SafeGrowth and 안심 - A shared vision with Korean CPTED researchers

Skyline of Seoul, South Korea, by night. Over 25 million in the metro area, one of the most advanced cities in the world. Leaping ahead with the latest CPTED - photo CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

by Gregory Saville

When the Korean CPTED delegation departed Seoul last Sunday to meet us in Denver, they traveled 16 hours and crossed 16 time zones. Twenty-four years earlier, two South Korean scholars published a study applying space syntax theory to evaluate CPTED in the International CPTED Association’s official journal, Volume 1, Issue 1.

Across that distance and span of time, South Korea has quietly become one of the world's most innovative laboratories for CPTED research and practice.

Last week we hosted visitors from the Architecture and Urban Research Institute (AURI), a government research institute in the Republic of Korea, led by Dr Eunhee Kim. The members of the group included: 

• Dr. Eunhee Kim, Director, CPTED Research Center, AURI; 
• Dr. Youngweoo Kim, Associate Research Fellow, CPTED Research Center, AURI; 
• Jaeseok Her, Assistant Research Fellow (Spatial AI and Big Data Division), AURI; 
• Hongseok Choi, doctoral candidate, City & Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah (former AURI). 

 EARLY CONNECTIONS 

Late last year, AURI reached out to us for some background on SafeGrowth, the International CPTED Association, and our generational approach to CPTED. In May, we collaborated with them in an online webinar with some of their talented researchers. That is when I learned about the astounding progress of Korean CPTED over the past 20 years, especially in a few areas where they have leapfrogged past many other places with CPTED (how many CPTED instructors teach space syntax, or even know what it means?).

Beginning a three-day tour of Denver metro at the Arvada City Hall, Colorado

Before they arrived, we read AURI's recent work using virtual reality to evaluate neighborhood design and a study on using machine learning to explore relationships between urban environments and emergency calls for service. That research reported, “green areas have been mixed in the literature, [but] this study newly demonstrates that green spaces in urban Seoul are associated with reduced 112 [911] call occurrence”. It was a finding that seems to reinforce the Third-generation CPTED environmental principle of biophilia and how green land use can reduce fears and crime rates.

This was an exciting moment! 

Eight members of the SafeGrowth Network appearing virtually from across North America, including some also from the International CPTED Association, joined Mateja and I at the introductory workshop in Arvada in welcoming our Korean guests. Their visit was a professional exchange for research and education, but I suspected they would show us more than vice versa.

 

THE SITE VISITS

Obviously, the Koreans did not need more evidence on crime hotspots, lighting, target hardening, or access control. They have decades of experience with those concepts. Instead, we toured sites showing a more complex, urban planning side of SafeGrowth and CPTED, especially Smart Growth planning of which SafeGrowth is based and in which metro Denver excels. Smart Growth integrates compact development, walkability, mixed land uses, and transportation into complete neighborhoods.

One of our sites included the successful Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in Arvada’s Old Towne centered on the RTD commuter train station. 

Arvada City Hall meeting with Mayor Lauren Simpson, City Manager Don Wick, and their respective staff members

We met our gracious hosts, Arvada City Mayor Lauren Simpson and City Manager Don Wick, and their staffs to learn about TOD governance and development issues. 

Although the modern term Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) was popularized by planner Peter Calthorpe, transit-centered neighborhoods have existed for many years in cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Stockholm, and London. 

Yet despite their importance, TODs remain one of the least-developed areas of CPTED practice. We spent considerable time discussing how walkability, connectivity, mixed land uses, and human-scale design influence neighborhood safety and crime.

We then traveled to Lakewood’s new downtown, mixed-use development also based on Smart Growth, one of the first in the country, constructed from the ground-up twenty years ago. 

We spent time with artists at the Denver Art Society to learn about the social impact of Third Places on neighborhoods like the Arts District of Santa Fe and then followed with another Third Place, this one an adaptive reuse mall, the Edgewater Public Market. 

 

Dr. Eunhee Kim and Jaeseok Her speaking to Denver Art Society
artist Dana Mooney

Hongseok Choi speaking with Denver Art Society artist Allard Broderick

We have posted prior blogs on the Third Places crime immunity effects and the Denver Art Society. Third Places have a growing role in SafeGrowth to stabilize troubled areas in a way that no policing or target hardening ever could. 

We spent one morning at the Denver Police Academy with academy Director, Lt. Jessie Campion and Commander Jacob Herrera, from the Operational Innovation Bureau. They kindly permitted us a visit to examine police crime prevention strategies and training, including a CPTED report on the historic Denver Union Station following a crime spike in 2021. 

Police Lt. Jesse Campion toured the delegation through the academy and described tools of the trade in the Denver training programs

We ended our third day with a visit to Harmony Village, a cohousing development in Golden, Colorado. The Denver metropolitan region is home to about a dozen cohousing communities, among the largest concentrations of cohousing developments in North America.

The community gardens at the Harmony Village Cohousing in Golden, CO.

At first glance, the neighborhood looks much like any well-designed residential development, with plenty of natural surveillance and territorial controls, attractive homes, pedestrian pathways, gardens, and shared recreation areas. But the difference lies beneath the physical design. 

Residents own their homes but also intentionally share responsibility for governing the community, organizing activities, maintaining common spaces, and building relationships with one another. They learn conflict resolution techniques and organizing skills. In many respects, the neighborhood functions as a small, self-governing community. This illustrates why second-generation CPTED extends far beyond physical design.

The cohousing visit sparked considerable discussion since cohousing combines private home ownership with intentional community building and resident self-governance. For SafeGrowth, that distinction is important. 

Lorraine Neimela touring the delegates through Harmony Village Cohousing

Strong neighborhoods emerge not only from good design, but also from the capacity of residents to organize and collectively solve local problems. This is what too many Condo Associations and Homeowner Associations lack and what digital platforms like Nextdoor do not always achieve. In fact, studies now suggest they often do the opposite by encouraging fear of strangers, amplifying rumors, and replacing face-to-face interaction. 

Our thanks go to Lorraine Niemela from Harmony Village for touring us and the Koreans to view how cohousing, as with SafeGrowth, strengthens relationships first, so residents develop the capacity to solve problems together rather than simply report them.

 

안심

Korea has mastered many of the physical and technological dimensions of CPTED. This site visit was a great opportunity to show how SafeGrowth begins where those strengths leave off. It retains traditional CPTED, but it also asks how neighborhoods continue learning, adapting, and governing themselves long after the design work is finished. 

During the visit I learned that the Korean word 안심 best captures the SafeGrowth philosophy. It loosely translates to peace of mind and feelings of safety. That was the SafeGrowth concept we wanted to convey during the three days of their visit.

We were delighted to welcome our new Korean CPTED colleagues and impressed with their intuitive grasp of crime and safety problems in complex neighborhood systems where everything is interconnected to everything else. We barely had time to introduce the latest possible evolution of CPTED theory into complex adaptive systems. Next time, perhaps!  

As we said our goodbyes, I couldn't help but think of the final scene in the classic 1943 film Casablanca: "…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." 

I am convinced that is so 

Helping neighbourhoods adapt to urban change

 

Miklošičeva Street in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, closed for renovation. Improvements included wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling, greenery, improved seating and more positive social interaction. It met the European Union's carbon neutral and smart city goals for 2030. It also met significant public protest and opposition. 

by Mateja Mihinjac

Imagine strolling down a vibrant boulevard shaded by mature trees, where pedestrians and cyclists move comfortably through public space. People pause on benches to watch the world go by, while cafés spill onto wide terraces filled with conversation. Instead of being just another road, the street becomes a place to meet, linger and enjoy urban life.

This is the vision behind the redesign of Miklošičeva Street, one of the busiest and most important streets in Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana.

 

A VISION MEETS RESISTANCE

Miklošičeva Street is one of Ljubljana's busiest corridors, linking the city's main railway and bus station with Prešeren Square and the historic centre. In June, the City of Ljubljana launched a two-year pilot project to transform the street into a greener, safer and more people-oriented public space. The redesign includes wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling infrastructure, additional greenery and outdoor seating, while reducing through traffic to encourage walking, cycling and social interaction.

In one of the busiest corridors, construction redesign creates chaos for
those working and walking downtown.

The project supports Ljubljana's Integrated Transport Strategy 2025–2032 and the EU Mission for 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030.

Yet, almost as soon as construction began, public opposition emerged. A public petition calling to "Return Miklošičeva to its previous state!" quickly gained attention. 

Critics argue that it will increase congestion, restrict access to businesses and homes, create confusion for all road users, and that the project has not been developed in sufficient dialogue with the local community. Whether these concerns prove justified remains to be seen. 

The more interesting question is, however, why the opposition became so visible only after construction had begun when the plans had been publicly available for months?

Resistance to new urban development is not unique to Ljubljana.

 

When a massive new sports stadium was introduced in Denver this year,
hundreds of residents attended information sessions as part
of a "public participation" process.

RESISTANCE IS PART OF URBAN CHANGE

When New York City proposed pedestrianising Times Square in 2009, critics predicted traffic chaos and economic decline. The city responded by introducing a temporary pilot, collected data on traffic, safety and retail performance, and used the evidence to guide the final redesign while publicly shared findings. Many of the early fears proved unfounded.

Copenhagen followed a different approach, gradually expanding its cycling network over several decades. Incremental improvements allowed both the infrastructure and the public to adapt, helping the city become one of the world's leading cycling capitals. 

Not every renewal project succeeds. During research in one North American city, I observed strong opposition to new downtown bike lanes despite evidence of their potential benefits. Political pressure eventually led to some of the lanes being removed.

These examples suggest that opposition is neither unusual nor evidence of poor design. Usually, it is a predictable part of urban transformation. The real question is this: Why does resistance occur and how cities can help the residents navigate it?

Road redevelopment in Ljubljana's Miklošičeva Street  

 

WHY DO WE RESIST?

Behavioural psychology offers some insights.

Status quo bias – Our tendency is to prefer familiar conditions over uncertain alternatives. Samuelson and Zeckhauser argue that the status quo acts as a psychological anchor, making any departure from established routines feel like a loss rather than a potential improvement.

For those who live, work or regularly travel along Miklošičeva Street, the redesign disrupts familiar routes and long-established habits. What planners see as progress may initially feel like unnecessary disruption to people using the space every day.

Loss aversion – Behavioural design research has resulted in Prospect Theory showing that people \ experience the pain of losing something more strongly than the pleasure of gaining something new. 

Both loss aversion and status quo bias show up with remarkable frequency in urban redevelopment – AI-generated imagery from ChatGPT for this blog 

In street revitalisation, this means people often focus on what they might lose such as parking, familiar routes or established routines. They tend to ignore or overlook benefits yet to materialise, such as safer streets, more greenery or livelier public spaces.

Thus, opposition may be less about rejecting the future than about letting go of the familiar present.

 

 

PUBLIC CONSULTATION & ENGAGEMENT TRAP

On Miklošičeva Street public consultation did take place before construction began, although it attracted far less attention than the opposition that followed. In March 2026, the City of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy invited residents to learn about the project and provide feedback through a half-day public event and an online survey. 

So, why did opposition become so visible only after construction began?

Behavioural psychology provides another answer. For one, the plan seemed abstract until changes became visible. When road markings appeared, parking spaces disappeared or familiar routes changed, status quo bias and loss aversion arose as powerful motivators for action.

Another answer is the nature of public engagement itself. I argued previously, that informing and consulting residents is not the same as involving them in shaping decisions. In our upcoming book Hope Rises, we call this concept the engagement trap.

Meaningful participation requires more than asking for opinions. It requires enabling residents to identify problems, create a shared vision and help design solutions. Only when that happens will change become something the residents co-create and feel part of the process. This is why SafeGrowth often deploys methods such as Search Conferences to help this co-creation process. Search conferences are interactive, future-oriented and carefully guided planning sessions with community members. They are widely used in fields such as public health, and we have deployed them in cities around the world. 

 

Our first search conference launched the SafeGrowth Network in Canmore, Alberta in 2015. These participative planning session are a powerful way to develop shared ownership and a vision for future actions – AI imagery generated for this blog.

ANTICIPATING RESISTANCE VS BEING SURPRISED 

The purpose of community engagement is not to eliminate disagreement, but to build trust, create shared ownership and help communities adapt to change. It is about helping them navigate the journey from the familiar to the unknown. That means treating neighbourhood revitalisation as a social process, not only an engineering project.

SafeGrowth views neighbourhoods as living social ecosystems. Over time they develop routines, relationships and shared habits in how people use space. In all our training, students are taught to look, listen and hear those patterns during their site visits. The book What We See describes how urbanist Jane Jacobs emphasised the power of going to the street to find those ecological patterns.

When residents help identify problems, create a shared vision and shape solutions, change becomes their project rather than the city's. Successful revitalisation emerges when communities have the opportunity to learn and grow alongside the places they call home.