkability and neighbourhood liveability. Rather the question should be how do we better design laneways and make them safe.

POOR DESIGN

Many laneways are separated from neighbouring courtyards with high non-permeable fences that offer few opportunities for natural surveillance and interaction. Such laneways create tunnel-like gauntlets that are unattractive, especially at night. 

In addition to this, many laneways, especially in North America, are positioned along backyard residential garage areas intended predominantly for vehicles and rubbish removal. No wonder these laneways become a “no man’s land” and thus lead to safety concerns described earlier.

One of our project teams from a recent Calgary SafeGrowth training identified that residents were concerned with hiding spots, poor visibility in the dark, graffiti on tall fencing, and similar. Clearly, laneway designers must create open and attractive areas that pay attention to pedestrian use.  

IT’S MORE THAN CRIME 

The second issue is that the laneway debate centres exclusively around crime prevention. Little attention is given to larger issues such as the type of the laneway and neighbourhood structure. Conversely, much of urban design literature speaks to the importance of integrating multiple liveability indicators and considering safety as an integral rather than isolated indicator of laneway suitability. As architecture professor Kim Dovey says, “I begin from the view that the urban public realm needs to be at once safe, accessible, vital, creative and democratic.”

Criminologist Paul Cozens believes that when the discussion centres around crime prevention alone, we make laneways hostile to human-scale design. In fact, he claims we can inadvertently “design in crime” while the residents become isolated from one another and from the outside neighbourhood.

When our Calgary team spoke to residents they found that the residents often referred to other quality of life concerns that affected their use of the laneways rather than safety concerns alone. Some of these included poor maintenance, tripping hazards, poor wayfinding, and integration of laneways with the street.

Again, this suggests we must consider laneways more holistically, not strictly with a crime prevention eye, and we must reconcile safety with other liveability indicators.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? 

Despite the potential safety risks, there are many benefits of well-designed and well-functioning residential laneways. If designed well, they can further enhance community capacity-building and create a sense of neighbourhood.

There are some excellent toolkits describing how to accomplish these goals. They include a Turning Laneways into Public Places document and a Reimagine Catwalks Playbook. 

As we say repeatedly in SafeGrowth, what matters most is collaborative design with residents – not designing to or for them. This is how we use laneways, not as dreadful shortcuts and fear-inducing places, but as shortcuts for building the neighbourhood. 

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?

Movie night - watching movies on our neighbor's garage door

by Greg Saville

Seasonal celebrations are now underway. Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and National Don’t Make Your Bed Day (Yes, there is such a thing! I’m a believer). Each event celebrates a different aspect of life – seasonal, religious, cultural – and, in so doing, each celebrates our human community. Given the mess that is 2020 - inequity protests around the world, the Racial Reckoning riots in the United States, and the scourge of COVID-19 - we desperately need to celebrate something this year!

Human “community” is an elusive animal. It means different things to different people, and consequently, it means nothing that you can put your finger on. Of course, since we’re not testing a theory in a lab experiment, who cares? It’s okay that we have regular celebrations of community; it’s needed now more than ever.

To some, “community” is their immediate family and circle of friends. (I’ve been particularly lucky in this regard.) For others, it is their social circle or their affiliation with sports teams. To yet others, it is those who share political affinities or who occupy the thousands of groups in Meetup.com. 

TO EACH, HIS-HER OWN

For my part, I recently became obsessed with a YouTube group that takes virtual rides on famous trains around the world (yes, yes… I know how pathetic and uncool that sounds. COVID cabin fever takes a toll!)

Yet there is another important part of this story worth telling. For those of us in the community-building and crime prevention world, the term “community” is too elusive. We prefer using local geography to describe our neighborhood – those buildings, neighbors, parks, shops, and other places within a 15-minute walk of our home. After all, it is within those neighborhoods where we actually live much of our lives. 

Our immediate neighbors, for better or worse, matter a great deal! And it is in those very places where we experience, recover from, or hide from, crime and fear. Mateja Mihinjac and I describe some of these ideas in our Third Generation CPTED article last year.

A pre-Covid, summer afternoon with neighbors

Neighborhoods matter and neighbors matter. So let’s celebrate our neighbors too during this holiday season. I’ve been fortunate to have some great neighbors over the years. We may not always agree about politics or see eye-to-eye on our philosophy of life, but we agree it is important to be a good neighbor. When neighborliness works well, it costs you little, it means a lot, and it contributes to your quality of life. In an upcoming blog, Mateja will describe how we encourage neighborhood engagement. In the meantime, let's celebrate our neighbors. 

To the great neighborhoods and to the great neighbors who care, thanks. You rock!