The Great Internet Migration - the life and death of face-to-face

Les Deux Magots café in Paris, the penultimate face-to-face meeting place. For over a century, this legendary café became a place of debate for modern art, philosophy, and literature with the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, and Jim Morrison. Much of our culture emerges from face-to-face conversations.

by Gregory Saville 

One way to reduce crime is to cut crime opportunities – make it tough to steal or harder to assault. Another way is to cut the motives to commit crime – improve living conditions, treat substance abuse, or build positive social relations between people. In either case, we need a functioning community with decent livability where people enjoy engaging in social life. That means creating places where social life encourages positive, productive, and secure face-to-face socializing (a goal of SafeGrowth). 

That brings me to my recent visits to a nearby movie theater, a bank, and McDonald’s. In each of these places, I noticed a new design and marketing ethos creeping up on us. I am referring to the trend of forcing people to migrate away from face-to-face interactions and towards the internet, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies are forcing us to shop online, deliver goods remotely, and replace face-to-face conversations with technology. It’s difficult to know how far this will continue.

Will we learn how to retain meaningful face-to-face connections in the face of new technologies?

NO ANTI-LUDDITE 

I am not making the claim of an anti-technology Luddite. True, of late I have admittedly been obsessively critical of AI, security technology, and the HiDWON future of high-security enclaves. 

In truth, I know there is an important role for advanced technology, especially in urban safety. In Nihlism Nixed, I wrote about the undeniable improvement in our overall quality of life globally from improvements in technology. 

But there is no denying the inexorable shift in how we build cities, run our businesses, entertain ourselves, and shop. We are being drawn away from face-to-face, a trend with an ominous outcome if we want a safer social life where people interact in a positive, productive, and joyful way. 

 

...out with the old! Old-style movie theatre seating -
 photo Jorge Simonet, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wiki Commons

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Take movies! Films are no longer box office hits until they stream online. Movie-goers hardly seem to matter. Watching films on a smartphone, or streaming at home…that’s the thing. In a futile attempt to stem the tide of crashing ticket sales, brick-and-mortar theatres are ripping out their old-style seats and installing half as many seats designed as airline-style, 1st class beds/seats with nearby liquor lounges and boutique food.

 

... and in with the new!
The redesigned bed seat cinema as theatres struggle to recover lost seat sales from online streaming - photo by Startrain844, CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wiki Commons

Consider banks. Gone (or going fast) are counter stations with tellers to converse with, share stories, and learn firsthand about better interest rates. Wikipedia describes how in-person bank tellers are “most likely to detect and stop fraud transactions” and that their position “requires tellers to be friendly and interact with customers.” Apparently, banks have something else in mind.

Instead, banks want you online at your computer, transferring funds electronically, or standing in front of metallic ITMs, the new "interactive teller machines" (basically, a souped-up, quasi-AI ATM). Teller jobs are declining and banks are becoming nothing more than empty foyers, private offices, with no tellers at all. 

 

The new bank - no tellers, only empty lounges and ITMs 

Then consider McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast food chain, the restaurant for excited kids, and the PlayPlace area for toddlers, with a busy counter/drive-in service. The last time I visited McDonald’s I could not locate an employee. I eventually found her in a small nook behind the electronic E-clerks. Another example of face-to-face extinction! 

McDonald's... few employees. Instead, meet E-clerks

Few chairs and no people. Internet migration is working!

The article Robots will Replace Fast-Food Workers describes the automation in the fast food industry: 

"In 2013, the University of Oxford estimated that in the succeeding decades, there was a 92% probability of food preparation and serving becoming automated in fast food establishments."

THE INTERNET MIGRATION

I have not checked the data, but I predict the internet migration I describe here represents the largest immigration problem in history. I suspect some of the techno-crime-opportunity reduction theorists might celebrate. They do so foolishly. 

The truth is that we are social beings to the core. Our relationships define us. As philosopher and psychologist Viktor Frankl once wrote, we gain meaning from the world around us and through our relationships with each other – that is where we ultimately find meaning. 

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

The lack of meaningful, face-to-face relationships, and the social connections that emerge from them, make our lives poorer. Sustainably preventing crime becomes an unsolvable equation. And in that equation, loneliness is the enemy of meaning and purpose.

Desire paths to real paths... User-generated urbanism

Walkways and desire paths - a major player in urban design and safe walkability

by Mateja Mihinjac 

In our urban design work, we often confront the issue of pedestrian mobility, which is referred to as desire paths (or desire lines). We have previously discussed desire lines and their impact on crime in our blog on Happy Trails. We have also touched on the related CPTED concept of movement predictors in our blogs on laneways. All this comes down to the concept of walkability.

If we are serious about increasing walkability in our cities and towns – and if we listen to the CPTED message of increased safety through “eyes on the street” – then we must pay attention to the formal, and informal, paths that exist to get people from one place to another. 

Sidewalks, one-way or two-way streets, paths, gates, and trails are only one part of the movement picture. Desire lines are equally important since they predict how movement can trigger, or eliminate, crime opportunities. Leslie Malone’s urban design book Desire Lines calls them “the paths people create through simple usage.” It all depends on how we do them!

 

Ease of access, simple travel routes, or pathways to crime?
Desire lines are everywhere and offer CPTED clues to prevent crime

USER-GENERATED URBANISM

We tend to expend as little time and as little effort as possible to achieve our goal. This least effort principle also translates into our choice of routes traveled. This often results in the emergence of desire paths, what wiki calls the unplanned convenient shortcuts humans create on frequently navigated routes.  

Why don’t traffic engineers or landscape architects incorporate these desire paths into their designs and engineer the streets as people naturally use them? It turns out an approach termed user-generated urbanism might do just that.

John Bela, an urban designer and landscape architect, describes user-generated urbanism as: 

“the synthesis of top-down and bottom-up practices engaged synergistically to cultivate greater participation. This synthesis help us achieve the goals we outline with the adaptive metropolis of resilience and social justice.”

He suggests desire paths should inform the installation of permanent routes - but not before the users indicate their preferred pathways. This is similar to tactical urbanism, a community-driven style of permanent public infrastructure. However, while Bela refers to tactical urbanism as DIY urbanism, user-generated urbanism stresses the importance of combining bottom-up and top-down planning practices.

 

The  Ohio State University "Oval" today - a sophisticated network of user-generated walkways. It began in 1914 when urban designers paved the pathways on new laws that were created by users - Photo Google Earth 

One of the most famous successful examples of this strategy emerged in 1914 at Ohio State University. 

The University intentionally had no plan for the walkways between buildings across the campus and only paved them once the most eroded routes in the lawn – desire paths – clearly communicated to the architect where the routes should be installed. This resulted in an interesting intersection of routes across the large campus lawn, the Oval.

Listening to the principal users of streets may help us avoid the mistakes and unintended consequences, including potential issues such as vandalism and movement predictors, the concerns that Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) practitioners often deal with. 

 

Ad hoc attempt to block a natural desire path across public lawn

COLLABORATION DRIVES SUCCESS

In an ever-changing world user-generated urbanism teaches us the importance of adaptive designs and designs that serve the purpose of their users. This is why collaboration in designing our streets is as important as ever. In Second Generation CPTED and SafeGrowth we teach the concept of Connectivity, which ensures the neighbourhood is connected to outside actors including the government and agencies to realise their goals. 

Engineers, architects, planners and landscape architects should therefore strive for collaborative practices as much as possible – doing so might just give them the answers they’re looking for when designing the streets the users want.

We're Using Our Streets All Wrong 

- Dead Metal versus User-Generated Urbanism 

The "nudge" factor in CPTED

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 contributions to community-building. He is a member of the SafeGrowth Network and now joins our blogging team.

In 2021 a book was published called Nudge: The Final Edition. Prior to that, there are several videos and TedTalks on the topic going back over a decade. Prof. Richard Thaler won the Nobel prize in 2017 for the theory. Nudge has become popular in behavioral economics studies. The concept is simple: Most people want to do the right thing, but instinctively take the path of least resistance. A reminder or nudge can put us all on a path towards doing the right thing. 

For example, after a sporting event or concert, I have often left garbage behind under the seat (like everyone else). My thinking: 'We all know they have cleaners coming in after, so no guilt'. One day after leaving a game, my friend picked up his beer can and plastic cup. I turned back and did the same. We then waited while many others put their recycling in one bin (the beer can) and the plastic cups in another. Simple, yes, but ultimately, we must be the change we want to see in the world. We can’t expect (or guilt) others to join us, but we can nudge them.

WHAT IS A NUDGE?

When translated, the sign in the above photo in Helsingborg, Sweden reads “A hello can save lives”. Mateja Mihinjac from our SafeGrowth team came across this yellow-painted bench in a downtown park. It was part of Helsingborg's "Friendship Benches Project" and it was an attempt to nudge those feeling alone and alienated seeking conversation to sit at the yellow part of the bench to encourage empathetic passersby to have a friendly conversation.  

According to research from the National Center for Suicide Research,“talking is one of the ways to prevent someone from actually attempting suicide”. It is a classic example of "nudge" design to encourage positive behaviour. And Swedish research suggests it is working.

When I hear behavioral economists and behavioral scientists talk about this topic I can’t help my mind wandering over to the CPTED space. Both CPTED and Safegrowth have behavioral elements. Designing a space to nudge others into doing what is best for the environment around them, not what is the most immediate personal win. Spaces to encourage gathering and community building will be activated by someone and followed by others to create a critical mass.

Research suggests that certain colours at night might trigger less violent behaviour

For example, an experiment was described during a TedTalk where a speaker put up signs that said, “Your mother doesn’t work here, clean up your own mess”. The result was a mess left everywhere. 

A successful example was putting three garbage receptacles on a beach in a high visibility area with different colours and signs above with examples of what to put in each colour bag. The latter was FAR more successful. A Nudge (subtle) is greater than an order or ultimatum. It gives the individual the agency to make their own decision to do the right thing. Do you ever hear anyone boast that they did the right thing because a sign told them? Rather do you hear “I always do that”? It can become a big part of someone’s personal brand or narrative. 

Prior SafeGrowth blogs have described the subtle impact of
coloured lighting and crime

HOW DO YOU NUDGE A SPACE? 

Nudging and CPTED take time to change people’s behavior and for most people, it will work. We all need to be patient to see the results over time. In Safegrowth the goal is stated on the website “If Neighborhoods had the skills, tools, and resources to remove, wherever possible, the motives and opportunity for crime.” A lofty goal, but certainly worth the time it takes to understand who and what assets your community has and what assets are needed to accomplish this.

One might think that a survey asking behavioural questions is a good idea, but the problem goes back to the YouTube nudge example above. Putting instructional signs up sounds like a good idea. People would likely answer 'put up a sign' in response to irresponsible behavior. That notion comes from the premise that we all want to do the right thing, but when we see others not do the right thing, we all follow. 

The Thaler and Suntein book "Nudge" revolutionized
how urban designers think about space

Therefore, it is not simply asking the question but instead, it is understanding what behavior needs a nudge. How often have you heard someone explaining bad behaviour by saying, "others do it, so why can’t I?" In criminology, this is known as the techniques of neutralization.

It is not enough to hope for good intentions. In SafeGrowth and in intelligent CPTED, when we look at designing spaces and activating spaces to create community, we always must keep in mind human behavior. For people to comply, they might need a little nudge or two.