Liveability - the key to success in community development

Liveability is not only physical infrastructure - Photo courtesy of Denys Nevozhai - Unsplash

by Mateja Mihinjac

What is liveability? Liveability is one of those buzzwords that has been used extensively in urban development and city planning circles. Yet, it is one of those words that mean different things to different people and organisations and they rarely offer a consensus on what it means.

For example, the Online Cambridge Dictionary defines liveability as “the degree to which a place is suitable or good for living in”.

The organization, Partners for Livable Communities, takes a more specific approach: “Livability is the sum of the factors that add up to a community’s quality of life—including the built and natural environments, economic prosperity, social stability and equity, educational opportunity, and cultural, entertainment and recreation possibilities.”

Different definitions of liveability raise some important questions. Is liveability simply a binary concept? What parameters should it consider?

IS IT JUST BINARY?

Over the years, and especially since Greg Saville and I wrote our first article on Third Generation CPTED in 2019, I’ve had interesting discussions in professional circles about liveability.

At some point, liveability must mean the perspectives of people

First, I am asked about levels of liveability. In our article, Greg and I proposed neighbourhood liveability exists on a spectrum from advanced level to moderate and basic level neighbourhoods. An advanced-level neighbourhood will be highly liveable and offer opportunities for addressing the lowest and the highest level personal and social needs. Conversely, the neighbourhood at the basic level will generally have a bare minimum infrastructure and services for addressing the basic level physiological and psychological needs.

Sometimes, I am asked whether liveability exists or it doesn’t exist – a binary relationship. That would mean we should classify neighbourhoods as either liveable or non-liveable. 

In our view, liveability should be assessed on a spectrum similar to that of personal health. There are many levels of health with a multitude of contributing factors; we don’t simply say one is healthy while another is unhealthy. Similarly, as we describe in our 3rd Generation article, liveability of a neighbourhood has many facets that may contribute to higher levels of liveability in some categories and lower in others.

Existing liveability indices support our view. The continuum of liveability shows up when world cities are ranked based on their liveability scores in relation to economic, health, physical, and social factors. Organisations using these indices affirm there is a continuum of liveability. 

For example, 

• The Economist’s Intelligence Unit assigns different weighing to categories of stability, healthcare, culture & environment, education, and infrastructure to calculate the total index. 
• Mercer’s Quality of Living City Ranking uses categories of political stability, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and socio-cultural environment. 

These are just some examples of why it appears unproductive to refer to liveability as a binary concept.

Integrating green with concrete infrastructures can improve livability - Photo courtesy of Unsplash

WHOSE LIVEABILITY PARAMETERS?

Another point of contention is the categories employed when evaluating liveability. The Centre for Liveable Cities points to the tangible elements associated with physical infrastructure and availability of services like housing affordability, road access, school, and shopping access.

Undoubtedly, such services are paramount for a good quality of life. Unsurprisingly, cities like Singapore and Vienna score highly on the liveability scale largely due to these types of elements. 

But a question remains: Should we rely on those categories defined by the organisations conducting liveability surveys? Or should we delve deeper and identify what liveability means to people living in a particular neighbourhood? 

Our choice is the second option – liveability should be based on residents’ assessment of whether their needs and desires are being addressed where they live. This might make comparisons between neighborhoods difficult and it will surely annoy evaluators. However, the methodological needs of the evaluators seem secondary to the needs of the residents. It seems more realistic to ask those who actually live in a place to define their own perceptions of where they live. 

Liveable cities offer social places - Photo courtesy of Toni Ferreira, Unsplash

IT'S PEOPLE! 

One thing is certain: liveability should put people and local communities at the centre. This view is supported by many different sources. For example, consider the website of Partners for Livable Communities. They too identify people as the greatest resource for community change.

It is also identified by the senior communications adviser for the Congress of New Urbanism, Robert Steuteville, who asserts the importance of walkable and integrated living environments for building social capital and promoting a sense of belonging within a community.

Another supporter emerged in a recent interview with urbanist Richard Florida. His view was that the key element of liveability centers around community building, housing affordability, and access to health & wellness.

TO-FOR-WITH

From our perspective, liveability starts with people. The core philosophy of SafeGrowth is the TO-FOR-WITH principle – we aim to work as much “with” residents in a place rather than delivering programs “to” them or “for” them. It has historical roots in sociology and community development going back to the action research studies of the last century. It was the method employed in our successful SafeGrowth work in New Orleans.

Instead of relying on professional agencies to identify liveability categories, or discussing whether some city or neighbourhood is liveable or not, we need to start paying more attention to people. We must find out what liveability means to them and what they need to improve it. 

Nihilism nixed - hope as a way forward

In crime prevention and community-building, perspective is everything! 

by Gregory Saville

I am struck by the optimism in the cases described in recent blogs – Beth’s story about the Portland TriMet community safety team; my blog on answers to homelessness, especially the miracle underway today in Finland; the numerous examples of successful solidarity in Mateja’s blog about how we have witnessed communities come together to rebuild after natural disasters.

And yet I am also struck by the political blindness people choose to accept when it comes to difficult situations, like high crime neighborhoods, and how hopeless things seem. I was told, before our recent training in Baltimore, that there are unsurmountable obstacles in that city with drugs, shootings, fiscal chaos, and hopelessness (said by people not from Baltimore). 

Yet, on the ground during training, residents and community-builders who live there had a different view. Yes, there were problems, but they dedicated themselves to doing something positive. Currently, they are doing just that. (We return to Baltimore next month to review the results).

It is easy to be distracted by news stories of wickedness around the world

GLOBAL TRENDS

In the middle of news stories about the doom and gloom around us, and the very real terror of nuclear war and environmental collapse, I often remind myself how easy it is to fall into a nihilistic, hell-in-a-handbasket funk. 

Then I read Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupey’s book Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know and dozens of charts, graphs, and data showing inexorable positive directions for dozens of social, economic, and crime trends around the world. Life expectancy, poverty, health, food resources… all getting better, not worse! How can this be so? So many people believe the doom and gloom story! 

Maybe, I thought, these authors got it wrong. Did they get caught in a confirmation bias trap and cherry-picked rosy data and ignored the rest. To answer that, I went on a deep dive into data on global trends to see if they were right. 

Here is what I found:

Life expectancy… going up. Even a downward blip during the global pandemic does not offset the enormous improvements over the decades.

Global access to technology like electricity, even in the poorest countries, has markedly improved.

Child mortality around the world has been plummeting for decades. Bailey and Tupey were right.

For over 500 years, global literacy rates have grown every century and continue to improve today.

And there it was, from one source after another, chart after chart, the list of positive trends goes on and on. 

NIHILISM NIXED

But you'd never know it! You’d never know so many trends are improving if you only watched the miracle of stupidity that is the 24-hour news cycle spitting out, as it does, tragedy after tragedy! With billions around the world, and cell phones in every nook, it is not difficult for news machines to find one “exclusive” horror after another. It may not be the full truth – and it is certainly not investigative journalism – but it sells!

In SafeGrowth, we teach neighborhood dwellers how to do basic field research, how to collect a wide variety of stats, and how to observe carefully. That is how they can get a complete picture before they devise a plan to make things better. You cannot fix something if you drink the noxious elixir of political ideology or popular nihilism. The truth emerges as we dig for ourselves, suspend our biases, and, as Jane Jacobs once described, cultivate the art of seeing clearly. 

Seeing clearly, beyond the opinions and biases,
means learning how to do research and conduct careful observations

I met a student during the Baltimore training with a family member who, once upon a time, was a famous drug dealer back in the day. Now out of prison, this person turned away from gangs and violence and is now committed to speaking publicly about other ways forward for wayward teens. It is an inspiring story.

There are many challenges facing us both globally and locally. We cannot fix them with doom-and-gloom shades or with rosy glasses. We must retain optimism and hope, but only with clear eyesight. Threats are real, but so too are solutions. Inspiration, as I found out in Baltimore, can come from unlikely places if you learn to see and listen clearly.

Riding that train with TriMet's Safety Response Team - Part 3

Portland's TriMet mass transit serves over 50 million riders annually in metro Portland. The SRT Team works on this system. Photo Steve Morgan - CC BY-SA 3.0

Beth Dufek is a writer and marketing strategist for clients who are improving the built environment. She runs her own consulting firm in the Pacific Northwest. As a member of the SafeGrowth Network, she teaches SafeGrowth in cities across the U.S. This is Beth’s third blog on responding to people in crisis on the street.

To round out the third of my SafeGrowth blog series, (see also January, 2024  and November, 2023) I am pleased to share a morning spent with one of the many Portland TriMet Safety Response Teams in my final blog on this topic. 

HERE’S HOW WE ROLL

I arrived at TriMet’s Public Safety Office at a reasonable 10am on a partly cloudy, crisp, dry day in February. Having no idea what it’s like to be outside all day anymore, I layered up, packed snacks, and changed my shoes three times. 

I was warmly greeted by a four-person Safety Response Team (SRT) who started their shift at sunrise: 7am. Each person had a unique reason for joining the SRT, ranging from social work and trying a new career to former issues with addiction. Comradery among the team seemed essential. They maintained a sense of humor (they were hilarious), shared stories (especially about food), and watched out for each (something they took seriously). 

Here is how I saw TriMet’s four core principles of the SRT play out in 2 short hours.

SRT on the system. Photo courtesy of Tri-Met

HIGH VISIBILITY SYSTEM PRESENCE 

SRTs work in two shifts, 6 days/week. Each SRT has one team lead and three team members. Each shift has three to five teams on the system. They cover TriMet’s 533 square mile service area within the regional counties of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas.

The team I rode with estimated they interact with 30 - 50 people per shift, but it depends on the day. Interactions are not limited to people in distress or mitigating behavioral issues. They may help people navigate the system – that they know like the back of their hand – or help tourists get to their destination. They enter each interaction into a Smartsheet app on their phones, which TriMet aggregates to track trends. In November 2023, the SRT interacted with 11,354 people, 8,022 of whom were offered services. 

Rose City Resource list made available by SRT

CONNECTING RIDERS TO RESOURCES

Within minutes of leaving the Public Safety Building, we stopped so the team could ask a person if he got to a place that could help him. In an earlier interaction that day with him, he needed a place that would cash a check without an ID, to get the paperwork to get the ID, and then get to a less temporary place to stay. He was ecstatic that he found a place to stay for a month. To think, I was worried about what shoes to wear.

The SRT carries printed copies of Rose City Resource from the organization Street Roots so they can point people to community-based resources on the spot and tell them which bus or train to take to get there. I am so impressed by their system navigation - I have nearly zero geographical memory; therefore, by the grace of Google Maps go I. 

The SRT backpack and contents for use on the Tri-Met system - Photo courtesy of TriMet

At each stop, the SRT approaches people in pairs for safety to do wellness checks. Granola bars, water, and maps, among other supplies are on offer. They have an affectionate reputation for being “the people with the backpacks with granola bars.” One man at first declined any supplies, but after some kind SRT persistence, he asked for socks (and got them)! 

LOW-LEVEL ISSUES PREVIOUSLY DIRECTED TO 911

At the Pioneer Square transit center, Portland’s “living room” and once THE place to be for entertainment and culture, a person curled up under a moving blanket was asked “Are you ok? You don’t have to interact with me, but can you just let me know you are ok? I have resources for you, but only if you want them.” 

Pioneer Square in Portland. A N/W view showing the west side of the square on a sunny day. Photo courtesy of Steve Morgan, CC Wikipedia

I learned that Pioneer Square is a privately owned public space, and given the current conditions downtown - alcohol and/or drug use, camping, urination, defecation, or indecent exposure, not to mention more overt crimes - they have their own security due to the volume of issues. I was saddened to see the private security simply shoo the person the SRT offered resources to away … from the living room. 

I observed that people were unsure how to interact with the quite official-looking team. They assured me they were used to it. I expressed my concern that people think the SRT initiated the security guards’ action. They said it happens all the time, so they stay in their resource-offering lane and feel good about the help they provide. 

SOME HUMANS HELPED, INCLUDING ME

I started this series by questioning how humans can help other humans. Spending time with SRT members in the classroom and on the train has helped this human believe in Portland’s resilience. One SRT member told me they had more conservative ideas about how to deal with the homelessness crisis before joining the SRT, but after helping people on TriMet’s system in dire circumstances due to drug addiction or mental illness, they have more empathy and want to be a part of the solution. 

It can be tempting to draw conclusions and reinforce biases about the fentanyl crisis, homelessness, and social unrest in order to join a conversation fueled by sensationalized local news and social media. These issues demand serious attention, but I want to end with a thought-provoking post by Alice McFlurry at Beige.Party: 

Let’s normalize saying, “I don’t know enough about the topic to be able to comment.” 

For me, it is a reminder to take the time to ask the questions before forming the hypothesis.