SafeGrowth and 안심 - A shared vision with Korean CPTED researchers

Skyline of Seoul, South Korea, by night. Over 25 million in the metro area, one of the most advanced cities in the world. Leaping ahead with the latest CPTED - photo CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

by Gregory Saville

When the Korean CPTED delegation departed Seoul last Sunday to meet us in Denver, they traveled 16 hours and crossed 16 time zones. Twenty-four years earlier, two South Korean scholars published a study applying space syntax theory to evaluate CPTED in the International CPTED Association’s official journal, Volume 1, Issue 1.

Across that distance and span of time, South Korea has quietly become one of the world's most innovative laboratories for CPTED research and practice.

Last week we hosted visitors from the Architecture and Urban Research Institute (AURI), a government research institute in the Republic of Korea, led by Dr Eunhee Kim. The members of the group included: 

• Dr. Eunhee Kim, Director, CPTED Research Center, AURI; 
• Dr. Youngweoo Kim, Associate Research Fellow, CPTED Research Center, AURI; 
• Jaeseok Her, Assistant Research Fellow (Spatial AI and Big Data Division), AURI; 
• Hongseok Choi, doctoral candidate, City & Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah (former AURI). 

 EARLY CONNECTIONS 

Late last year, AURI reached out to us for some background on SafeGrowth, the International CPTED Association, and our generational approach to CPTED. In May, we collaborated with them in an online webinar with some of their talented researchers. That is when I learned about the astounding progress of Korean CPTED over the past 20 years, especially in a few areas where they have leapfrogged past many other places with CPTED (how many CPTED instructors teach space syntax, or even know what it means?).

Beginning a three-day tour of Denver metro at the Arvada City Hall, Colorado

Before they arrived, we read AURI's recent work using virtual reality to evaluate neighborhood design and a study on using machine learning to explore relationships between urban environments and emergency calls for service. That research reported, “green areas have been mixed in the literature, [but] this study newly demonstrates that green spaces in urban Seoul are associated with reduced 112 [911] call occurrence”. It was a finding that seems to reinforce the Third-generation CPTED environmental principle of biophilia and how green land use can reduce fears and crime rates.

This was an exciting moment! 

Eight members of the SafeGrowth Network appearing virtually from across North America, including some also from the International CPTED Association, joined Mateja and I at the introductory workshop in Arvada in welcoming our Korean guests. Their visit was a professional exchange for research and education, but I suspected they would show us more than vice versa.

 

THE SITE VISITS

Obviously, the Koreans did not need more evidence on crime hotspots, lighting, target hardening, or access control. They have decades of experience with those concepts. Instead, we toured sites showing a more complex, urban planning side of SafeGrowth and CPTED, especially Smart Growth planning of which SafeGrowth is based and in which metro Denver excels. Smart Growth integrates compact development, walkability, mixed land uses, and transportation into complete neighborhoods.

One of our sites included the successful Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in Arvada’s Old Towne centered on the RTD commuter train station. 

Arvada City Hall meeting with Mayor Lauren Simpson, City Manager Don Wick, and their respective staff members

We met our gracious hosts, Arvada City Mayor Lauren Simpson and City Manager Don Wick, and their staffs to learn about TOD governance and development issues. 

Although the modern term Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) was popularized by planner Peter Calthorpe, transit-centered neighborhoods have existed for many years in cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Stockholm, and London. 

Yet despite their importance, TODs remain one of the least-developed areas of CPTED practice. We spent considerable time discussing how walkability, connectivity, mixed land uses, and human-scale design influence neighborhood safety and crime.

We then traveled to Lakewood’s new downtown, mixed-use development also based on Smart Growth, one of the first in the country, constructed from the ground-up twenty years ago. 

We spent time with artists at the Denver Art Society to learn about the social impact of Third Places on neighborhoods like the Arts District of Santa Fe and then followed with another Third Place, this one an adaptive reuse mall, the Edgewater Public Market. 

 

Dr. Eunhee Kim and Jaeseok Her speaking to Denver Art Society
artist Dana Mooney

Hongseok Choi speaking with Denver Art Society artist Allard Broderick

We have posted prior blogs on the Third Places crime immunity effects and the Denver Art Society. Third Places have a growing role in SafeGrowth to stabilize troubled areas in a way that no policing or target hardening ever could. 

We spent one morning at the Denver Police Academy with academy Director, Lt. Jessie Campion and Commander Jacob Herrera, from the Operational Innovation Bureau. They kindly permitted us a visit to examine police crime prevention strategies and training, including a CPTED report on the historic Denver Union Station following a crime spike in 2021. 

Police Lt. Jesse Campion toured the delegation through the academy and described tools of the trade in the Denver training programs

We ended our third day with a visit to Harmony Village, a cohousing development in Golden, Colorado. The Denver metropolitan region is home to about a dozen cohousing communities, among the largest concentrations of cohousing developments in North America.

The community gardens at the Harmony Village Cohousing in Golden, CO.

At first glance, the neighborhood looks much like any well-designed residential development, with plenty of natural surveillance and territorial controls, attractive homes, pedestrian pathways, gardens, and shared recreation areas. But the difference lies beneath the physical design. 

Residents own their homes but also intentionally share responsibility for governing the community, organizing activities, maintaining common spaces, and building relationships with one another. They learn conflict resolution techniques and organizing skills. In many respects, the neighborhood functions as a small, self-governing community. This illustrates why second-generation CPTED extends far beyond physical design.

The cohousing visit sparked considerable discussion since cohousing combines private home ownership with intentional community building and resident self-governance. For SafeGrowth, that distinction is important. 

Lorraine Neimela touring the delegates through Harmony Village Cohousing

Strong neighborhoods emerge not only from good design, but also from the capacity of residents to organize and collectively solve local problems. This is what too many Condo Associations and Homeowner Associations lack and what digital platforms like Nextdoor do not always achieve. In fact, studies now suggest they often do the opposite by encouraging fear of strangers, amplifying rumors, and replacing face-to-face interaction. 

Our thanks go to Lorraine Niemela from Harmony Village for touring us and the Koreans to view how cohousing, as with SafeGrowth, strengthens relationships first, so residents develop the capacity to solve problems together rather than simply report them.

 

안심

Korea has mastered many of the physical and technological dimensions of CPTED. This site visit was a great opportunity to show how SafeGrowth begins where those strengths leave off. It retains traditional CPTED, but it also asks how neighborhoods continue learning, adapting, and governing themselves long after the design work is finished. 

During the visit I learned that the Korean word 안심 best captures the SafeGrowth philosophy. It loosely translates to peace of mind and feelings of safety. That was the SafeGrowth concept we wanted to convey during the three days of their visit.

We were delighted to welcome our new Korean CPTED colleagues and impressed with their intuitive grasp of crime and safety problems in complex neighborhood systems where everything is interconnected to everything else. We barely had time to introduce the latest possible evolution of CPTED theory into complex adaptive systems. Next time, perhaps!  

As we said our goodbyes, I couldn't help but think of the final scene in the classic 1943 film Casablanca: "…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." 

I am convinced that is so 

Helping neighbourhoods adapt to urban change

 

Miklošičeva Street in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, closed for renovation. Improvements included wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling, greenery, improved seating and more positive social interaction. It met the European Union's carbon neutral and smart city goals for 2030. It also met significant public protest and opposition. 

by Mateja Mihinjac

Imagine strolling down a vibrant boulevard shaded by mature trees, where pedestrians and cyclists move comfortably through public space. People pause on benches to watch the world go by, while cafés spill onto wide terraces filled with conversation. Instead of being just another road, the street becomes a place to meet, linger and enjoy urban life.

This is the vision behind the redesign of Miklošičeva Street, one of the busiest and most important streets in Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana.

 

A VISION MEETS RESISTANCE

Miklošičeva Street is one of Ljubljana's busiest corridors, linking the city's main railway and bus station with Prešeren Square and the historic centre. In June, the City of Ljubljana launched a two-year pilot project to transform the street into a greener, safer and more people-oriented public space. The redesign includes wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling infrastructure, additional greenery and outdoor seating, while reducing through traffic to encourage walking, cycling and social interaction.

In one of the busiest corridors, construction redesign creates chaos for
those working and walking downtown.

The project supports Ljubljana's Integrated Transport Strategy 2025–2032 and the EU Mission for 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030.

Yet, almost as soon as construction began, public opposition emerged. A public petition calling to "Return Miklošičeva to its previous state!" quickly gained attention. 

Critics argue that it will increase congestion, restrict access to businesses and homes, create confusion for all road users, and that the project has not been developed in sufficient dialogue with the local community. Whether these concerns prove justified remains to be seen. 

The more interesting question is, however, why the opposition became so visible only after construction had begun when the plans had been publicly available for months?

Resistance to new urban development is not unique to Ljubljana.

 

When a massive new sports stadium was introduced in Denver this year,
hundreds of residents attended information sessions as part
of a "public participation" process.

RESISTANCE IS PART OF URBAN CHANGE

When New York City proposed pedestrianising Times Square in 2009, critics predicted traffic chaos and economic decline. The city responded by introducing a temporary pilot, collected data on traffic, safety and retail performance, and used the evidence to guide the final redesign while publicly shared findings. Many of the early fears proved unfounded.

Copenhagen followed a different approach, gradually expanding its cycling network over several decades. Incremental improvements allowed both the infrastructure and the public to adapt, helping the city become one of the world's leading cycling capitals. 

Not every renewal project succeeds. During research in one North American city, I observed strong opposition to new downtown bike lanes despite evidence of their potential benefits. Political pressure eventually led to some of the lanes being removed.

These examples suggest that opposition is neither unusual nor evidence of poor design. Usually, it is a predictable part of urban transformation. The real question is this: Why does resistance occur and how cities can help the residents navigate it?

Road redevelopment in Ljubljana's Miklošičeva Street  

 

WHY DO WE RESIST?

Behavioural psychology offers some insights.

Status quo bias – Our tendency is to prefer familiar conditions over uncertain alternatives. Samuelson and Zeckhauser argue that the status quo acts as a psychological anchor, making any departure from established routines feel like a loss rather than a potential improvement.

For those who live, work or regularly travel along Miklošičeva Street, the redesign disrupts familiar routes and long-established habits. What planners see as progress may initially feel like unnecessary disruption to people using the space every day.

Loss aversion – Behavioural design research has resulted in Prospect Theory showing that people \ experience the pain of losing something more strongly than the pleasure of gaining something new. 

Both loss aversion and status quo bias show up with remarkable frequency in urban redevelopment – AI-generated imagery from ChatGPT for this blog 

In street revitalisation, this means people often focus on what they might lose such as parking, familiar routes or established routines. They tend to ignore or overlook benefits yet to materialise, such as safer streets, more greenery or livelier public spaces.

Thus, opposition may be less about rejecting the future than about letting go of the familiar present.

 

 

PUBLIC CONSULTATION & ENGAGEMENT TRAP

On Miklošičeva Street public consultation did take place before construction began, although it attracted far less attention than the opposition that followed. In March 2026, the City of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy invited residents to learn about the project and provide feedback through a half-day public event and an online survey. 

So, why did opposition become so visible only after construction began?

Behavioural psychology provides another answer. For one, the plan seemed abstract until changes became visible. When road markings appeared, parking spaces disappeared or familiar routes changed, status quo bias and loss aversion arose as powerful motivators for action.

Another answer is the nature of public engagement itself. I argued previously, that informing and consulting residents is not the same as involving them in shaping decisions. In our upcoming book Hope Rises, we call this concept the engagement trap.

Meaningful participation requires more than asking for opinions. It requires enabling residents to identify problems, create a shared vision and help design solutions. Only when that happens will change become something the residents co-create and feel part of the process. This is why SafeGrowth often deploys methods such as Search Conferences to help this co-creation process. Search conferences are interactive, future-oriented and carefully guided planning sessions with community members. They are widely used in fields such as public health, and we have deployed them in cities around the world. 

 

Our first search conference launched the SafeGrowth Network in Canmore, Alberta in 2015. These participative planning session are a powerful way to develop shared ownership and a vision for future actions – AI imagery generated for this blog.

ANTICIPATING RESISTANCE VS BEING SURPRISED 

The purpose of community engagement is not to eliminate disagreement, but to build trust, create shared ownership and help communities adapt to change. It is about helping them navigate the journey from the familiar to the unknown. That means treating neighbourhood revitalisation as a social process, not only an engineering project.

SafeGrowth views neighbourhoods as living social ecosystems. Over time they develop routines, relationships and shared habits in how people use space. In all our training, students are taught to look, listen and hear those patterns during their site visits. The book What We See describes how urbanist Jane Jacobs emphasised the power of going to the street to find those ecological patterns.

When residents help identify problems, create a shared vision and shape solutions, change becomes their project rather than the city's. Successful revitalisation emerges when communities have the opportunity to learn and grow alongside the places they call home. 

AI and Machine Knowing: A new challenge for CPTED and crime prevention

This Saturday's ICA Masterclass on CPTED White Papers will explore frontier AI systems, machine learning, and the pros and cons of AI and CPTED. The session is a primer for the AI and CPTED sessions at the 2026 CPTED conference, Oct 2-4 in Calgary. 

by Gregory Saville

Artificial intelligence is arriving in crime prevention faster than many practitioners realize. We’ve been posting blogs about AI in crime prevention for years. In my 2023 blog, Stop Dave, I’m Afraid, I reported on Smart City research by Finnish AI researchers.  

Last year, in Gambling with the Future I summarized Nobel Laureate, Professor Geoffrey Hintons’ warning at the latest AI conference. In What 1980s Weather models taught me about crime prediction I described my own research experience with scientific weather forecasting models. 

Today the story has expanded again. From predictive analytics and digital twins to large language models and autonomous surveillance systems, the question is no longer whether AI will influence CPTED. The question is how.

For decades, CPTED practitioners have focused on the relationship between people and places. We have examined territoriality, access control, surveillance, maintenance, social cohesion, and neighborhood capacity. Yet frontier AI systems introduce something new into that equation: machine knowing.

ARE YOU USING A FRONTIER SYSTEM?

Frontier systems include leading generative LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, along with advanced multimodal systems that work with images, audio, and video. They are less common in predictive analytics, such as hotspot mapping and crime forecasting. Some frontier systems are now becoming agentic, meaning they can pursue goals with limited supervision, although these remain in the early stages of deployment.

Frontier systems raise a new question: What happens when a machine begins interpreting places, risks, and human behavior alongside, or instead of, human observers?

That question forms the foundation of the Masterclass this Saturday. The session serves as a primer for the larger AI and CPTED discussions planned for the ICA Conference in Calgary this October.

AI-assisted auditing may help practitioners identify environmental risks, but human interpretation remains essential - AI-generated imagery for this blog 

SATURDAY’S MASTERCLASS 

On Saturday, the Masterclass begins with an unusual exercise. I begin with a conversation between myself and the same AI system chatbot I used throughout the development of the CPTED and AI White Paper. The purpose is not to demonstrate technology, but to explore a deeper question. How should we relate to an intelligence that can reason, explain, persuade, and create knowledge while making mistakes that appear convincing?

One of the most important concepts discussed will be the phenomenon known as a confabulation rate. In 2023, I described the problem of AI hallucinations. Confabulation takes that concern a step further. 

It refers to the frequency with which an AI system generates information that may be partly true and sounds plausible but is incorrect or entirely fabricated.

The future of prevention may depend less on what AI knows and more on how communities use that knowledge - AI-generated image for this blog

WHY DOES THIS MATTER IN PREVENTION? 

Confabulation matters because prevention professionals increasingly rely on digital information. If AI is used to analyze crime patterns, evaluate risk, generate recommendations, support neighborhood planning, or advise decision-makers, practitioners must understand both its capabilities and its limitations. Errors like confabulation rates may never vanish, so we must understand when and how they occur.

The opportunities and risks are extraordinary. The future of CPTED and crime prevention will not be shaped only by better environmental design or social cohesion. It will also be shaped by how we choose to work with increasingly powerful forms of machine intelligence.

Join me on Saturday, June 27 as we begin exploring that future. 

Can saving a building save a neighbourhood?

 

The former Denver Civic Theatre, built in 1921 and now home to Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center, illustrates how a modest historic building can find new life through adaptive reuse and community stewardship

GUEST BLOG: Carl Bray, Ph.D. is principal at Bray Heritage, a cultural heritage planning firm, in Kingston, Ontario. He is a member of the SafeGrowth Network and a co-author of our forthcoming book Hope Rises (University of Toronto Press). He is also adjunct associate professor at Queen's University's graduate program in the School of Urban and Regional Planning.

A few decades ago, residents in a declining Liverpool neighbourhood faced a familiar problem. Empty houses, demolitions, disinvestment, and a growing sense that their community was being written off. Rather than accept the loss, local residents organized, reclaimed vacant properties, created gardens, restored homes, and eventually formed a community land trust. Their efforts helped reshape both the physical environment and the story of their neighbourhood.

We have recently explored how old factories, warehouses, and historic buildings can find new life through adaptive reuse such as community marketplaces. In a few recent blogs, Greg touched on just such a story now unfolding regarding Denver’s new football stadium and an adjacent Third Place arts co-operative. 

But what happens when local residents take the lead in saving buildings themselves? 

Cover image courtesy of Princeton University Press

In her recent book Preserving with Purpose: Reimagining Buildings for Community Benefit, architect Amy Hetletvedt describes examples of local residents taking over abandoned or dilapidated buildings and transforming them into community assets. While a building alone does not create community, the process of acquiring, renovating, and using a building can bring people together and become a catalyst for neighbourhood revitalization.

Hetletvedt argues that it is not always the most historically significant buildings that offer the greatest opportunity for renewal. In many neighbourhoods, modest and ordinary buildings are more accessible, more adaptable, and more connected to local life. A former shop, school, church, diner, or row of aging houses may hold meaning that goes beyond its market value. Such places help tell the story of a community.

LOCAL CHARACTER

The author describes a range of strategies for preserving threatened buildings. In some cases, communities stabilize structures, provide temporary protection, or relocate buildings to prevent demolition. In Florida, one community group mothballed several houses slated for loss, persuaded the owner to donate them, and then transferred some homes to local residents while holding others for future use.

Liverpool, Granby Market looking toward Princess Road
- phoro by Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most compelling examples comes from Liverpool, England. Faced with years of demolition and neglect, residents formed an association to care for nearly one hundred vacant terrace houses. They began by boarding up buildings, cleaning streets, planting gardens, and preventing further deterioration.

Over time, they created a community land trust and purchased ten vacant houses. Some homes were sold at prices linked to local wages rather than market rates. Others were renovated through collaboration between architects and residents. In one collapsed structure, the community created an enclosed garden beneath a glazed roof, reflecting the neighbourhood's long tradition of gardening.

What makes this example noteworthy is not simply the restoration of buildings. The project unfolded incrementally over several years and depended on local initiative, persistence, and collective effort. Residents were not passive recipients of outside assistance. They became active participants in reshaping the future of their neighbourhood.

On Liverpool's Cairns Street, residents, housing associations, and the city worked together to help revive a neighbourhood marked by disinvestment and demolition.
Photo - Toxteth, Liverpool. Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

TAKING ACTION

How easy is this process? Hetletvedt points to familiar barriers: financing, regulations, administrative complexity, and negative perceptions that discourage investment in distressed areas. Any one of these can derail a project.

Yet she concludes that access to technical expertise and professional support can help communities overcome those obstacles. That observation echoes a central principle of SafeGrowth. Outside assistance is most effective when it helps residents build their own capacity to improve where they live.

Revitalizing a building can bring people together around a common purpose. The result may be a neighbourhood hub, a gathering place, or simply a visible sign that local residents still believe in their community.

As Hetletvedt writes in her introduction, professionals from outside a neighbourhood can contribute most effectively when they respect and empower residents to determine the future of their own places.

Sound familiar?

 

Returning to Vancouver - projects survive, but the neighbourhood worsens

Vancouver's Hastings Street - the Downtown Eastside, one of
the most challenged neigbourhoods in Canada.
Photo CC Wiki Commons 

by Gregory Saville

This week I returned to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, often described as Canada's largest skid row, to work with members of the SafeGrowth Network and several of the city's Community Policing Centres (CPCs). We were there to prepare local instructors for Canada's first SafeGrowth Livability Academy. 

It was a milestone. Three Vancouver CPCs participated in the training: the Strathcona CPC, the Chinese CPC, and the Aboriginal CPC. Along with their SafeGrowth and CPTED training last year, Vancouver has now become the first city in Canada to move this far along the SafeGrowth pathway.

Yet the visit was also deeply personal for me.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY

More than thirty years ago, my former business partner and I conducted traditional CPTED projects in this same neighbourhood. While preparing for this week, I looked back at some of those projects. To my surprise, many are still holding up. The lighting improvements, design modifications, and site-specific interventions remain visible decades later.

That should be encouraging. Yet I could not escape another conclusion. Those projects improved places, but they did not substantially improve neighbourhood life.

Vancouver's Chinatown is among the most exciting and
fascinating communities in the country

I found myself once again walking through areas adjacent to Vancouver's notorious Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside. Decades have passed since I first co-taught problem-oriented policing to British Columbia police officers. Decades have passed since criminologists, sociologists, urban studies researchers, and community development analysts began studying crime, addiction, homelessness, and social disorder in Downtown Eastside. Entire careers have been built examining the Downtown Eastside. Hundreds of reports have been written. Countless interventions have been launched.

A few crime stats have been declining of late (as they have everywhere), yet the situation remains bleak on most categories. The corridor still accounts for a large portion of the city’s serious assaults and robberies. Mental health calls for police service increased, overdose incidents remain high, and from what I could see, street disorder has displaced and is spreading. And, making matters worse, homelessness has been increasing.

Homeless rates concentrated on Downtown Eastside from
the metro population demographics and annual homeless counts

 

The homeless numbers tell part of the story. In the early 2000s, Vancouver's homeless count was approximately 56 people per 100,000 residents. Today, that figure is approaching 200. Even after accounting for population growth, homelessness has increased dramatically over the past two decades.

WHY DON'T HOTSPOT TACTICS LAST?

For those of us who have spent careers studying crime prevention and community safety, these trends force uncomfortable questions.

Why have decades of hotspot interventions failed to produce lasting change? Why have the various social programs, such as a safe injection site or the many social service agencies here, not prevented the worsening spread of the problem? 

Why have so many individual projects succeeded, such as a recent police crackdown and our prior CPTED work, while the broader neighbourhood ecology continues to struggle?

Why has so much effort yielded so little transformation?

I could see that some of the original CPTED improvements we helped design are still functioning. Yet, standing on Hasting Street today, it felt like our earlier work was all for naught. It brought to mind three principles in SafeGrowth planning: 

• Neighbourhoods are more than collections of hotspots
• Communities are not simply the sum of their crime locations
• A city cannot solve deeply embedded social problems by repeatedly treating symptoms while neglecting the health of the larger social ecosystem.

The Downtown Eastside remains home to thousands of people living
with addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and profound social isolation. 

A NEW THEORY ON COMPLEXITY

Since last year I have been working with new colleague, a talented oncological medical researcher, regarding complex adaptive systems. We are studying the power of these systems, (like the Downtown Eastside), and how they exhibit distributed adaptive behavior near critical thresholds. It now seems possible this may be the reason why street disorder continues to displace and spread in spite of enforcement actions. We have learned how small perturbations can produce disproportionate, scaling-law effects that deteriorate stability. This, in turn, may explain why complex adaptive systems such as tumors or high-crime neighbourhoods resist interventions rather than underlying system conditions.  

In other words, hotspot policing alone cannot tip the neighbourhood far enough on its own. Much more collaboration and a strategic long-term action plan is needed, and that is where the Community Policing Centres and their neighbourhood-based Livability Academy might better address the conditions they face every day.

Walking in and around Hastings Street it was clear; there are too many dysfunctional activities, crime hotspots, crime generators, and too few social controls and social stabilizers to help those who suffer and those who work and live there. There is simply no way to arrest, imprison, or hotspot our way out of this disorder. 

Downtown Eastside has long ago scaled out of control. I left Vancouver today feeling both discouraged and encouraged at the same time.

I was discouraged because the visible suffering remains. The homelessness, addiction, and disorder that have characterized parts of the Downtown Eastside for decades continue unabated despite enormous investments of effort and resources. 

I was encouraged because something wonderful remains. I refer to the dedicated and passionate residents, community workers, business people, and CPC members attending both our SafeGrowth problem-solving training last year and the Livability Academy instructor's course this week. 

Instructors and some students of the recent Vancouver Livability Academy
Instructor Training celebrating their graduation

GOOD NEWS

I am also encouraged by the Vancouver Police Department's continuing support of their Community Policing Centre’s illustrating both persistent and intelligent leadership.

Those CPCs are staffed by committed, highly capable people. They understand the neighbourhood, the relationships on the street, and the kind of inclusion needed for successful problem-solving. I was impressed by their professionalism and organizational skills. They asked difficult questions. They challenged assumptions. Most importantly, they were already thinking about how to engage people and build long-term neighbourhood capacity.

They are the ones who best represent the heart of SafeGrowth. They know their goal is not simply to reduce a statistical crime blip next month or to remove a hotspot next year. They want their neighbourhood stronger, more resilient, and capable of self-help.  

Thirty years ago, I co-taught CPTED and problem-oriented policing in Vancouver. This year, I returned with some SafeGrowth friends to help launch Canada's first Livability Academy. The problems are still here. But so are the people willing to confront them with new skills, a new action plan, and deep connections to the social roots of their community.

After everything I saw this week, I believe the next chapter will not be written by its problems, but by the people working together to solve them.

Neighbourhoods need more than Wi-Fi

 

At the cafe, Les Deux Magots, in Paris, generations of writers, philosophers, and artists shaped culture through conversation long before the digital age

by Larry Leach

In 2026, communication technologies are everywhere. Pen and paper, telephone, email, text messaging, Facebook, X, Bluesky, Discord, Snapchat, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, podcasts, and countless social media platforms allow us to communicate instantly. Yet when I speak with people of all ages, many describe communication today as getting worse. Misunderstandings, jargon, mistrust, isolation, conflict, and social fragmentation seem more common than ever.

This matters because SafeGrowth is built on the idea that safer neighbourhoods depend on communication, participation, and trust between residents. Communities function best when people know one another, share concerns openly, and work together to solve local problems.

FACE TO FACE

Face-to-face interaction remains one of the strongest ways to build those relationships. In person, we observe tone of voice, body language, emotion, and empathy in ways digital communication often cannot fully capture. Online communication can connect us, but it can also amplify misunderstanding, hostility, and social distance. At a time when loneliness and social isolation are increasingly recognized as a public health epidemic, communication skills matter more than ever. 

At the same time, digital communication has become essential to modern community-building. Neighbourhood groups use online platforms to organize meetings, share information, recruit volunteers, and respond quickly to local concerns. Used well, these tools can strengthen participation and collective problem-solving.

The challenge for SafeGrowth is not choosing between digital communication and face-to-face interaction. The challenge is learning how to combine both in ways that strengthen rather than weaken neighbourhoods.

Solitude can restore us. Lonliness can diminish us. The challenge for modern neighbourhoods is learning the difference

THE SITUATION

If face-to-face communication is so important, how do we convey facial expression, tone, humour, and intent through social media? In some cultures, sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek humour is playful. In others, it may appear insulting or aggressive. What one person sees as harmless humour, another may experience as disrespect. They may consider it insulting and try to defend their friend who you never meant to insult.

When companies, politicians, and public speakers study communication, one lesson always appears near the top: know your audience. The same principle applies online. Public speaking training emphasizes that private jokes, insider references, assumptions, or emotionally charged language can easily be misunderstood in public forums.

SafeGrowth has long emphasized that safer neighbourhoods depend on more than physical design alone. Communication, participation, trust, and local problem-solving are equally important. Residents who know one another, share information, and participate in community life are often better able to respond collectively to local concerns before problems escalate.

Digital communication can support that process, but it cannot fully replace the trust-building that comes from direct human interaction in neighbourhoods, public spaces, and local gathering places.

Communication is not simply about technology. It is about people gathering, sharing experiences, and building community together - Denver Art Society, Santa Fe Arts District, Denver.

THE COMMUNICATIONS PLAN

From a SafeGrowth perspective, building community starts with a good communications plan to understand who lives in the neighbourhood and how they communicate. Different cultures, languages, age groups, and life experiences require different approaches.

If a neighbourhood includes multiple languages, communication should occur in those languages. Different age groups may respond to different communication tools and meeting styles. Community-builders should also consider who is most likely to volunteer, what motivates participation, and where those residents are most likely to engage.

Once the medium is chosen, the message matters. People volunteer and participate for many reasons: learning, contributing, meeting others, improving their neighbourhood, sharing experiences, or simply feeling connected to something meaningful. Above all, communication should begin with listening. The goal is not to force agreement or predetermined outcomes, but to ensure all perspectives are heard respectfully. People do not need to agree on every issue, but they must feel included in the process.

An effective communications plan begins with listening, understanding, and choosing communication methods that help residents participate meaningfully in community life.

There is an old marketing adage that that it takes seven impressions to change attitudes. Whether it is seven or more, the message is clear: Strong communities are rarely built through a single conversation. They emerge through a decent communications plan, trust-building, and participation over time.