Stockholm is burning - back to our future

This past week, following a police shooting, a civilized Sweden erupted into days of rioting from the immigrant suburbs of their capital city. In fact, streets are burning now as I write this.

In 2005 this happened in the underprivileged immigrant suburb of Chichy, Paris. In 2011 it started in Tottenham, the immigrant suburbs of London following (yet again) a police shooting. In every case a police related death of a local resident sparked the riots.

Is the European experiment unravelling when it's immigrant suburbs live such a fragile thread away from chaos. Is European immigration really that different from the US and Canada?

Canada has immigration rates higher than European cities. Yet Canada's occasional hockey riots or student tuition protests seem petty by comparison and - forgive my petulance - more the stuff of privileged millennials. Recent Canadian First Nations native protests have far more legitimacy in my biased view (though native people are neither immigrants nor suburban).

Swedish cops in Husby, Stockholm. Photo by Johan Nilsson, Getty Images

Richard Florida has been prophesizing about new urban geographies following the Great Recession - especially the suburban poor. I don't think he expected the explosion to start in Europe, and certainly not in peaceful Sweden.

The European conflagrations are not your typical Mayday riots spawned by rabble-rousing anarchist-communist radicals. Suburban immigrant riots, police shootings, and race issues are a very different thing. In so many ways it reminds me of the urban American riots during the turbulent 1960s, except this time it is suburban and immigrant-based.

I wonder if suburban poverty and crime in North America will take us back to that future?

Completing the equation - part 2

We must rethink land use zoning

There were interesting comments to my last blog about CPTED, design guidelines and the incomplete equation.

My view is that without social capital, territoriality doesn't work well. Offenders usually want to avoid detection when they steal, burgle or rob which is why natural surveillance helps prevent crime. But that is only true when offenders fear someone will apprehend them (or get the police). In other words, someone must care enough about their neighborhood to do something. That's social capital.

To cultivate social capital we must re-learn how to better build and re-create neighborhoods from the ground up.

Jane Jacobs champions this idea in her famous incantation when she says the public peace is kept by an intricate network of voluntary controls and standards among people themselves. That is why we created 2nd Generation CPTED.

WHAT IS SOCIAL CAPITAL?

Social capital is the idea that within healthy neighborhoods there is a subtle system of what anthropologist Edward Hall called social dos and don'ts. It's the idea that there is wide range of social activities, people, services, businesses and cultural events that encourage local folks to share, sell, play, and relax. Social capital helps them tackle their own neighborhood problems. Service providers (e.g. police) are still available, but the majority of issues are dealt with internally.

There are plenty of neighborhoods where this happens. Westville in New Haven and the San Romanoway Apartments in Toronto are two. Last month I discussed Hollygrove, the New Orleans neighborhood where impressive improvements have been underway for a few years. Last year Louisiana AARP asked me to introduce CPTED in a SafeGrowth format.

SUCCESS IN HOLLYGROVE

This week, AARP posted an article and video about the residents and their work in Hollygrove. The video shows what in 2nd Generation CPTED we call "social stabilizers". My favorites are the "Hollygove Originals" and the walking club.

Click here to watch the AARP video of social capital at work!

CPTED-styled, urban design guidelines are a small step in that direction. But guidelines will not create Hollygrove, Westville or San Romanoway. Design guidelines fall short.

How can we encourage local interest and ownership, community driven initiatives such as community gardens, artists moving into and reusing old areas, and locally improved public spaces? Can urban planning help?

The world of land use planning (distinct from other forms of planning) is usually the world of zoning. Traditional zoning is done through setbacks, floor-space ratios, and restricted/permitted land use categories. It can be very restrictive and changes (variances) to it can be awkward, difficult and politically dangerous. From a CPTED perspective, traditional zoning says little about safety.

Unlike traditional zoning, form-based zoning controls the physical look of a place through design guidelines. For example the shape of building facades, types and sizes of streets, and the scale of architecture prescribes the what the neighborhood will look like. For CPTED guidelines, form-based zoning is ideal. However, this does not lead to social capital.

ZONING FOR PERFORMANCE - THE FUTURE OF CPTED?

Performance zoning is another alternative. Where traditional zoning specifies the types of use, performance zoning specifies only the intensity and results of that land use. It deals not with the type of use, but the performance of that development and how it impacts surrounding areas.

Performance zoning is already working in a few places. Early adopters include transport planners aiming to require roadway builders to adopt designs to cut traffic fatalities.

Performance zoning is more flexible than traditional or form-based zoning. It better accommodates market principles, social activities, and environmental protection.

Performance zoning in Breckenridge, Colorado

It's not difficult to see both CPTED guidelines and social capital as performance measures in such a place. There are helpful websites to learn the pros and cons of performance based zoning and the international experience with performance based planning.

Today's zoning denies certain uses or forms when developers submit their plans. Performance zoning evaluates the impacts of land uses directly. Property owners have the obligation, cost risk, and duty to fit the required performance to their land - and the freedom to use their own creativity in an innovative way.

As Jacobs often noted, one of the first ingredients of social capital is local innovation. Richard Florida says the same thing when interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Perhaps that's how we solve the safety equation in the 21st Century city?

Harnessing the Creative Class to control crime

The basic premise of SafeGrowth:: Crime is best tackled within the neighborhood by tapping into and harnessing the creativity and energy of the neighborhood dweller and functional neighborhood groups.

A provocative interview just aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBC. It is difficult to get anything quite this succinct through the U.S. media. It is about how cities can succeed as vibrant (and I would argue crime resistant) communities by tapping into the knowledge workers and the creative class.






If you've read Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone you'll recall how cities are hollowing out due to the privatization of public space, the massive growth of private property zones, private governance, and the decline of community.

This has huge safety and security fallout. Two examples: the rise of private policing and the spread of security cameras in public places.

This past Sunday the CBC aired an interview with famous urban studies scholar Richard Florida. He says the economic crash is a social re-set on how we will think and live in the years to come. He predicts which cities will lose and which cities will win. He is - as you might imagine - controversial. He is also necessary!

His most provocative line: the firms and cities that will succeed after the recession are those who tap into and harness the creativity and energy of the knowledge workers.

Florida on YouTube

Slums of the Future - The Suburb

I was asked this week to do a radio blog show March 12, Thursday at 2PM eastern time (see details below) The only topic I could imagine important enough was radical common sense and creativity. They seem the ultimate human commodity whenever crisis arrives at the door. Take, for example, the creation of future slums.

I've been saying for some years the American suburb - that monotone, energy-sucking, environmental monstrosity so embraced around the world, is becoming the slum of the future.



A few years ago some of my grad students in Sacramento drove to an apparently quiet suburban street and did a video cam drive-by. What they captured in their film was subtle, yet foreboding.

As the scene opens the houses on the street look suburban normal...with a few twists: Multi-family duplexes, cement lots replacing lawns, drapes covering window. What they discovered behind the drapes was another story: Overcrowding, high crime rates and fear off the charts. Gang shootings were not uncommon.

We were miles from downtown. Yet it felt like an urban slum.

This week in The Atlantic Monthly magazine there are series of articles about the economic collapse. There are two you should read: Richard Florida's article How the Crash Will Reshape America (see Florida's article) and Christopher Leinberger's article The Next Slum (see Leinberger's article) .

Florida believes the current crash will not look much like the Great Depression, but he does think it will reshape our urban geography. Some cities will flourish, some will not. The key to success will be the creativity of what he calls our Creative Class.

Leinberger takes the argument beyond. He thinks the crash will hasten the demise of the suburb. Goodbye to McMansion. Hello extinction. He cites data suggesting that 40% of today's large-lot homes will be vacant within 15 years.

This seems like a good time to talk about how we come out of these times. That's what our blog radio show is about.

The blog is moderated by my friend Deborah Osborne - an internationally recognized expert in crime analysis and former analyst with the Buffalo Police. She has been chair of the Police Futurists International and research fellow at the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

If there is anyone who thinks strategically and innovatively about the future, it is Deborah.

Join us live Thursday at 2PM eastern time.

Click here for details