What makes a competent CPTED practitioner?

Certification in CPTED comes down to some essential learning and practical skills -  it all begins with reading and studying  

by Mateja Mihinjac 

When working with clients in SafeGrowth we often get asked: “How do I know what CPTED expert I should hire?” 

Our response: “Make sure their expertise is certified by an independent and widely recognized third-party professional organisation.”

In practice, this is not so black and white. Many consultants claim they have knowledge or experience practicing Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). It is not uncommon to have CPTED consultants self-proclaim themselves “CPTED experts” after entering the job market directly from University, with no practical experience in the field. 

Other consultants are well-seasoned individuals who have been practicing in the field for years and convince themselves they know everything there is to know about CPTED. They don’t read, write, or publish in technical or scientific journals about CPTED. Consequently, they provide the same simple CPTED advice throughout their career with little reference to recent research or modifications to CPTED theory.

Assessing the same environment at night and day
- an essential data collection skill for the competent CPTED practitioner

Class learning or field experience? Neither group is populated by the best example of competent CPTED expertise. This arises due to several reasons:

• College/university education might provide foundational knowledge (theoretical understanding, how to collect and analyse data). While it is important to have advanced knowledge, that alone will not work without considerable practical experience. In the real world of preventing crime, theory cannot function without practice, and vice versa.

• CPTED experience might help a practitioner understand a problem, the environment, or how people behave. However, a CPTED practitioner should never believe they know everything due to their experience. There are many cases when past experience does not explain changes in offending behaviour or prevention methods. Theories evolve to respond to those social changes and only by keeping up with recent findings and new theories can a practitioner truly master the complex field called CPTED. 

All experts must constantly refresh themselves with new theoretical concepts. Our physical, social, and administrative environments change as society changes. That means crime and safety threats evolve. CPTED theory, policies, and other legal and regulatory documents must evolve to reflect those changes. That means a competent CPTED expert constantly reads, attends conferences, and writes about such things.

That leads to an obvious question: How can we ensure CPTED consultants possess the knowledge, skills, and experiential abilities needed in the field? 

Outdoor research tours are an essential ingredient for CPTED training

CPTED CERTIFICATION FOR INDIVIDUALS - ICCP

This year the ICCP (ICA’s CPTED Certification Program for Individuals) is 20 years old. 

Those unfamiliar with professional certification sometimes confuse the content of CPTED with the practice of CPTED. While theory and practice are interconnected, the primary measure of the certified expert is their competency in how they practice CPTED. That is obviously reflected in their background knowledge, what ICCP terms core subjects. This places the ICCP as a competency-based certification program. 

On the ICA’s website, the ICCP is described as:

“Certification in the field of one's choosing is a way of indicating to yourself that you have arrived. You have achieved a level of expertise … Certifications provide a raised bar to which those new to the field can strive. Certification also serves to lock out charlatans claiming to be "trained" or "certified" by merely attending a course or taking a test.“

The competency units within the ICCP program are on the website. 

The International CPTED Association website hosts the ICCP Certification Program information. It also lists additional learning resources like webinars and guidebooks

 

PROFESSIONALISING THE FIELD

While CPTED doesn’t need the same level of certification as medical and engineering professions, CPTED does respond to personal threats to property and lives. These are important matters and the ICA is pleased to have contributed to the advancement of CPTED over the past decades. 

All this has led to exciting new initiatives:

GLOBAL CPTED STANDARDS

Another movement forward, that certified professionals must know, is that CPTED now has its own European Standards and international ISO Standards.

CPTED-GRANTS

Many CPTED-related grant proposals in North America now require a certified CPTED professional on the submission team. 

EXPERT WITNESSES IN COURT

CPTED experts, including ICA CPTED-certified members, are now regularly called as expert witnesses in criminal and civil trials. 

COURSE ACCREDITATION

In 2019 the ICA launched an accompanying program – the Course Accreditation Program (CAP) – to accredit CPTED courses that teach the KSAs – the knowledge, skills, and abilities of novice CPTED practitioners. 

As such, CAP offers an accelerated pathway towards obtaining CPTED certification. One example is our SafeGrowth program which is CAP-accredited and several graduates have already successfully pursued the ICCP. 

 

CAP accredited CPTED courses include urban design sessions

WHAT IS A CERTIFIED CPTED EXPERT?

It is reasonable to ask why CPTED warrants a professional-level certification. As you can see from the discussion above, a competent CPTED professional knows that their decisions can prevent crime and their recommendations impact people’s quality of life. They can save lives. Those recommendations come with equity and ethical implications. 

In some cases, those recommendations might even mean the difference between life and death. Certification matters!

Opportunity Lost? The RCMP and the future

  

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police - the Mounties and their worldwide famous musical ride. The RCMP is the national police force of Canada - photo Andrea_44, Leamington, Ontario. CC BY 2.0 via Wiki Commons

by John Lyons

John Lyons spent many years as a patrol officer living and working in northern Canadian communities. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 28 years, he served as a major crime investigator. For 10 years he was an international crime analyst with Interpol Ottawa. Post policing he consulted government on health care fraud. Now he brings his extensive experience to SafeGrowth, particularly in conducting search conferences to prevent crime and build collaborative networks.

Sometimes it is worth opening a door into the past to see how things repeat themselves.

Over the years, this blog has written about problem-oriented policing, like the 2002 project to cut street drug dealing by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Burnaby, British Columbia. We have also described the street disorder and tragedy of homelessness and street drugs plaguing so many cities, especially in my last blog on Prince George, BC 

What does a look back in history teach us?

LOOKING BACK

Some of us remember how economic stagflation and increasing crime rates decimated police resources in the 1970s. Like today, police leaders were told to do more with less, despite increases in crime. Then, as now, there were studies on how police services ought to be improved when officers were overworked and understaffed. Officers were facing intensive stress levels, a well-known problem reported in books and psychological studies. 

In that environment, problem-oriented policing (POP) emerged as a re-think about how to deliver police services. POP was seen as a way to cut street crime and decrease workloads during a time of high stress and under-resourced cops. Successful case studies began to appear at the annual POP conference pointing to a new way forward. Things seemed bright, indeed.

The Canadian Parliament buildings in Ottawa. The RCMP - Gendarmerie royale du Canada - was established by the Canadian federal government in 1873 as Canada's national police.

ENTER THE RCMP

Throughout the 1990s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched a nationwide program to retrain its officers and introduce POP methods. They modified the curriculum at the national training academy incorporating a problem-solving model called CAPRA. Training teams traveled from coast to coast to teach problem-solving seminars in each RCMP Division. I know this because I was a coordinator and participant in those teams. 

As we traveled coast-to-coast, we noticed an interesting pattern: RCMP detachment commanders and supervisors rarely sat through the training, limiting themselves to guest appearances at the beginning or end. The only Commanding Officer who attended from all the Divisions we trained was in New Brunswick. To make matters worse, no one attended these regional seminars from the national policy center tasked with implementing community policing. 

What did this mean? 

It meant that RCMP commanders lost out on the informed ‘wisdom of the streets’ told by the operational police officers. The officers in our classes described their physical and emotional struggles – the stressors confronting them daily – as they effectively served their communities. They also told us how problem-oriented policing closely aligned with their own experiences – a message commanders did not hear. 

Thus, the major shift required in RCMP culture, from senior positions of command, never truly happened. Then, as now, problem-solving never really became embedded into the operations and organizational structure in cities like Prince George. Except in a few detachments, it did not happen in a systemic fashion.   

Graffiti on underpass walkway in Prince George

THIRTY YEARS LATER IN PRINCE GEORGE

We have been blogging about the street crisis of homelessness and drug abuse in Prince George, British Columbia. The Prince George Citizen labeled that city the crime capital of British Columbia 

Statistics seem to confirm that conclusion, like a government website showing an increasing crime severity index over the past 7 years. 

Conversely, a city website describes a reduced crime rate due to innovative policing strategies such as "community-oriented policing, increased patrols in high crime areas", and the "utilization of advanced technologies for surveillance and investigation". 

Nevertheless, in 2022 a consulting group was commissioned to produce an RCMP workload and resource study. That study was delivered to the city in 2023 –  the Resource Review of the Prince George RCMP.

The City Hall of Prince George, BC, employs the RCMP to deliver municipal policing services.

The study recommends adding 19 sworn officers and 12 support staff to improve efficiency. At a time when the city already spends 37% of its budget on public safety, it’s no surprise that city councilors are resisting throwing more money at the problem with no guarantee of success.

The study also indicated 20% of sworn officers were on leave, many for mental health and stress-related issues – an obvious red flag for city and police leaders. It was reminiscent of a similar situation in the 1970s and 1980s during the heyday of POP.

OPPORTUNITIES LOST

My sense of the RCMP community policing problem-solving model in Prince George is that it is more an ideal than a reality. The resource study confirmed this by claiming the Prince George RCMP had “near zero community policing capacity” and that it “does very little proactive, problem-solving policing”. 

Remember how we introduced problem-solving training and programming to the RCMP in the 1990s? Let’s not forget that RCMP detachments still have good problem-solving bones. Recruits are taught problem-solving through their CAPRA model.

How might they reclaim the lost opportunities of problem-solving that we describe in other cities? Simply adding more officers might seem like a simple fix. But that rarely works without more structural changes. Otherwise, it will fade away as it did before. How might they move forward? 

The 2024 International Problem-Oriented Policing Conference - retired deputy police chief, Dr. Ronald Glensor moderates alongside POP Center director, Michael Scott. Years ago, the RCMP submitted successful problem-solving projects at this conference and participated in sessions on crime prevention methods  

OPPORTUNITIES GAINED

1. No doubt the officers at Prince George, combined with trained support staff, are capable of installing a problem-solving infrastructure and culture. There are already plenty of successful case studies, in-service training programs, and examples where police/community POP has worked across North America. 
2. Problem-oriented policing projects by the RCMP have already been submitted to the International POP conference by other detachments in British Columbia. This includes projects on retail theft in Langley, BC in 2016, or dealing with prolific offenders in Kamloops, BC in 2010. Clearly, there is no lack of expertise.
3. Senior commanders and supervisors need help putting such programs into place. This will mean investment in leadership training, resource support, and the assistance of outside organizations (expertise from local universities, retired officers to help in key areas, community partnerships).
4. Finally, for the past 15 years, SafeGrowth has taught communities, residents, and their police across North America how to problem solve by establishing neighborhood safety plans. Police do not require additional officers to do this since the police do not lead the neighborhood planning process – neighbourhoods, business and downtown associations, and community groups do that. 

NEXT STEPS

The Prince George resource study sketched out a simplified version of this process titled the Community Safety and Well-being Plan. Fortunately, a model has already been tested and implemented in other cities through the SafeGrowth process. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

One of the strategies included in the 1990s POP training was precisely this type of community safety planning. Sadly, that was lost to history. But it does not mean it cannot be rediscovered, this time with a large toolbox of updated and modern methods. Prince George citizens, its police officers, crime victims, and those suffering on the street deserve no less.  

 

A shot in the dark - murder under U.S. presidents

Detroit viewed from across the river in Windsor, Canada.
Detroit (popn. 649,000), 252 murders last year, murder rate 23 per 100,000. 
Windsor (popn. 229,000), 10 murders last year, murder rate 2.8 per 100,000.
Do national policies cut crime?

by Gregory Saville

Last week’s 2024 U.S. election ended with Donald Trump defeating Kamala Harris. It wasn’t a landslide, but it was not a cliffhanger. Some think crime will now drop, others think it will explode.

I am amazed at how frequently crime becomes a political weapon – a well-placed gotcha for a media soundbite in the middle of a campaign. Politicians love to promise solutions to crime waves but rarely offer practical answers based on research. It’s easy to claim that one president or another will reduce crime, but can a president actually achieve this? How does a president’s term in office truly affect national crime rates?

The data show that crime is declining. There are some upward blips here and there – violent crimes against young people are up, and mass shootings and school shootings have increased. However, on the whole, most crime rates are declining.

 

Detroit police use technology, surveillance cameras,
and other programs to attempt to prevent homicides 

HOW DO WE KNOW?

I examined U.S. homicide data to see if there was a pattern with different presidents. I’m not ignoring recent increases in a few city centers. I’m simply saying that most city centers have declining homicides this year. Denver is one of them.  

I know a few things about weaknesses in crime data. Yet,  even with the limitations, we can learn something. 

I collected homicide data from 1960-2022, and graphed the results and the tenures of 11 presidents. This method obviously bypasses all the other important factors affecting homicide and it only examines a President’s term and homicide rates. Even still, it shows something worth considering.

 

KENNEDY/JOHNSON

Homicide rates exploded during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration and continued through President Nixon's term. Kennedy and Johnson launched highly-regarded social programs, much of which emerged from criminologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s book Delinquency and Opportunity. 

Many of the crime prevention strategies from the Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty were successful and survive today such as Head Start, Job Corps, and AmeriCorps.

  

President Kennedy greeting Peace Corps volunteers in 1961 - one of the social programs from his administration - photo Abbie Rowe, CC via Wikimedia Commons

Those programs were founded on the belief that improving access to legitimate opportunities for disadvantaged youth could reduce crime. Crime, particularly homicide, was supposed to decline! It didn’t!

REAGAN

Consider this – a large portion of crime, like homicide, occurs via young male offenders between 18-25 years. The youngest in that demographic born in the War on Poverty decade reached their crime-prone years in the early 1980s. Perhaps they benefited from the War on Poverty programs? After all, the graph above shows that the early 1980s was a period of dramatic homicide declines. By then Ronald Reagan was president! 

Could it be that Ronald Reagan benefitted from Kennedy and Johnson’s War on Poverty? 

President Reagan's inauguration speech, 1981
- photo White House Photographic Collection, CC Wikimedia Commons

Probably not. By the end of Regan’s presidency, the homicide rate began increasing again. Rates climbed through the presidency of George Bush with a small decline in his last year. So much for presidential influence over crime!

CLINTON 

The most dramatic impact on homicide was from 1993 to 2001. Clinton’s tenure saw the largest homicide decline in recorded American history. This decline was across all crime categories, it continued through George W. Bush’s tenure and into Obama's first term. 

Did that crime decline stem from Clinton’s all-encompassing anti-crime campaign called the 1994 Crime Bill? 

This bill was one of the largest anti-crime efforts since Johnson's 1968 Safe Streets Act. Clinton’s 1994 bill created stricter criminal sentences and violence against women laws. It hired 100,000 community police officers and banned assault rifles. It implemented the National Police Corps, an ROTC-style university degree to improve police education – a program in which I was hired as associate director of the Florida Police Corps (the program was later defunded during the Bush years). 

 

President Bill Clinton shaking hands with Donald Trump in 2000 - photo Ralph Alswang, Office of the President, CC Wikimedia Commons 

OBAMA

Clinton’s crime bill is now criticized (even by Clinton) as a trigger to mass incarceration of minority populations (to be fair, a trend that actually began long before 1994). It is also unclear that the Clinton crime bill was responsible for the homicide decline because crime also dropped in countries where there was no crime bill. For example, Canada’s crime rates started declining a few years before this bill.

President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama on the Colonnade to the Oval Office, 2008 - White House photo, Eric Draper CC Wikimedia Commons

After Obama’s election in 2009, police excessive use of force spread across social media. There were anti-poverty protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, and riots in city centers. It seemed impossible to predict murder rates. In the first half of Obama’s presidency, the homicide rate declined. Then it rose. Exactly the same thing happened to Trump. 

TRUMP

During the first two years of Trump’s presidency, the homicide rate declined from 5.3 to 5.0 homicides per 100,000 people. In his last two years, homicide rates jumped almost 40%, from 5.0 to 6.9. Recent election disinformation claimed otherwise, but the fact is that homicides increased at the end of Trump’s first tenure. Was he responsible? 

By now it should be obvious it is difficult to attribute homicide rates to any president. There are simply too many factors at play. And now, homicide rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels and crime is dropping. 

WHAT NOW?

Nothing here suggests that a forward-thinking presidential administration cannot make a difference. Sadly, few presidents deliberately craft a well-designed, properly implemented crime prevention policy based on proven community-building strategies. Kennedy and Johnson did that, yet it was poorly implemented, underfunded, and it largely failed. Clinton also did that and it might have cut some crime. Unfortunately, there were unintended consequences like exploding prison populations and it’s unclear how much credit that program deserves.

The takeaway? There are well-designed, evidence-based strategies, like SafeGrowth, that prevent crimes and sustain prevention effects for years. A presidential administration armed with the right tools and strategies can make a meaningful difference, but only through intentional and well-executed policy. History shows without that, it is a shot in the dark! 

Pictures in the sky - a vision for the unhoused in Prince George

  

Judge and Senator Calvin Murray Sinclair
- photo by Archkris, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wiki Commons

 by John Lyons

John Lyons spent many years as a patrol officer living and working in northern Canadian communities. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 28 years, he served as a major crime investigator. For 10 years he was an international crime analyst with Interpol Ottawa. Post policing he consulted government on health care fraud. Now he brings his extensive experience to SafeGrowth, particularly in conducting search conferences to prevent crime and build collaborative networks.

This week, a giant died in Canada. I met him many years ago when I gave testimony in an inquiry that he headed as a judge. I have remained impressed by him ever since. How we could use his wise advice now! 

I speak of the Ojibway First Nations Judge and retired Canadian Senator Calvin Murray Sinclair who died on November 4th. His passing is a deep and huge loss to Canada. Judge Sinclair was a champion of crime prevention through First Nations community development. From 2009, he was a leader in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and he had a profound impact on how Canadians, such as myself, contextualize colonial abuse of First Nations peoples. 

He shaped my perspective on addressing crimes and incivilities by economic and socially marginalized First Nations people. The problems Judge Sinclair brought to light are still apparent in the cities across northern communities, especially in the northern Canadian city of Prince George, British Columbia, a community with problems of homelessness, street crime, illicit drugs, and drug overdoses. The blog "Innovations in responding to street drugs" described those issues last year. 

The Prince George story illustrates Judge Sinclair’s message most succinctly. Last year's blog was about the 2023 SafeGrowth Person of the Year, Jordan Steward, and her downtown safe inhalation, harm reduction site – The Pounds Project – which was largely defunded.

Aerial photo of Prince George, British Columbia
- photo by CPG1100, CC BY-SA via Wiki Commons

Today, when thousands of drug-addicted and unhoused people populate Canadian cities, far too many hail from Indigenous backgrounds. Where is Judge Sinclair’s perspective at this point in history when so many Canadian cities, like Prince George, are suffering from this social pain?  

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN?

First, one of the persistent paradoxes we know that emerges from top-down government responses to the unhoused, especially with people from marginalized communities, is the problem of inaction and the false belief that one-size-fits-all. True to form, this paradox has now reared its head according to news stories about conflicts between the city of Prince George and the provincial government. 

Second, having spent a great deal of time in Prince George, I have learned that it is not enough to treat the problem as an eyesore disrupting downtown businesses. The city must go beyond displacing these troubled souls to accommodations outside the city centre. This blog has previously described cities like Wheat Ridge, Colorado and Victoria, British Columbia that experienced the futility of simply rehousing the homeless without wraparound services.

 

Housing encampment in Prince George

Third, bottom-up strategies were already emerging in Prince George, for example the harm reduction that Jordan Steward attempted through her Pounds Project. That is what should be expanded and supported. We know that relocating the unhoused and drug addicted must involve far more than pushing the problem around the city like some perverse board game. We also know, from prior blogs, that successful projects already exist in places like Finland.

All these examples teach us that any relocation plan needs to consider setting up safer physical environments using strategies like 1st and 2nd-generation CPTED. They must also reinforce historic Indigenous culture. If there is to be any hope of redemption, that is the way to make things right. 

The Grand Medicine Society in Ojibwa syllabics. Judge Sinclair combined his wisdom as a member of this traditional First Nations society and as a Judge,  Canadian Senator, and a Companion of the Order of Canada.  

LOCAL ACTION PLANS 

Over the years I have joined members of the SafeGrowth team in delivering search conferences precisely to create local visions of new approaches and to build local capacity to make them happen. This approach produces success. For example, last year SafeGrowth facilitator, Professor Tarah Hodgkinson finished a successful search conference for safety planning in Brantford, Ontario.  

I see the value of empowering those in the community by teaching skills in crime prevention, neighborhood planning, community investment, and rehabilitation. This is how you build local capacity. Diffuse government programs rarely fit the local context, as suggested by recent provincial/municipal government conflicts in Prince George.

Judge Sinclair was a member of a traditional Ojibway medicine society and his Ojibway name was Mizanay Gheezhik. That translates to "the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky”. If there was ever a time when we needed a new vision of something bigger and better – new pictures in the sky – now is the time! 

Judge Sinclair, we miss your vision. 

The Great Internet Migration - the life and death of face-to-face

Les Deux Magots café in Paris, the penultimate face-to-face meeting place. For over a century, this legendary café became a place of debate for modern art, philosophy, and literature with the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, and Jim Morrison. Much of our culture emerges from face-to-face conversations.

by Gregory Saville 

One way to reduce crime is to cut crime opportunities – make it tough to steal or harder to assault. Another way is to cut the motives to commit crime – improve living conditions, treat substance abuse, or build positive social relations between people. In either case, we need a functioning community with decent livability where people enjoy engaging in social life. That means creating places where social life encourages positive, productive, and secure face-to-face socializing (a goal of SafeGrowth). 

That brings me to my recent visits to a nearby movie theater, a bank, and McDonald’s. In each of these places, I noticed a new design and marketing ethos creeping up on us. I am referring to the trend of forcing people to migrate away from face-to-face interactions and towards the internet, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies are forcing us to shop online, deliver goods remotely, and replace face-to-face conversations with technology. It’s difficult to know how far this will continue.

Will we learn how to retain meaningful face-to-face connections in the face of new technologies?

NO ANTI-LUDDITE 

I am not making the claim of an anti-technology Luddite. True, of late I have admittedly been obsessively critical of AI, security technology, and the HiDWON future of high-security enclaves. 

In truth, I know there is an important role for advanced technology, especially in urban safety. In Nihlism Nixed, I wrote about the undeniable improvement in our overall quality of life globally from improvements in technology. 

But there is no denying the inexorable shift in how we build cities, run our businesses, entertain ourselves, and shop. We are being drawn away from face-to-face, a trend with an ominous outcome if we want a safer social life where people interact in a positive, productive, and joyful way. 

 

...out with the old! Old-style movie theatre seating -
 photo Jorge Simonet, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wiki Commons

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Take movies! Films are no longer box office hits until they stream online. Movie-goers hardly seem to matter. Watching films on a smartphone, or streaming at home…that’s the thing. In a futile attempt to stem the tide of crashing ticket sales, brick-and-mortar theatres are ripping out their old-style seats and installing half as many seats designed as airline-style, 1st class beds/seats with nearby liquor lounges and boutique food.

 

... and in with the new!
The redesigned bed seat cinema as theatres struggle to recover lost seat sales from online streaming - photo by Startrain844, CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wiki Commons

Consider banks. Gone (or going fast) are counter stations with tellers to converse with, share stories, and learn firsthand about better interest rates. Wikipedia describes how in-person bank tellers are “most likely to detect and stop fraud transactions” and that their position “requires tellers to be friendly and interact with customers.” Apparently, banks have something else in mind.

Instead, banks want you online at your computer, transferring funds electronically, or standing in front of metallic ITMs, the new "interactive teller machines" (basically, a souped-up, quasi-AI ATM). Teller jobs are declining and banks are becoming nothing more than empty foyers, private offices, with no tellers at all. 

 

The new bank - no tellers, only empty lounges and ITMs 

Then consider McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast food chain, the restaurant for excited kids, and the PlayPlace area for toddlers, with a busy counter/drive-in service. The last time I visited McDonald’s I could not locate an employee. I eventually found her in a small nook behind the electronic E-clerks. Another example of face-to-face extinction! 

McDonald's... few employees. Instead, meet E-clerks

Few chairs and no people. Internet migration is working!

The article Robots will Replace Fast-Food Workers describes the automation in the fast food industry: 

"In 2013, the University of Oxford estimated that in the succeeding decades, there was a 92% probability of food preparation and serving becoming automated in fast food establishments."

THE INTERNET MIGRATION

I have not checked the data, but I predict the internet migration I describe here represents the largest immigration problem in history. I suspect some of the techno-crime-opportunity reduction theorists might celebrate. They do so foolishly. 

The truth is that we are social beings to the core. Our relationships define us. As philosopher and psychologist Viktor Frankl once wrote, we gain meaning from the world around us and through our relationships with each other – that is where we ultimately find meaning. 

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

The lack of meaningful, face-to-face relationships, and the social connections that emerge from them, make our lives poorer. Sustainably preventing crime becomes an unsolvable equation. And in that equation, loneliness is the enemy of meaning and purpose.

Desire paths to real paths... User-generated urbanism

Walkways and desire paths - a major player in urban design and safe walkability

by Mateja Mihinjac 

In our urban design work, we often confront the issue of pedestrian mobility, which is referred to as desire paths (or desire lines). We have previously discussed desire lines and their impact on crime in our blog on Happy Trails. We have also touched on the related CPTED concept of movement predictors in our blogs on laneways. All this comes down to the concept of walkability.

If we are serious about increasing walkability in our cities and towns – and if we listen to the CPTED message of increased safety through “eyes on the street” – then we must pay attention to the formal, and informal, paths that exist to get people from one place to another. 

Sidewalks, one-way or two-way streets, paths, gates, and trails are only one part of the movement picture. Desire lines are equally important since they predict how movement can trigger, or eliminate, crime opportunities. Leslie Malone’s urban design book Desire Lines calls them “the paths people create through simple usage.” It all depends on how we do them!

 

Ease of access, simple travel routes, or pathways to crime?
Desire lines are everywhere and offer CPTED clues to prevent crime

USER-GENERATED URBANISM

We tend to expend as little time and as little effort as possible to achieve our goal. This least effort principle also translates into our choice of routes traveled. This often results in the emergence of desire paths, what wiki calls the unplanned convenient shortcuts humans create on frequently navigated routes.  

Why don’t traffic engineers or landscape architects incorporate these desire paths into their designs and engineer the streets as people naturally use them? It turns out an approach termed user-generated urbanism might do just that.

John Bela, an urban designer and landscape architect, describes user-generated urbanism as: 

“the synthesis of top-down and bottom-up practices engaged synergistically to cultivate greater participation. This synthesis help us achieve the goals we outline with the adaptive metropolis of resilience and social justice.”

He suggests desire paths should inform the installation of permanent routes - but not before the users indicate their preferred pathways. This is similar to tactical urbanism, a community-driven style of permanent public infrastructure. However, while Bela refers to tactical urbanism as DIY urbanism, user-generated urbanism stresses the importance of combining bottom-up and top-down planning practices.

 

The  Ohio State University "Oval" today - a sophisticated network of user-generated walkways. It began in 1914 when urban designers paved the pathways on new laws that were created by users - Photo Google Earth 

One of the most famous successful examples of this strategy emerged in 1914 at Ohio State University. 

The University intentionally had no plan for the walkways between buildings across the campus and only paved them once the most eroded routes in the lawn – desire paths – clearly communicated to the architect where the routes should be installed. This resulted in an interesting intersection of routes across the large campus lawn, the Oval.

Listening to the principal users of streets may help us avoid the mistakes and unintended consequences, including potential issues such as vandalism and movement predictors, the concerns that Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) practitioners often deal with. 

 

Ad hoc attempt to block a natural desire path across public lawn

COLLABORATION DRIVES SUCCESS

In an ever-changing world user-generated urbanism teaches us the importance of adaptive designs and designs that serve the purpose of their users. This is why collaboration in designing our streets is as important as ever. In Second Generation CPTED and SafeGrowth we teach the concept of Connectivity, which ensures the neighbourhood is connected to outside actors including the government and agencies to realise their goals. 

Engineers, architects, planners and landscape architects should therefore strive for collaborative practices as much as possible – doing so might just give them the answers they’re looking for when designing the streets the users want.

We're Using Our Streets All Wrong 

- Dead Metal versus User-Generated Urbanism