The neighborhood effect - A contextual social science

  

New York, Greenwich Village Park at night. When it comes to preventing (and understanding) crime - neighborhoods have always mattered. 

by Gregory Saville 

I was thinking about my recent blog Do we know enough about crime to prevent it? Then I remembered some writing from Stanley Leiberson, former president of the American Sociological Association and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He wrote the book Making it Count: the Improvement of Social Theory, about the logic and reasoning in social science. That was a publication I wrote about during my doctoral research and I was mystified my supervisors knew nothing of it nor seemed interested in it. 

Decades before the evidence-based/crime science movement was around, Lieberson showed how social science went wrong by searching for a way to mimic classical, physics-style research. 

The doctrine of the undoable

He coined the term the doctrine of the undoable. In his book, he asked: “are there questions currently studied that are basically unanswerable even if the investigator had ideal nonexperimental data?” He discussed non-experimental, and yet rigorous, ways to answer difficult questions while still remaining scientific.  

Lieberson claimed social research sought to mathematize every factor, replicate findings in a lab, and deploy randomized controls (the same points I made last blog). While some of those have a place, Lieberson thought a more fruitful approach was the holistic methods emerging during breakthrough scientific discoveries, especially those used by evolutionary biologists. Biologists use rigorous observations and then construct logical systems (hence, my point on typologies). 

Scientists like evolutionary biologists and ecologists use holistic methods of research to study the natural environment through history 

Collective Efficacy and Chicago’s neighborhoods 

Lieberson was on to something fundamental, a discovery made real in Sampson's, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Robert Sampson is the recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, (the “Nobel” award of that field), and something of a phenom when it comes to sociological work on cities. 

If you care about neighborhood safety and health, read this book! It virtually re-invigorated the famous Chicago School of Urban Ecology from the last century, an approach that led to most modern sociological theories about the city. Among them, collective efficacy and social cohesion are integral principles within the SafeGrowth planning method.

Between all the towers, smaller places thrive. All cities are congregations of one type of neighborhood or another

Sampson’s work followed many of the principles that Lieberson espouses.  Sampson's findings seem to use a Lieberson-style methodology to revive the idea of neighborhoods as a powerful way to create safer and more livable cities. We have seen this repeatedly in SafeGrowth neighborhoods. 

Contextual causality – a new scientific concept 

In one powerful chapter titled “Neighborhood Effects and a Theory of Context”, Sampson concludes, “We require a more flexible conception of causality than that offered by individual experiments and their mathematical counterparts”. 

Then he adds a concept that aims straight back to the social ecologists of the 1940s and their focus on the interactions between neighborhood residents and how that can create a crime-resistant neighborhood. 



“Consistent with a pragmatist philosophy of science and the idea that causality can only be understood in a context, I believe this book taken as a whole has demonstrated a family of neighborhood effects and examples of contextual causality.” (page 383 in Great American City). 

Sampson’s work, particularly regarding neighborhood effects, is a watershed in the theory of crime prevention. It puts to rest many of the old criticisms that questioned the power of neighborhood organizing to prevent crime. Even notable scholarly works like Wesley Skogan’s Disorder and Crime: The Spiral Decay of American Neighborhoods,  take a derisive turn on community organizations when it comes to preventing crime. 

Skogan offers two case studies on community organizations tackling disorder and crime, neither of which were successful (page 155, Disorder and Crime). Then again, both cases used “neighborhood block-watch groups” as the strategy and surveys as the method of evaluation – which takes us right back to the problem of research methods and context.

 

Neighborhood Watch groups and traditional neighborhood associations
are not always well suited to create plans to prevent crime

To be clear, Skogan’s work includes some penetrating insights into the dynamics of disorder, particularly the struggles by community policing to address it. Putting aside the reliance on public awareness as a measure of effectiveness and the curious dependence on statistical "path coefficients" (a popular statistical fashion of the day), it is a pretty good read.   

But, two decades later, looking back through the prism of Sampson’s neighborhood effects and social cohesion/ efficacy theories, it is clear that a new dawn has emerged in neighborhood research. Context causality methods, first suggested by Lieberson, now offer a more powerful context-based research program for neighborhood crime prevention (and, possibly, a more pragmatic social science).

Sociologist Stanley Lieberson - a giant in sociological thought
Photo Harvard Emeritus Faculty

Lieberson died in 2018.  It would be fascinating to travel back a few years and report to him just how ground-breaking he was in triggering this new movement in neighborhood-based research and crime prevention. I wonder if he had any idea?

Oath of fealty

Sci Fi novel by Niven and Pournelle - Oath of Fealty. Our future?
photo Amazon.com

by Gregory Saville  

The world has 8,172,746,366 people and, since I wrote that sentence a moment ago, it has grown by tens of thousands. It grows every second. While the rate of growth is slowing, estimates place the global population at 10 billion by mid-century. Where, and how, will all those people live?

In many countries, housing and rental costs have skyrocketed. And in a country with an ethos of the “American Dream”, (now adopted in China as the “Chinese Dream”) the single-family home is becoming a thing of the past. In my city of Denver, the majority of new buildings comprise tens of thousands of high-density condos, apartments, or townhomes. The new building motto: Fewer cul-de-sacs, more density. 

Sadly, developers construct physical buildings at the speed of light, but they do not understand neighborhoods. When neighborhood planning takes a back seat to the home construction derby, absent any thought of a livable neighborhood, we are left with a bleak future. If you know anything about the history of CPTED, remember the crime catastrophe emerging from 1950s high-density public housing and modernist architecture. If you don't, read Newman’s Defensible Space! 

Giving rise to Newman's Defensible Space, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing apartments in St. Louis in the 1950s, before demolition.
High-density public housing with a new architectural style - modernism. 
- photo US Geological Survey, public domain, via Wiki Commons

HISTORY NEED NOT REPEAT

Are we building another crime-ridden, future catastrophe?

There is no shortage of city utopias in modern design publications. The cities they describe look futuristic and slick. They seldom describe what people will actually do to make ends meet or how they will live surrounded by thousands of others with nowhere to walk. Are there are stories about such places or the consequences of such places? There are indeed and every year, I ask the members of our SafeGrowth network to read a book that tells such a story. It is no utopia!

Larry Niven is an award-winning science fiction writer of the famed Ringworld series, among many other well-known novels. Larry Pournelle worked as an aerospace psychologist before launching into his writing career. Together they published Oath Of Fealty in 1981, a book considered among the top 100 best sci-fi novels. 

Oath of Fealty is a dystopian story set in the near future about a massive high-density structure called Todos Santos – a city within a city – surrounded by a crime-ridden and blighted Los Angeles. Todos Santos is an urban design concept called arcology, originally developed by architect Paulo Solare. In 2010, I wrote Arcosante – Our Future? about an actual arcology under construction in Arizona. 

[Note: I spoke to Paulo Solare in depth about his planning philosophy and I am certain he would be horrified by the Todos Santos style of arcology]. 

Dining area at Arcosante - a real-life arcology under construction in Arizona. Completely different from the arcology depicted in Oath of Fealty
- photo license Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 

TODOS SANTOS IN REAL LIFE

The Todos Santos arcology is miles wide and deep and a half-mile high. Solare told me he imagined arcologies as dense urban beehives with beautiful architecture and plenty of greenery. Because architecture in Todos Santos comprised an enclosed 3-D city constructed as one structure, it is easy to control access and establish territorial control (the basic principles of CPTED). Surveillance in all forms is a simple matter, especially with the permission (the Oath) of residents. Within such a high-tech, massive security castle (think of gated communities on steroids), controllers can protect a million inhabitants with their own security – as long as you swear an oath of allegiance to constant surveillance. 

Liverpool One development in the UK - photo courtesy of Wiki Commons 

In 2014 I wrote a blog titled A Few Years After Tomorrow about a development scheme in the UK to privatize 35 downtown streets, limit public streets, and control safety via a private security force and CCTV. Called Liverpool One, it was as close to Todos Santos as I could imagine back then – private corporations buying up the public realm and controlling security. Today, Liverpool One is now built, albeit with plenty of public access and without the private streets. It is not an arcology, but it does hold the promise of a safer future.

On one hand, Oath of Fealty suggests that when faced with terrifying blight and crime (or at least the fear of them), a rarified, high-tech, comfortable life within the arcology is worth an oath fealty by residents allowing constant surveillance and monitoring to keep everyone safe. That lifestyle offers security that public police cannot provide because arcology dwellers choose to forgo their anonymity and privacy to secure their safety (at least, in the Todos Santos version). 

 

Promotional painting from the 1927 German film Metropolis - an urban utopia that came true. It looks remarkably similar to large, downtown skyscrapers today. 
- image Wiki Commons 

On the other, Oath of Fealty suggests that those inside the arcology are shackled by a Big Brother. They forgo their civic responsibility and collaboration with others to ensure safer streets – the very thing we work to reinforce in SafeGrowth programming. Instead, they trust technology and rely, not on each other, but on the Todos Santos corporation. 

It all sounds very AI-like in tone. An electronic parent is always watching...just relax and let your fears subside. Your Oath of Fealty will keep you safe. Trust the massive global expansion of public CCTV and security AI. 

I am calling the new high density redevelopment movement, which lacks neighborhood-building and relies on technology for security, the HDWON movement (High-Density WithOut Neighborhood). Will this new HDWON movement lead to Todos Santos style cities? Is this future really so distant?

The pivotal role of connection

 

Mural in one of Calgary's neighbourhoods

By Larry Leach 

Larry is Executive Director of Calgary’s 12 Community Safety Initiative – a non-profit crime prevention collaborative. He was awarded the Queens Diamond and Platinum Jubilee medals for his contribution to community-building. He is a member of the SafeGrowth Network. 

Decades ago, North American society had an unwritten social contract. When you need help, you can reach out to your neighbours. When they needed a cup of sugar or help building a fence, you were there as a community to help. As we progressed through the decades, a sense of community was valued less and we began relying on institutional support. This is the message we have described in prior blogs regarding the Bowling Alone book by Robert Putnam.

Today, we spend our time in an isolated society without the natural neighbour support we once took for granted. 

I won’t preach about getting back to the old days (or about the social contract concept of philosopher John Locke). Still, it’s important to recognize what we had and how it’s been eroded over time to make the next shift better and how to fix what is clearly a societal issue.

We used to know our neighbours, those struggling and those doing well. We knew each other’s children. If a child was struggling, the community picked that up, usually finding out from the local school. They were involved in their lives. School teachers were local, knew the families, and often taught all the siblings and sometimes even the parents. The local police officer knew people in the neighbourhood. Importantly, in knowing came caring.

Children need not grow up alone.
We can do better to care for each other.

As communities found more to do and value, they found less value in this approach, and big government and big charity stepped in to fill the void. Today, teachers change schools often and, in some police agencies, officers are discouraged from policing in their own neighbourhoods. Parents move their children to schools they think are better for their children and drive long distances to put their child in the best sports club or activity, where they hope to achieve success at an early age. 

Throughout this time, we learned that service providers cannot replace family, friends, and significant community members. Humans need connection – a fact well-known in social psychology, and reported in prior blogs by both Mateja and Tarah. 

 

As with many local community organizations, Calgary's 12 CSI runs a community ambassador program and others like anti-bullying, community walks, and safety audits.

FILLING THE VOID

If a sense of connection is missing, how do we fill that much-needed void? In the 1985 book Careless Society, community activist, and author, John McKnight warned of a time when we would believe that We Can’t: We can’t do things for ourselves and each other; We can’t care for our own children or a neighbour’s child;  We can’t muster enough individual or personal will to tell the politicians We Can.  

In contemporary North American societies special agencies now fill these gaps. For example, I am the board chair of a Youth Centre called Cornerstone Youth Centre. This centre did not need to exist when communities made sure the kids in it had lots to keep them occupied. When they slipped, the community was there to pick them up.

Additionally, several agencies have developed around homelessness. Again, this is something that families and communities used to handle. Now it is handled by an agency funded by some level of government. I spoke in a previous blog about how some of these agencies are too big and they are not addressing the needs of the communities where they work. Often they have no relationship at all with the surrounding residents in the neighbourhood. 

WE CAN

I also work for a non-profit called 12 Community Safety Initiative, the neighbourhood organization that helped launch the first-ever SafeGrowth Summit in 2015.

In 12 CSI we employ Ambassadors to walk the neighbourhood, helping residents and visitors to the area connect with services and each other. It is small and nimble and connected to the communities it serves. If community members are unable to be the eyes and ears of their own community, or are unable to help their neighbours, then Ambassador and outreach programs will fill that void until individuals, families, and communities follow the model of caring vigilance and demonstrated compassion. 

This may all seem like nostalgia for a better time, or perhaps it is a naive expectation of the wisdom, generosity, and power of community. But if we are going to participate in our safety, the safety of neighbours, and the creation of a better world I firmly believe we must say, "We Can”. 

Neighbourhoods that take the idea seriously that they are responsible for many of their own needs, will be in a better position to come together and build programs that are truly for community members (and run by community members) before an outside agency arrives and decides it for them.

Local communities can have a major impact on problems like homelessness

As we reported in a previous blog on homelessness, Finland’s communities are doing exactly this with great results. That country made it mandatory for municipalities to shelter and provide outreach services to the needy in their own community. They now have the lowest homeless population in the world. It is government-funded, but it is also community-based. Each municipality is responsible and accountable to its own residents for these services.  

As we say in SafeGrowth, the experts are the people who live in the neighbourhood. It all starts with having a good look at your neighbourhood strengths and the resources needed to help people. We do not need to go back in time to recreate the past, but we can all take some responsibility for how our neighbourhood operates. 

I offer this final challenge: What will you do to make your neighbourhood better? It is up to us. We can!

[Personal note: Thank you to Bob McInnes for his thoughtful contribution to this blog].

Announcing the 2024 Problem-Oriented Policing Conference - SafeGrowth and POP working together

 

Baltimore's Inner Harbor Skyline
- photo courtesy of Wiki Creative Commons

by Gregory Saville 

This year, for the first time, SafeGrowth project teams from cities across the U.S. and Canada will attend an international policing conference to showcase their crime prevention and neighborhood safety work to hundreds of police delegates from around the world. The meeting will be held in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. 

The Baltimore Inner Harbor is not only famous for being the site of one of the most dramatic, urban post-industrial waterfront redevelopments, but it also gave birth to the lyrics of the American national anthem during the War of 1812 (technically that happened at nearby Northwest Harbor).

Now the Inner Harbor features another breakthrough event. From September 12-14 this year, Baltimore’s Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel hosts the 2024 International Problem-Oriented Policing Conference (the POP Conference).

 

The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at Arizona State University runs the annual International POP Conference - this year it features SafeGrowth project teams

THE POP CONFERENCE 

Each year the POP Conference reminds the police community, and the community at large, about a powerful problem-solving strategy where police cut crime and increase safety. The problem-oriented policing method has been around for decades showing, in project after project, how effective policing can build community respect, enhance officer safety, and turn crime hotspots back from the brink of crime. 

The conference is run by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing under the direction of Michael Scott. He not only leads the POP Center, but he has authored many police guidebooks on how to address everything from assaults around bars and dealing with clandestine meth labs, to speeding in residential areas and how to deter high-risk individuals from crime. 

This year’s conference will feature topics such as 

• Preventing People with Dementia from Going Missing
• Homelessness and Public Safety in Palm Springs
• Reducing Racial Disparities through Problem-Oriented Policing
• Reducing Gun Violence in Baltimore

It will also highlight the prestigious Goldstein problem-oriented policing award projects throughout the conference with the winner announced at a final presentation.

Baltimore's Greater Baybrook Alliance SafeGrowth team presentations earlier this year - teams will unveil their projects also to the 2024 POP Conference delegates

SAFEGROWTH AT POP

The SafeGrowth teams have been invited to this year’s conference to illustrate how community members use the SafeGrowth program to create safety plans and how it can work alongside POP projects. Like the POP method, SafeGrowth employs a similar step-by-step process, but the SafeGrowth program is based in urban planning and employs both 1st Generation CPTED and 2nd Generation CPTED. 

The SafeGrowth teams attenting this year’s conference will bring their project results on problems such as homelessness, illicit drug dealing, vacant properties and blight, and street violence. The projects are primarily led by neighbors and community associations, in collaboration with police problem-solvers. They illustrate another model of what effective POP and crime prevention might look like in the years ahead. 

SafeGrowth students have been invited from classes in Madison, WI, Vancouver, BC, Palm Springs, CA, Baltimore, MD, San Jose, CA, and Saskatoon, SK and they will present their work in informal poster sessions. 

If you want to learn about powerful crime prevention methods where police and community work together, conference registration is available at the POP website.