Displacement and the NIMBY wars

Downtown skyline, Madison, Wisconsin - site of our latest SafeGrowth training
- photo courtesy of Wiki Creative Commons

You always seemed so sure
That one day we'd be fighting

In a suburban war

Your part of town against mine

by Gregory Saville 

The rock group Arcade Fire wrote those lyrics about the alienation and gentrification in cities in their Grammy-winning song “The Suburbs”. It's a theme that arose several times in our SafeGrowth trainings in different cities this year, particularly as it pertains to the risk of displacing the troubles, disorder, homelessness, and crime in one neighborhood to others around the city. 

Displacement has shown up in this blog over the years including how gentrification displaces the poor, or how Melbourne, Australia positively displaced graffiti into a successful industry called street art tours.

MADISON

We spent time last week teaching in the beautiful city of Madison, Wisconsin. We were delighted by the dedication of members of very engaged police and planning departments, community members, business downtown advocates, and others. They chose their sites for projects and are now digging into their work to improve livability and safety. 

As in so many other cities we’ve visited over the past year, homelessness rose to the surface. We remind our students to keep an eye out for problems with crime displacement – moving problems from one area to another. They must not trigger fights between one part of town against another.

It is the same in other cities like Vancouver, Saskatoon, and Palm Springs where SafeGrowth teams identify homelessness as a major concern. Of course, homelessness, while troubling and tragic, is not a crime. Yet displacing people on the street from one place to another happens over and over and one neighborhood ends up fighting a war against another in another part of town. These NIMBY wars – Not-In-My-Back Yard – tarnish everyone and starts needless political wars. 

Architect Oscar Newman was among the first to describe the concept of crime displacement in his 1972 book Defensible Space - photo Livingston Press

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

The research article most commonly cited to describe crime displacement originally appeared in 1976. It was written by one of the original researchers from the first-ever evaluation of CPTED – the Westinghouse Studies. CPTED of that era was based on the work of architect Oscar Newman, among others, and his book on Defensible Space. 

However, it was in Newman's book where you will find the original deep dive into crime displacement. Newman spent years studying crime and prevention in New York public housing and he claims that it was Police Captain Arnold Berkman who tracked crime around the properties, including when it displaced. 

“As a vigorous police effort is concentrated in one project, criminals respond by moving into adjacent projects. Displacement, however, is seldom a full 100 percent.” (page 205). 

It is unclear from Newman’s book exactly how he and Captain Berkman traced displacement accurately enough to conclude that 100% displacement was rare. Subsequent research does seem to confirm that this is the case. 

Or does it? 

New research uncovered a different story - some of the first empirical examples of malign, negative crime displacement.

Movement around cities happens in many ways - trains, walkways, and roads. But other things move around cities, such as crime. This is the concept of crime displacement.

We advise those in our classes and in our projects that, when it comes to displacement, take nothing for granted. To the best of your ability, plan for the worst as well as the best. As in all types of neighborhood safety planning, include everyone potentially affected by displacement.  The question of displacement remains very much open.

Newman's conclusion from 50 years ago applies as much today: 

“There are serious moral implications to the question of displacement, and they are not as easily dismissed... The full extent of the displacement problem is yet to be understood and a means for coping with it developed.” (Page 206)