Neighborhoods - social immune systems

Night skyline of Calgary - city of neighborhoods, residential towers and site of the 2026 CanAm ICA CPTED Conference

by Gregory Saville

I’ve been diving into some exciting reading starting with a disturbing sci-fi called Scythe. It’s the story of a future where AI has helped humanity conquer disease, aging, and accidental death and now governs society with near-perfect efficiency. Scythe reads like the smooth winter ice on a northern lake that seems safe, right up to the moment it begins to crack beneath you. 

I’m also re-reading two non-fiction books. They are more challenging, perhaps because they are real and, like real life, contain possibilities for multiple futures. Paul Hawken’s 2007 Blessed Unrest, is a sweeping account of the vast, decentralized movement of environmental, social justice, and community organizations quietly reshaping the moral ecology of the world in recent decades. It is a story in which much has already come to pass. 

The book reads as a cultural argument rather than an empirical one. Hawken does not offer crime statistics or econometric models. He is describing something more organic: the emergence of civil society as a kind of adaptive immune system responding to social harm. Steven Pinker has convincingly posed a similar argument over a longer historical arc in Enlightenment Now. For practical examples, think of our blogs on adaptive reuse community marketplaces in Denver and Third Places for the homeless in Madison.

East Village riverwalk views in Calgary - one of the Jane's Walk Tours during the 2026 CPTED conference - Street activation means incorporating nature

 

THE GREAT CRIME DECLINE CONTINUES

Are there data to support this urban adaptive immune system? 

The Great Crime Decline started in the 1990s and accelerated from 2007 and 2017. In the United States, FBI Uniform Crime Reports document declines in the crime rates, including statistics that show the national violent crime rate declined 18.9 percent over a decade. It is one of the steepest and most sustained drops in modern U.S. history. 

Interestingly, over that same period, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of nonprofit organizations grew by roughly 29 percent, while employment within those organizations increased by about 18 percent. Growth in the for-profit sector over the same period was far more modest.

CORRELATION ≠ CAUSATION

SYMMETRY > 0

Being cautious about this parallel timing, it’s important to note the trends do not prove Hawken’s thesis more than any social theory is conclusively proven. Yet there is no denying it gives it empirical weight. 

This could not be farther from the AI-perfected Scythe society. It suggests that civil society (admittedly, a slippery term in need of tightening) expanded rapidly during the same time that violent crime receded across the country. Society might not look very civil in today’s news in this country, but this pattern happened over decades, not within the past year. 

Nonprofits and Third Places in civil society may not directly cause crime drops in any simple way because functioning neighborhoods are ecosystems that evolve together across the city in complex ways. But it is worth restating a powerful, and obvious, hypotheses – improvements in civic capacity have direct impact on livability and for crime. This is an hypothesis tested in different studies over the years, for example: Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime.

Comeback Cities by Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

My second read, Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival, answers how this works. Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio examine how American cities began recovering in the 1990s after decades of disinvestment. Their conclusion? Urban revival did not come from top-down policy or market forces alone, but rather from the slow reconstruction of neighborhood institutions, community development corporations, and housing nonprofits. It is the same long-term strategy upon which SafeGrowth works to rebuild trust and local ownership.

Criminologists Tarah Hodgkinson and Martin Andresen reinforce this point in their study Preventing Crime at Places by examining the limits of place-based prevention approaches that focus narrowly on opportunity reduction rather than underlying motives.

“By building cohesive networks of capable community partners, integrated strategies can improve the overall well-being of the community through local governance systems.”

Where do we find places of activation? Libraries, cultural spaces, shared work hubs, neighborhood cafés, arts centers, and informal gathering sites. These are not simply amenities in the narrow sense. They function as social infrastructure, creating routine contact and informal guardianship. Our blog on the Third Place, the Denver Art Society, offers examples how they use problem-solving as a way to improve street life.

 

Public art in Calgary. Great places need cultural statements
- proof that cities, like people, benefit from a little headspace

THE STORY WE KEEP MISSING 

As urban chaos captures our attention across the country, another story has been quietly unfolding for decades. We examine it in depth in Hope Rises, our forthcoming book.

This story sits at the core of our livability thesis. Rather than treating crime as a technical failure to be corrected by AI, we need to focus on strengthening the everyday environments where people meet, live and play. Environments like ecologically designed village-style housing, Third Places, and urban green spaces and parks.  

When cities invest in social infrastructure, whether through housing organizations or grassroots nonprofits, they reinforce the conditions that make violence less likely to take hold. When cities organize neighborhoods with interlinked safety plans and provide opportunities for the training to deploy problem-solving, they show how to increase social resilience.

Scythe imagines a dystopia that is not inevitable. We believe public safety is ecological, and livability is one of its primary engines.

Kayfabe on the street - Why community stories matter

WrestleMania 32 - the 2016 professional wrestling pay-per-view event in Texas drew over 100,000 viewers. Kayfabe rules matter - photo Miguel Discart CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

by Larry Leach 

What lessons can we learn from professional wrestling? Kayfabe is the long-standing convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic. Pro-wrestlers historically adhered to kayfabe so strictly that they would not socialize or travel with those on the opposing side. If you were a babyface or hero, you were never seen in public with a villain. 

Malcolm Gladwell describes this concept as the overstory. In Gladwell’s usage, an overstory is the shared narrative people agree to treat as real, even when everyone knows, at some level, that it’s constructed or selective. It’s the story that makes coordinated social behavior possible.

Similarly, Kayfabe works because people remember the rules of the story and we need to pay attention to this dynamic when we think about community building.

We tell ourselves and each other stories. Some true, some not true, but most that have elements of both. Deep down we think the grass is greener on the “other side”. The people in that other community, city or country have elements to be admired. The weather, the people, the scenery, the government and how they structure their society are all elements that make a place great. But because we have this envy, we tell ourselves that our place is either greater than it actually is or is awful and needs to be torn down and rebuilt. There seems to be no happy medium.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics at Luzor - for millennia, community storytelling has been part of the transformative arts - photo Asta, Public domain, Via Wiki Commons

The stories we tell ourselves matter a great deal in community-building, and we’ve written on this before. For example, I blogged about the behavioral economics concept of nudging which is the idea that we can steer behavior by design and by a community narrative, not by force. 

Consider the role of community storytelling described in Mateja's blog during our work with the UK National Storytelling Laureate, Katrice Horsley, while attending our SafeGrowth Summit in New Orleans.

KAYFABE ON THE STREET

Marketers and politicians try to read this kayfabe and use it to their benefit. We read it every day as politician "X" speaks to his or her base. For us in the SafeGrowth blog team, we continually ask ourselves about our audience and our message. Will our message resonate with our audience? What stories can we share to help or hinder the motivation to take action? 

Teachers helping students with artistic storytelling in a SafeGrowth program

What is your personal Kayfabe? What is your community Kayfabe? What is your country’s Kayfabe? For my country Canada, we are known for being kind, apologetic and welcoming, yet would you be surprised to know that people cut me off in traffic every day and that I have friends who spend HOURS daily complaining about the government?

In my community, one political flavour targets the Federal Government while the other flavour targets the Provincial Government. I recently had a discussion with an Alberta separatist. (For those of you who may not know, recent polls put Alberta separating from Canada at 19 % support. This is a minority political sentiment that has existed for decades.) This separatist shared opinions about how Alberta is getting “screwed” by the federal government of Canada, many which I agreed with and many which have been talked about for 50 years. 

That narrative, whether right or wrong, is not going to change. I asked this separatist some simple questions: What does a separate Alberta look like? Do we have our own currency? What about the military? Simple, and legitimately honest, questions like this can confirm the reality of narratives and show whether they are thought through properly. 

To test whether a narrative is on thin ice, ask the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why and, for good measure, the faux sixth W: how. Any narrative kayfabe must withstand those questions if it is to earn genuine community buy-in for a community-building project.

Places, urban design, and community art also help convey community stories

STORIES IN COMMUNITY BUILDING

Bringing this back to CPTED, SafeGrowth, and community development: you may gain quick support by echoing how poorly residents believe their city or national government has treated them. You may even agree. But if you don’t understand the local kayfabe about how the community sees itself, how others see it, and what story holds it together, then you are doing little more than repeating the latest Facebook post. 

Communities need solutions to real, often negative issues. But before offering solutions, we must first understand the local challenges and the local kayfabe, or overstory, that shapes them.

My father used to ask his friends: “Do you want to be right or do you want to have friends?” A SafeGrowth spin on the question is, Do you want to be right or do you want community support? You might want both, but gaining the latter will help discover the former. As Greg comments when he quotes Steven Covey’s maxim: “We move at the speed of trust”. 

And since stories move societies forward as much (or more) than facts, you can only earn trust after you understand the Kayfabe.

Hope without surrender

Screen pervasiveness in daily life
Photo: Creative Commons by JuanMA from Pexels 

by Gregory Saville

It was 2005, and we were strolling along Charlotte’s tree-lined sidewalks in North Carolina, streetcars clinking in the background as we weighed dinner options at the end of a long workday. My work colleagues had lived in the city for years. I offered them a challenge: Find a restaurant without a television screen! 

They mulled what seemed like an apparently simple task. Surely somewhere downtown in this city of over 2 million, there must be one restaurant that had no TV screens facing diners? 

They rhymed off restaurant after restaurant, each one quickly rejected into the trash bin of screen-dominated dining rooms. After about a dozen failed attempts, we walked into a few nearby restaurants. Nada.

“Look,” I said, “it should be simple”. 

It wasn’t. 

In the end, they dragged me to a local sports tavern so they could watch the game on the numerous TV screens as we ate. Sigh! 

Tech, without surrender.

Years later, it happened again. I was in a taxi in Mexico City and this time the tech was not TV screens. It was far more pervasive. Cellphones! Everywhere I went in that city it was the same. Blank faces staring down at tiny screens in their hands. 

During a subway trip in Toronto last year, I counted fifty people, about 70% of everyone in my visual field, staring zombie-like at their cell phones (eventually, I was one of them). 

This week, debates fill our local school board newsletter on what to do with kids and their cells. Police academy instructors recently told me they solve a problem the simple way by banning cell phones. 

I ask incredulously, “Recruits are not able to control their cell phone usage in class?”

LUDDITE-RESISTENT 

I am no luddite to technology. A year ago, I tested augmented reality and loved it. I recently toured a police drone control center. Like many, I use spell checkers, automated proofreading, and chatbots to clean up text (but never to write it). Something in my primal brain lights up in the presence of new tech, yet something equally deep remains unsettled by the speed and direction of its growth.

The first Blackberry smartphone emerged in 1999 and the first iPhone in 2007. In just 17 years, our species was programmed to bring small slabs of plastic, silicon, lithium, and metal to our faces hundreds of times a day. Pervasive restaurant TV screens collapsed into tiny TVs in our hand. This is not a new phenomenon. I have previously blogged about the internet migration into banks and restaurants.

 

Cellphone addiction is worldwide 
Photo: N509FZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Now comes artificial intelligence, extending that conditioning beyond the screen. Psychologists are increasingly worried about a lack of human interaction, AI addiction and higher levels of loneliness. 

THE PROPHET SPEAKS 

This was all foretold in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher of media, who warned that technology reshapes how people think long before it changes what they think. McLuhan told us that in future, the worst threats will not come from propaganda. The real threat emerges from a much more subtle quarter - technology itself! He called this idea, “the medium is the message” (a term now expanded into “the algorithm is the message”).

McLuhan did not warn us to watch for the manipulators of technology to change our beliefs. He said that technology (the medium) changes the conditions under which believes are formed. When you can change how beliefs are formed, there is no need to censor through propaganda. 

He predicted that electronic media would undermine traditional authorities and lead to a rise in conspiracy stories, exactly what we see today. Consider the rise of influencers, those who confuse volume with insight, the same people who ignore expertise. 

Photo of McLuhan and Powers' Global Village

McLuhan predicted that control emerges not from censorship, but from bombarding people with so much information they could not possibly make sense of it. Consider the 24-hour news cycles in which exclusive stories never end or the endless streams of Facebook or Instagram posts.

McLuhan cautioned that a global village would be created by electronic media. He predicted it would not lead to harmony, but to more tribalism. Instead of bringing people together, constant global connectivity would amplify cultural, racial, and national divisions. Consider today’s culture wars, cancel culture, and group identity-based conflict, all exacerbated by social media.

WELCOME TO 2026

Later this year we will publish our new book, Hope Rises, on SafeGrowth from University of Toronto Press (the same university where McLuhan taught). It does not fully answer our digital tech smothering, but it does offer a different story about a very non-global, village – we call it the NUV (Networked Urban Village). 

Must new technologies dominate every part of our lives?

We describe pockets of this new future from cities all over the world, pockets where we have worked and showcase in this blog, such as adaptive re-use community marketplaces, Third Place designs, design for dignified affordability, and the power of reimagined neighborhoods. 

The key, we have learned, is not to remove tech but rather to refashion it and create a more balanced, transparent tech. Sooner or later, people will tire of the oppressive digital smothering in so much of our lives. People crave people, the face-to-face, the laughter, the human-energy-in-the-room. We see this emerging, gradually, everywhere.

One antidote might be the growth of Third Places, a trend echoing the NUV concept. It is much more than cafes or taverns. Third Places can be multi-purposed centers where old and young meet, green spaces with well-placed parks and benches or trans-species planning with dog parks for pro-social activities.

What we argue is simple: the answer is not longing for a dead past, but renewal into the future. It may sound like magic or nostalgic romance, but rethinking neighborhood life and community design offers something that tech-in-our-ear never can: places where visions are shared and where ideas grow, not faster, but deeper. 

May the months ahead bring some of this hope into your life. Hope without surrender.

Happy New Year!

After the light fades - Urban lighting as social infrastructure

Lighting influences safety and feelings of safety

by Mateja Mihinjac

It’s that time of year again. Darkness lingers until nearly 7:30 a.m. and settles again just after 4 p.m. Coupled with weeks of fog that barely lifts, the city can feel like it’s sealed under a grey, misty dome. Echoes of occasional firecrackers in the distance, as we approach the festive season, further amplify feelings of unease.

We’ve written before about how lighting, and sometimes the absence of it, shapes how people experience safety, such as situations where turning lights off can actually reduce risk. This season brings those questions back into sharp focus.

On one of those foggy late mornings, I ran into an elderly man I often see during my dog walks. He told me he now makes sure to take his daily walk while it’s still light. Night walks, especially when combined with fog and poor lighting, make him uncomfortable.

It was a simple comment, but I understood immediately what he meant, shaped by years of working with how people experience safety in public space. And yet, surprisingly, discussions about urban lighting in my city are rare.

 

Sherlock Holmes and Watson's path to 221B Baker Street, London. Lighting, night spaces, and fog play a powerful role in our imagination.

ANXIETY ABOUT THE UNKNOWN

From CPTED and SafeGrowth research, we know that nighttime environments differ fundamentally from daytime ones, both physically and socially. This is precisely why nighttime site visits and safety audits are essential. What feels manageable by day can feel uncertain or threatening after dark, especially when lighting is inadequate, and activity levels drop.

Research consistently shows that feeling safe and comfortable matters. Negative perceptions of safety influence how people use public space and are linked to poorer mental health outcomes, particularly among those experiencing high levels of fear.

Importantly, fear is often highly localised. My own field research on perceptions of safety in downtown Saskatoon showed that immediate, micro-spatial context matters more than broad neighbourhood reputation. Traditional social science surveys ask questions such as “Do you feel safe walking alone at night in your neighbourhood?” 

That fails to capture where fear concentrates. The Saskatoon study zoomed in with more detail and focus. Results were featured in the 2019 Saskatoon Planning publication.

The Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver has figured how to light outdoor paths
in beautiful and artistic ways 

Studies that focus on very small areas, sometimes just a block around someone’s home, show that fear is strongly shaped by what people see and experience nearby. Five cues in particular signal trouble: 

• signs of disorder, 
• poor upkeep, 
• obstructed sightlines, 
• entrapment spots, and 
• poor nighttime visibility.

Even when actual crime rates are low, these environmental cues can amplify anxiety.

The social life of a place matters as much as its physical form. Areas with little activity and visible neglect often feel unsafe, while everyday presence –  people walking, talking, passing through – can offset even imperfect design.

A sense of community doesn’t emerge on its own. It depends on spaces that invite people to be there. And this is where lighting becomes critical.

 

Environmental conditions like snow or fog can help,
or hinder, lighting effects - how about this example?

A SOCIAL ANGLE WITH LUCI

The social environment matters just as much as the physical one. Sparse activity and visible social incivilities heighten fear, while the presence of others can offset poor design. In some cases, social factors outweigh defensive physical measures entirely. 

A sense of community, collective efficacy, and everyday social presence can reduce fear, but only if the environment supports people being there in the first place. And this is where lighting becomes critical.

I recently came across LUCI – Lighting Urban Community International – an international network of cities focused on urban lighting as a tool for sustainable development, cultural and economic life, social cohesion, and quality of life.

LUCI challenges the idea that lighting is merely a technical issue. Instead, it frames lighting as a public health, social, and equity concern. Their research highlights how lighting influences sleep, mobility, safety, social interaction, and wellbeing, especially for vulnerable populations such as older adults. 

Poorly designed lighting can isolate people, discouraging them from going out at night, thereby shrinking their world. Thoughtful lighting, by contrast, supports confidence and connection.

Indirect window lighting and decorative lights can have a powerful impact

LUCI’s work highlights how urban lighting sits at the crossroads of many everyday goals that shape quality of life. It influences who feels included, how comfortably people move through a place, and whether streets and pathways feel legible and welcoming after dark. Lighting affects safety and natural surveillance, but also subtler things like social connection and the confidence to linger rather than hurry through.

It also carries environmental and economic weight. Decisions about lighting shape energy use, light pollution, and the character of nighttime activity in local economies. Just as importantly, lighting contributes to public health and overall wellbeing by setting the tone and ambience of public spaces.

Seen this way, lighting is not simply about preventing crime. It is about enabling life after dark and functioning as a form of social infrastructure, especially in places and seasons where daylight is scarce.

 

Night life in the city can be social, fun and safe - proper lighting is the key

RECLAIMING THE NIGHTS

Making lighting part of urban planning means more than installing brighter fixtures and replacing sodium with LED lamps. It requires engaging communities and integrating lighting into broader governance and design decisions. 

Socio-demographic analysis, co-design, and community-driven approaches are essential if lighting is to support wellbeing rather than undermine it. Such co-governance is necessary in SafeGrowth and in all the questions that affect the quality of life of residents.

That elderly man adjusting his walking routine wasn’t responding to crime statistics. He was responding to uncertainty that the darkness and the fog instilled in him. He was responding to a nighttime environment that no longer felt legible or welcoming. It had changed his world.

When cities get lighting right, they don’t just reduce fear. They give people their evenings back.

The ripple effect begins here - the 2026 Canada/US CPTED Conference

Larry Leach working on neighbourhood activities with the 12CSI organization in Calgary. Larry is a member of the 2026 Canada/US CPTED Conference planning team. 

by Larry Leach

Recently, we have started putting together an exciting new conference – the 2nd Annual Conference for the US/Canada chapters of the International CPTED Association. It will be on October 2-4, 2026, in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta. I am working alongside the great folks who ran the 2025 conference in Palm Springs, California, and it has been equal parts exciting and a fantastic learning experience. 

With a little under a year to go, we have many details ironed out and ready. I expect to learn and accomplish so much more working with this inspiring group comprising members of the joint Canada/U.S. CPTED team. I am a small cog in an impressive wheel. 

More than that, we have plans for my organization, Calgary's 12 Community Safety Initiative (12CSI), to attract staff and practicum students to this conference. It will be an ideal opportunity to make us a better organization. 

My attendance at other conferences allows me to learn the best practices and it offers an opportunity to network and promote the conference. The feelings that some of the conference delegate experience before and after the conference will carry forward and lead to future opportunities for 12CSI and others. This is a win-win opportunity.

Is this a shameless plug for the conference? Admittedly, it is a nice byproduct! My involvement, and the time I spend with like-minded people, adds a spring to my step, and it makes me a better servant to our organization here in Calgary. That is my main goal. 

 

Most assuredly, it is a feather in the cap of our small local organization to have me involved on the conference planning team. And if you're of a certain age, you may remember the commercial: “I told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on”. That sentiment really speaks to the magic of a good discussion, a good TED Talk, or conference networking and planning like this. You never know the ripple effect that it may have far beyond what you imagine. That’s exciting!

The prize at the end of the rainbow? First, the topics we’ll be discussing at this conference may spark the very project your community is ready for. Second, you will learn how to launch meaningful projects by talking with experts from across the world. Third, speakers will come from all walks of life and from many different professions – community organizers, police, criminologists, association leaders, planners, architects, and many others. 

Hilton Garden Inn overlooking downtown Calgary
- site of the 2026 CPTED Conference

Take a look where you live. Are there problems that have lingered too long? Are there opportunities to make things better that no one seems willing to act on? Do you and your neighbours want a real say in what happens, rather than waiting for government or big business to decide for you?

TURNING CONFERENCE IDEAS INTO ACTION 

If you don’t shape your community, someone else will, and you may not like the outcome.

A community project does more than build something physical. It educates, inspires, and sends a clear signal that people care. It becomes a symbol of who you are together. Building a sense of community, cutting crime and improving livability are all important goals. Whether it’s a curb extension to calm traffic, a basketball court, a shared garden, or a new community hall, the specific project matters less than the act of starting.

You may not raise all the money you hoped for. The final result may look different than you imagined. It may take longer than planned. But the process, the energy, the collaboration, and the shared purpose - all these can leave a legacy that lasts for years, even decades. It’s that first effort that inspires the next generation to take it further and make it better.

So what should you do? 

Come to the conference. Meet us and share ideas. Learn what success looks like. Mostly...just start! 

Right now.

The return of the Community Marketplace

The Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, east of Denver - adaptive reuse of commercial malls

by Gregory Saville

Adaptive-Reuse Community Marketplace:
A retail and cultural hub created by repurposing a former industrial, commercial, or civic structure into a multi-vendor market space. It functions as the modern Third-Places within revitalized buildings. 

It was the 1990s and we were sitting in an architect’s drafting room in Vancouver, pointing to some of our CPTED recommendations on a new suburban shopping mall south of the city. My business partner, Paul Wong, and I had spent weeks examining designs for the walkways, parking lots, store location placement, and other opportune crime areas. 

We believed this sprawling regional shopping mall might be redesigned with CPTED principles to make it safer. Paul had already co-published some of the first environmental criminology research with Pat and Paul Brantingham on the crime-causing character of shopping malls.

We had done our homework. Our recommendations were solid. We had the data to prove it. We were confident!

Then the figurative bomb exploded. 

“Nope,” said the architect hired to redevelop the property. 

He continued: “The property owners are going another direction. The suburban shopping mall concept is dying. There is a new kid in town. The Big Box store!”

“What?” I exclaimed. “What the hell is a Big Box store? That is a stupid idea. It will never take hold!”

Famous last words!

The Stanley Marketplace signals a traditional kind of community experience making a comeback

The emergence of the Big Box store changed everything. The saturation and decline destiny of the suburban shopping mall was set. By the 1990s, shopping malls began to fade. Some have termed the decline of malls as the retail apocalypse.

From a crime perspective, Big Boxes were not much better. They triggered more sprawl, monoculture and homogenization of land uses. They reduced public space walkability and drained life from local downtowns. Many small neighborhood stores closed. 

Twenty years later, especially following the 2008 recession, the pattern changed again. E-commerce expanded and consumer demand for large format buildings weakened. Today it is the Big Box apocalypse. Vacancies are rising and many appear to be following the same downward path of their suburban cousins. 

SHARED SPACES AND PUBLIC LIFE

Consumer behavior and retail land uses are changing demand. People still visit Box Stores for bargains, but many now shop online with home delivery. More people stay home and work digitally, yet many still want places where they can gather in safe, enjoyable communal settings.

Last week I visited the latest reincarnation of the mall. The Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, just east of Denver. It is one of a growing list of mixed-use, indoor/outdoor market-places called adaptive-reuse community marketplaces. 

The Stanley Marketplace opened in 2016 inside a former 1954 aircraft-parts factory. The building was repurposed into a 140,000 square foot (13,006.4 m² ) mixed-use marketplace that now hosts over fifty independent businesses.

Adaptive-reuse is an architectural strategy to repurpose older buildings, cut development waste, reduce carbon levels, and retain local history. It appears in residential buildings, office blocks, and increasingly in commercial markets.

Adaptive-reuse community marketplaces are a form of walkable, community-centered retail. They are human-scale, lively, and shaped more by local entrepreneurs than national chains. They return to the kind of economic and social embeddedness that suburban malls once promised but rarely achieved. 

Seattle's Pike Place Market - a popular adaptive reuse market, repurposed and saved from demolition - photo AlexReynolds at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wiki Commons

Early versions have existed for a long time, such as Pike Place Market in Seattle (1907) and the Fremantle Markets south of Perth, Australia (1897). Modern examples are appearing across many cities, including the Anaheim Packing House in California (2014), the Broadway Market in Baltimore near the harbor (2019), and Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market in its revitalized nineteenth-century warehouse district (mid-2000s).

The Stanley Marketplace feels like an old-style enclosed market. It avoids the sterile, marble and glass aesthetic in favor of wood, plants, smaller commercial units, and comfortable seating.  It has plentiful seating and it encourages people to linger, but in such a way that provides natural surveillance and territorial reinforcement to discourage anti-social behavior. It has abundant spaces for larger families to sit and play.

Metro Denver has numerous other adaptive-reuse markets across the city. It is gathering steam. 

Toronto's St. Lawrence market - reuse of a Victorian era industrial building - photo Canmenwalker, CC BY 4.0 via Wiki Commons

WHAT COMES NEXT?

Walking through the Stanley Marketplace felt like entering a place that remembered something essential about city life. People stayed longer, families wandered, and strangers shared tables. The building felt alive in a way many modern commercial districts do not. It brought activity to the street and created comfortable, visible spaces for local entrepreneurs. 

In SafeGrowth we see places like this as emerging community anchors. They grow from the way people use them and they show how neighborhood life strengthens when residents have shared places near their homes. These early projects suggest how future neighborhood hubs might form. They remind us that community centers can return when we design spaces that support connection and belonging.