When industrial decline creates opportunities to transform

 

The former industrial waterfront in Baltimore, now transformed into a multi-use neighbourhood with residential, commercial, parks, open spaces, and restaurants 

by Mateja Mihinjac

A few years ago, we posted some blogs about neighbourhoods in transition and how crime concentrates in these neighbourhoods. 

Tarah wrote about Zone 2 areas in her hometown of Hamilton, a manufacturing city near Toronto. Zone 2 areas of cities, Tarah recounted, are vulnerable to crime due to, among other reasons, poor social control and a social cohesion often termed a sense of community. Using SafeGrowth strategies to build local capacity and empower neighbourhoods was a powerful way forward. 

Following those blogs, Greg wrote about Zone 2 areas in Denver and how building “third places” – like the art co-op called the Denver Art Society – and how co-ops are key to transforming Zone 2 neighbourhoods.

 

Baltimore waterfront is now revitalized with offices and an environmental water reclamation project in the harbour

ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO TRANSFORM ZONE 2 AREAS

During my travels over the past decade, I have observed a trend where once industrial and factory districts of cities have repurposed former factory buildings into residential condos and shops. In some places, hip new areas with parks and completely new neighbourhoods have emerged on former industrial land.

Several have also transformed into art and cultural districts.

The automobile industry is one of those industries that has seen a major shift in a very short time. This has dramatically affected the cities that were once synonymous with the auto industry.

 

Detroit police have instituted a downtown CCTV system in the industrial city of Detroit, which is on the rebound from an economic collapse 

DETROIT 

A few years back I visited Detroit where one of the neighbourhood groups underwent SafeGrowth training. I remember parts of the city felt like ghost towns because they were void of services, shops and people. Vacant housing was rampant. This was, as I learned, due to the downfall of the auto industry that had only a few decades ago led to the economic and residential boom of The Motor City. 

A few decades on, the decline of the auto industry and environmental concerns left the city in ruins fraught with crime and murder. Population plummeted. 

Over the past few years, things seem to have started improving again with reinvestment, corporate redevelopment, involvement of several non-profits, and repurposing of old factory buildings, as well as targeted policing strategies leading to a safer city.

 

TURIN

The Italian “Motor City” Turin, the home of Fiat, has similarly observed the rise and fall and has been undergoing urban renewal since the mid-nineties.

The Winter Olympics in 2006 was a major catalyst for change that brought in investment for realising the revitalisation plan. The city revitalised areas and repurposed factory buildings that now boost restaurants, shopping, and event spaces, museums celebrating the city’s history, and even rooftop urban gardens. 

Unlike in Detroit, investment in public transport and cycling infrastructure helped the city towards realising its environmental agenda, although reportedly there is still much room for improvement especially with the older generation that is still engrained in their car-dependency mindset (as in Detroit).

As with other cities in the process of transformation, Turin’s crime is reported to be increasing while a national trend suggests a downward trend. The perception of the respondents from Turin suggests that almost 70% perceive crime to have increased over the past 5 years.

This may suggest that as Turin continues its transformation, special attention may need to be given to specific contributors to crime and the perception of crime in Turin to avoid the crime trajectory of Detroit. 

 

A redeveloped trail in the el Centro neighbourhood in Philadelphia

Philadelphia SafeGrowth practitioners Harry Tapia and Stasia Monterio and their remarkable community development corporation - HACE - have completed an urban corridor transformation in a former drug market and homeless encampment

RESILIENCE DURING TRANSFORMATION

These examples are neither isolated nor unique. As most of the world undergoes what has been termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and while countries address the social, political, and environmental challenges in urban areas, the transformation that disrupts the status quo is welcome and necessary. We have blogged about this transformation in several urban areas around the world such as The 15 Minute City and the Smart City

These are transformative times and they aim toward more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable and integrated cities. 

If you are looking for a direct path into transformation strategies, particularly if you are a practitioner, then familiarize yourself with the 4 strategies of Third-Generation CPTED. There are dozens of examples of Third-Generation CPTED thinking when it comes to urban safety. 

The best professional and personal pathway in this regard is to be one step ahead of anticipated challenges. That is the best way to find creative and effective safety strategies as we help the transformation of cities toward a safer and more resilient future. 

Small is beautiful - Pastor Barry and Islandview

GoogleEarth view of the Episcopal Church and Detroit's Islandview neighborhood

by Gregory Saville

With 267 murders last year, Detroit has a city population of 700,000 and murder rate 8 times the national average. It suffers a decimated tax base and in 2013, the largest city bankruptcy in US history. Naturally, you might associate it with crime, racial inequity, and blight. But would you associate it with urban innovation and rebirth?

With a renaissance of late, a lively downtown Detroit looks far different than a decade ago. And while that transformation is triggered by large, corporate reinvestment, it is the inner and outer suburbs where much of the blight and crime originates. How, I wondered this past week on project work in Detroit, does a neighborhood reinvent itself?

Neighborhood hubs can emerge from local churches

PASTOR BARRY

Then I met Pastor Barry Randolf at his Episcopal Church in the Lower Eastside neighborhood of Islandview. Not only has Islandview begun transformation, but Pastor Barry and his team have grand visions for the years ahead. Our task was to teach the SafeGrowth program in the neighborhood and work with our new friends at the Restorative City initiative.

New initiatives have fertile ground in a place like Islandview thanks, in no small measure, to Pastor Barry. He leads his church with programs like a community garden, a tea manufacturer, T-shirt design company, landscaping company, an employment program, a bike repair shop, mentorship programs, media production workshop, audio/video production, and others.

Community gardening on church property

SPEARHEADING LOCAL LEADERSHIP

Not only does the church provide opportunities for jobs and work, but it also spearheads a community development corporation to build and purchase affordable housing (213 units in the neighborhood thus far). Pastor Barry told me that he and his team locate small numbers of market-rate housing across from well-designed, affordable housing to help stabilize and diversify the neighborhood. They then hire local residents to work with builders and learn the skills of construction. 

With baseball cap and passion, Pastor Barry shows us housing under renovation

sponsored by the church housing corporation

Pastor Barry’s work is widely featured in local media and we were thrilled to offer our SafeGrowth tools to Islandview’s considerable toolkit. For me, the Islandview story illustrates the value of local organization and the power of competent neighborhood planning. As we say in our SafeGrowth Vision Statement, the successful 21^st Century city will be based on a linked network of self-governing and self-learning neighborhoods. 

A few units of nearby affordable housing.
Small diverse pockets of housing can stabilize neighborhoods.

When it comes to designing out crime beyond superficial security strategies, urban development and community-building like this digs at the roots of crime. With apologies to E. F. Schumacher, small truly is beautiful. Thanks, Pastor Barry, for the reminder.

Subtopia rising from the ashes

Urban apocalyptos - collapsing suburban strip malls and abandoned regional malls

The phrase urban apocalyptos came to mind this week - those activists who write about collapsing neighborhoods and make their living by hollering Armageddon. Consider those decay-chic writers who feed on the coolness of reporting blight, gang infestations and acres of abandoned houses. Existential nihilism gone amok!

Of course, sometimes they were (and are) right.

Remember those Michael Moore documentaries on corporate corruption, public fear and government inaction? He was probably right on many points especially the gun-ownership mess and the national health-care travesty (it helped Moore trigger an American renaissance in independent social cause films).

My personal favorite was Roger and Me describing the decline of Flint, Michigan. He targets Big Auto and claims they did little to save their cities, especially General Motors. He seeks out GM CEO Roger Smith to ask why. Against that backdrop Detroit's recent bankruptcy, the largest in US history, is a poignant reminder of Moore's message.

Subtopia - the good news

Subtopia was a term originally coined by UK urbanist Ian Nairn, (and later commandeered in eclectic music videos and by European apocalyptos).

The new subtopia arises phoenix-like from the ashes of the Great Recession. It is an idea similar to Capitalism 3.0, a book about a new economics where citizen-owned, market-based commons trusts purchase back their city.

Subtopia offers a way to rethink dying cities, a kind of survival-through-planned-shrinkage. While New Urbanists return to Mayberry, the Subtopians turn abandoned properties and buildings into community land banks. Fed up with slumlords who let empty homes sit and rot for years, they shut down entire neighborhoods of abandoned homes.

The posterchild for subtopian land use experimentation is Flint, Michigan (Moore's hometown). The hope is they will ignite a renaissance to revitalize blight.

Says the New York Times: The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.

This came to mind as I read a national plan to bulldoze acres of urban rot and decapitate what was once urban life. Subtopia is an interesting twist with all sorts of possibilities like Karen Dybis's story Designing a Better Detroit.

Is it possible that out of this crisis new ideas will emerge for rebirth?

Policing Detroit 2023 - ED Series 209 versus G3.mp4

The latest police vehicle in the fleet - the G3.mp4 - top-of-the-line

Consider the AC/DC lyrics in the above advertisement for the Lenco Bearcat G3.mp4 police vehicle:

I was caught
In the middle of a railroad track 
I looked 'round,
And I knew there was no turning back
My mind raced
And I thought what could I do? 
And I knew
There was no help, no help from you

An omen perhaps of a possible future?

I'm thinking of our LISC friends in Detroit this week as I watch with sadness the news of that city's bankruptcy. On the heels of a number of other Great Recession city bankruptcies, this is the largest in US history.

Just imagine broken police cars with no fuel, employee payrolls empty, acres of abandoned homes! Is there any doubt this is Toffler's hinge in history?  I wonder what future that hinge will open?

Today the Wall Street Journal, that staid fixture not known for radical thought, foreshadowed one future in Risk of the Warrior Cop.

It describes the increasing militarization of American policing. Those familiar with SafeGrowth may remember my blogs on combat policing and warrior cops. Some say my combat cop versus community cop dichotomy is unfair. Both are needed, right?

Maybe. But one wonders why the Cobb County Police require an amphibious military tank? Perhaps "tank" overstates. (How about military-grade, turbo-charged, armored personnel carrier with thermal imaging and tear gas grenade launchers?) Or why does the Richland County Sheriff require, "a machine-gun equipped armored personnel carrier that he nicknamed The Peacemaker."

Fueling this trend, in 2011 the Department of Defense gave away almost $500 million worth of military equipment to police.

Former Kansas City police chief Joseph McNamara warns police militarization is risky and counterproductive. "It's totally contrary to what we think is good policing, which is community policing".

With apologies to Detroit, all this domestic militarization brought to mind a future portrayed in a 1987 film. Then it dawned on me! (Cue sarcastic tone). I know exactly what law enforcement needs... The Enforcement Droid series 209, programmed of course for urban pacification.

If it wasn't so possible, it would be funny.

And now, for something completely different...

RoboCop portray's a failed policing system in a dystopian future - photo Sony Corp.

While governments in the UK are taking the remarkable step of hiring security to privatize police, something equally remarkable, and almost unnoticed, is unfolding in Detroit. 

Resident groups, fed-up with declining resources, a cash-strapped police department and crime and disorder, have decided to take advantage of a recently updated Michigan law - the Home Rule City Act - and hire their own private security to police their neighborhoods. Council has yet to approve the proposal. 

The Act allows neighborhoods to levy a service fee on residents for private security. In America, neighborhood's hiring their own security is not new. Allowing neighborhoods to tax themselves to fund it…that is!  

Drastic times call for drastic measures! Really? Without clearly thought out public policy? Without proper hiring benchmarks? Without quality control for training and selection? Who will do that? The Detroit police? How can Detroit police monitor, control, or audit quality of neighborhood security when they are too cash-strapped to deliver services themselves? 

Pythonic thinking to solve the privatization crisis

In a stunning leap of Monty Python logic, I'm told the British Home Office thinks it can do all that quality control, monitoring and auditing of UK police privatization themselves. After all, as this Pythonic thinking goes, they did it for public police…that is to say the same "inefficient" public police the government is now privatizing. 

In other words, more bureaucracy to control outsourcing due to funding shortfalls for inefficient policing from government funding. Blimey! That circular logic makes one's head spin. It's the Ministry of Silly Walks through and through.

And how's that working for them? I just read news that a former division of Hallibuton Inc was a leading bidder to privatize UK police services. That's Halliburton - the same military-industrial giant of Iraq infamy. The same Halliburton implicated in the Gulf Oil spill a few years ago. 

There is nothing wrong with private security (in fact the opposite) as long as it is administered properly and monitored for quality by qualified experts. But does Detroit really want in on this game without well-thought policy mechanisms? 

Is it just me, or does the dystopian RoboCop future seem just a bit closer today?

Welcome news from Detroit

Detroit skyline from the shores of Windsor, Canada

At a time when crashing municipal economies and blighted cities are too common, there is an American organization that does some pretty incredible community development work. It's the Local Initiatives Support Corporation - LISC - particularly one part of it called Community Safety Initiatives.

In the upcoming CPTED Perspective newsletter this month there is an article about good news in Detroit. That good news was helped along by LISC/CSI efforts.

Citizens in Detroit's Central Woodward/North End neighborhood have a new approach to build a safe and sustainable neighborhood and protect the future of their community.

They call it their "Safety Management Program".

Says one review of the program: "It calls for the creation of a Community Safety Coordinator who could shepherd the project. Bridget Vance was hired for this role. Vance received additional training from the successful SafeGrowth training program coordinated by the Community Safety Initiative of the national LISC office.

Finding such a community activator is a common theme in successful community development. Witness previous blogs about community activators in Montreal and transforming space into place in Portland.

Another quote:

A key element of the Program is that she also takes a grass-roots approach. She established an open line of communication with area residents by attending block club meetings, faith-based functions and hosting monthly safety meetings and workshops. Area residents became true advocates for safety and were empowered to take an active role in developing problem-solving strategies.

Check out the LISC article.

The International CPTED Association newsletter article comes out in three weeks. Watch for it here