Personal journey into CPTED - A planner's story

Marriott Bessborough hotel - historical landmark in downtown Saskatoon, Canada

by Elisabeth Miller

As a SafeGrowth advocate and senior urban planner in one of Canada’s major cities, Elisabeth Miller was one of the first Canadian planners to apply CPTED to her everyday work. She is an ICCP-certified CPTED professional with the International CPTED Association and an executive board member of that organization. She is an author of the book SafeGrowth, and a consultant to cities across Canada, the US, and Australia. She helped establish Saskatoon as the first city in Canada to adopt both CPTED and SafeGrowth as administrative policy. This is her story.

I am always curious when I meet other CPTED professionals or practitioners, what their background is, and how they arrived at incorporating CPTED into their professional work. CPTED, especially Second Generation and Third Generation CPTED, speaks to my heart and I can see how proper and inclusive application of CPTED would be helpful to any community. 

I first heard of CPTED at a British Columbia conference about 25 years ago in the mid-90s. It sounded very interesting and an excellent way to help make my community safe. Shortly after this conference in 1996, I attended a 5-day training on CPTED, a course that taught both 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED. I was hooked!

Elisabeth Miller - A personal story from her 25-year history
with urban planning and CPTED

My planning experience up to this point included neighbourhood planning and working directly with communities. Prior to that, I worked on municipal Concept and Sector plans, Land Use and Zoning Bylaws, and other policy related projects – activities that will be familiar to most urban planners. I believe I had a good variety of planning experiences.

The CPTED class was a very interesting combination of police (mostly police) with a few planners thrown in. It offered lectures, group work, site visits, buzz groups, and other problem-based learning activities to situate the learning in our brains. It was a very intense training environment – I loved every minute of it!

Once trained, my task was clear: Implementation!

And THAT was a big deal.

IMPLEMENTATION IS THE KEY

Fortunately, I had a very supportive manager. He also saw the benefit of including CPTED in the way we planned our city and encouraged me to include it wherever I could. So, I included it everywhere! I did not ask, I just included it and decided if the powers that be pushed back then I would deal with it then. 

I added knowledge of CPTED to job descriptions, reviewed plans and commented even if I wasn’t asked. I crafted an “elevator speech” to use on senior management and City Councillors whenever I had a captured audience in the elevator, and I brought various departments to work together to review civic projects.  The idea was, I help you and you help me.

Today, CPTED designs show up throughout Saskatoon
- in this case at the downtown transit center

Working together worked well for all. We decided it might be time to make this a formal part of a planning review, but how should we do this? It meant working with all the different departments that would be involved or who would benefit from a CPTED review. As a corporation, the City of Saskatoon made a conscious decision to start with our own civic projects before moving on to the private sector. This was a very interesting and challenging process.

I interviewed every departmental, divisional, or section manager responsible for projects that would benefit from the application of the principles of CPTED. That was almost a full-time job for a few months. Some were informed, others worried about added time, and there was a small group that really did not care. It was all part of the story that I uncovered. The next step was to get the private developers on board!

We met with local land developers to ensure they understood the process and that it would not cost them more time or money. That led to the establishment of The City of Saskatoon CPTED Review Committee.

Saskatoon's design guideline book provided for urban designers

In 2008 we created a formal administrative policy identifying what would be reviewed, who would do the reviews, and when they would be reviewed. The whole journey took years to accomplish and nowadays the Neighbourhood Safety section looks after the CPTED Review Committee as well as a number of other programs and activities that incorporate the principles of CPTED. 

Over the past 20 years, we managed to offer CPTED (and now SafeGrowth) training to over 400 staff members and others from the community. I believe that Saskatoon today is a safer city due to the work done by the Neighbourhood Safety section and the incorporation of CPTED and SafeGrowth into the planning process.

So, to my professional planning colleagues and other urban designers, the next time you notice someone excited to find out you are a planner at a CPTED activity or conference, it’s probably me. Say hello!