Third-Generation CPTED in post-pandemic cities

What will cities look like and how will neighbourhoods function in the 21st Century?

by Mateja Mihinjac

A couple of weeks ago Greg Saville and I presented an online masterclass for the International CPTED Association in which we talked about the evolution of CPTED. We described the journey from the early urbanist and architectural influences in the Jacobs/Newman CPTED era through to the criminological, psychological and sociological research that informed our development of Third-Generation CPTED, a theory we introduced in 2019. 

We described some of our most recent advancements to the theory and we presented four principles that inform liveable neighbourhoods – we call them the 4S of Third-Generation CPTED.

From the beginning of the CPTED movement, Florida State University’s Professor C. Ray Jeffery called for interconnections between all sorts of environments - from psychological and biological to urban and social - in order to create a truly “environmental” crime prevention. 

Twenty years ago, South African researcher Chrisna Du Plessis made a similar connection between sustainable urban development, quality of life, and crime prevention. In 2014, Paul Cozens in Australia made the point that CPTED needed a much broader view of wider environments, specifically public health and urban sustainability. These authors, and others, laid the foundation for what we later developed into Third-Generation CPTED.

The story below describes how we consolidated that early work into a new, coherent theory of crime prevention. 

Hanging gardens and building greenery contribute to environmental sustainability
- photo by bobarc, Creative Commons

AN INTEGRATED THEORY

One of the main characteristics of Third-Generation CPTED lies in the amalgamation of safety with neighbourhood liveability. The theory says that highly liveable neighbourhoods should offer opportunities to satisfy the basic, moderate, and also the highest-level human needs at the same time – a process that psychologist Abraham Maslow described as a hierarchy-of-human-needs. 

This means that advanced neighbourhoods will have already addressed basic physiological, psychological, and social needs. When crime and safety risks emerge, that neighbourhood will have the capacity to proactively address them through collaborative local plans. In such places, residents themselves will have resources for pro-social activities, to engage in activities that satisfy what Maslow called self-actualization or access to activities that allow them to positively contribute to the lives of others beyond one’s self (Maslow describes this as self-transcendence). 

Maslow's hierarchy and neighbourhood liveability

When a neighbourhood has that kind of capacity, it becomes a thriving and collaborative place of joy, contentment, safety, and sustainability. For many, if not most, such neighbourhoods help children socialize and thrive, and adults gain personal fulfillment from the urban design, cultural excitement, and pro-social opportunities that flourish there. Opportunities for crime are minimized and opportunities for personal satisfaction are maximized. The key is to extend public safety and crime prevention beyond the simple focus on crime and onto the liveability and sustainability of neighbourhoods. 

 

Future cities must learn from, not repeat, ancient cities. Third-Generation CPTED
helps us use new discoveries in neighbourhood liveability

In Third-Generation CPTED we built neighbourhood liveability around four principles emerging directly from Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. These principles act as the framework for this integrated theory of crime prevention and they are centred around sustainability: environmental, economic, social, and public health sustainability. We call them 4S (sustainability x 4).

THE 4S AND THE LINK TO CRIME 

There is research support for the preventive mechanisms in each of these four sustainability principles. For example, public health research demonstrates how physical exercise through neighbourhood walking enhances safety from crime.

The presence of those afflicted with mental health problems in a neighbourhood has long been known to contribute to conflict and suffering. Accordingly, there are many strategies that contribute to building the mental health of a neighbourhood, such as emotional intelligence training, self-awareness and meditation training, or dealing with risk factors from early childhood personal trauma.

Third-Generation CPTED employs 4S

Similarly, environmental factors can also provide a preventive shield, such as the greening of vacant lots to decrease gun assaults or enhancing overhead tree canopies to reduce street crime.

Autumn in the Bornste Hamlet, Germany. Tree canopies in urban areas need maintenance but provide beauty and connection to nature - photo by Deitmar Rabish, Creative Commons 

Investment in local infrastructure enhances economic sustainability and attention to social sustainability through grassroots community-based developments enhances the quality of life for local residents and can help reduce crime. 

Our proposition is that high-performing neighbourhoods designed around each of these four sustainability principles offer a more long-term solution to prevent crime and improve the quality of life. 

These four sustainability principles provide a powerful new integrated model for planning safer and resilient neighbourhoods in post-pandemic, 21st Century cities.

An alternate future for neighborhood living

Night lighting along cohousing common walkway - photo McAmant & Durrett

Given the unsustainabity of sprawl, the persistence of crime hotspots, and the unending call for a stonger sense of community, there is a thirst for on-the-ground examples of cohesive, safer and resilient neighborhoods. Cohousing is one.

I’ve been visiting cohousing projects around Denver over the past few months and working with a group establishing an art and culture oriented cohousing community. Here is what I’ve learned.

Cohousing is not for everyone. Some prefer towering condo apartments. Others prefer remote homes hidden in the bush. Those, of course, are legitimate choices.

However the overall trend is in the opposite direction. Over 80% of the developed world lives in urbanized cities. The UN says the majority of the world is now urban. More people migrate into cities than ever before. The truth is, cyber-creep notwithstanding, we are urban and we are social.

COHOUSING

I’ve been following the cohousing movement for 20 years. I described cohousing here 5 years ago -  Avoiding a wire-esque future and Fernwood Urban Village in Victoria, BC.

Most cohousing projects look like 25-35 unit condominiums with private residences and amenities similar to those anywhere. Yet cohousing communities are designed differently because they are designed by and for residents themselves in collaboration with architects. Cars are kept to perimeter parking and pedestrian walkways, gardens, and common greenspace areas are in the center.

Tour of community house dining room at Nyland Cohousing - Lafayette, Colorado

Cohousing governance is painfully democratic, intricate, and based on extended friendship networks. Those networks emerge from things like carpooling, shared childcare, sharing tools and common facilities like workshops and community gardens. Networks emerge from regular training in conflict resolution, mediation, and governance methods - the latest version is sociocracy. In the cohousing group I work with we are offering training in emotional intelligence skills.

Cohousing architecture includes a central common house with a library, guest rooms, play areas for kids and a large dining/kitchen area for community meals a few times a week.

Homes along the common walkway at Nyland Cohousing

REVEALING DATA

A few years ago the Cohousing Association of the United States funded a national survey of the cohousing phenomenon. How successful is cohousing and how does it differ?

Here is what it found:

• Cohousers described more opportunities for personal growth, especially with group trainings in communication and conflict resolution
• In 2011 there were 118 completed U.S. cohousing projects - another 100 under construction. 
• Cohousing was more financially stable during the Great Recession
• During the recession, less than a dozen cohousing units were foreclosed, out of thousands - far below national rates 

Lounge and fireplace at Nyland common house - a place to relax

In my experience, cohousing has lower crime and a greater desire for collaboration on difficult problems. They live more sustainably with shared gardening, recycling and ride sharing. And at the very core of social sustainability, they seem to call police less frequently to solve most problems that they instead solve themselves.

There are still issues to resolve in cohousing. For example internal conflict is lessened but it is not absent. But on whole cohousing is the most cohesive, safe and resilient neighborhood design I've seen yet. It’s a model worth considering in the 21st Century city.

Green answers for crime - 3rd Gen CPTED

Some words confuse rather than clarify, like "sustainability”. Planners use it to mean sustaining a viable neighborhood. In CPTED it means a prevention program that lasts. But in science it means we must sustain the natural world of water, air, land, flora and fauna so that we may continue to…well, live.

The science version of “sustainability” ranks a tad higher on the What-Really-Matters-in-Life-o-Meter. 

Third Generation CPTED hopes to bridge the sustainability gap between places, people, and the natural world. 3rd Gen CPTED emerged from an M.I.T. paper for the U.N. regarding improving urban security through green environmental design. 

3RD GEN CPTED

I highlighted it two years ago in 3rd Generation CPTED and the eco-friendly city.

The key idea:

The premise of third-generation CPTED is that a sustainable, green urbanity is perceived by its members and the outsiders as safe. Third generation CPTED’s focus on sustainable green environmental design strategies insists on practical measures, physically or cybernetically enhanced, that foster the perception of urban space as safe beyond mere concerns about crime.

Obviously 3rd Generation CPTED theory has tremendous promise. 

Except 3rd Generation CPTED does not exist! 

It is an idea from a discussion paper! There is no formal theory. No one has deployed and tested its principles. Those who wish to claim the 3rd Generation mantle will cling to jelly. Like ether - it’s there, but it’s not there. Yet!

It is time for the emergence of 3rd Generation CPTED. It must be a real theory with practical strategies. 

But that birth rings alarm bells. As co-developer with Gerry Cleveland of 2nd Generation CPTED, we warn there will be obstacles along the way. Here are a few alarms we faced:

THE OBSTACLES 

• Demands to modify. Sometimes that makes sense. Walter Dekeseredy suggested adding gender to create “gendered 2nd Generation CPTED”. It was a reasonable proposition now inhabiting the community culture principle of 2nd Gen. Third Gen will be no different. This is how science proceeds.

• The Comfort Clingers. There are many CPTED Traditionalists and opportunity theorists of a particular vintage who cling to 1st Gen and still don’t like 2nd Gen because they think it stains original CPTED with the “white noise” of social relationships (as though social relationships had nothing to do with crime). What deluded silliness. No doubt there will be climate-change deniers who ignore 3rd Gen and cling to lights and CCTV.

• Turf protection. Some academics describe 2nd Gen as fluff, partly due to white noise silliness and possibly because they didn’t invent it. But take a moment and consider the irony dripping off that sophistry: The theorist protects his turf from intrusions with the same vigor that wolves protect their kill in the forest. Yet when the Grizzly bear shows up at a wolf kill, the wolves discover they are not top predator! Same with 2nd and 3rd Gen CPTED. What the turf protectors will discover is that it is the most suitable theories that prevail, not those with the loudest voices. 

• The number crunchers. Some demand more evaluations ignoring that plenty of empirical evidence already exists on 2nd Generation CPTED, for example Robert Sampson’s expansive book on the power of collective efficacy or Steven Schneiders research showing the success of collective action for prevention crime.

Ultimately, as with all new theories, 3rd Generation CPTED will survive based on its logic and practical use. Innovative, courageous, and committed researchers… apply here!

Sustainability and Safety Through a Community Garden

Northey Street City Farm. Activating space on market day - all photos by Mateja Mihinjac

GUEST BLOG

Mateja Mihinjac is a criminologist completing doctoral research in CPTED at Griffith University, Australia. She is a member of the International CPTED Association and been involved in criminal justice issues in Europe and Australia for a number of years. Mateja’s guest blog offers an excellent example of placemaking through community gardens.  

***
For an avid market-goer like myself, Northey Street City Farm with a Sunday organic market is a perfect place to stock up on my fruit and veggies for the week. By promoting social interactions at a micro-level, community gardens like Northey improve community integration, strengthen social ties, promote wellbeing and even improve safety.

These by-products of community garden activities cumulate in social capacity building (a basic principle of 2nd Generation CPTED), which advances self-sufficiency and a sense of community ownership. In turn that promotes what Jane Jacobs famously called the healthy ecosystem.

Urban gardens for placemaking have made appearances in this blog, such as those in Portland and Indianapolis. The Northey Street City Farm provides yet another version - the urban farmer's market.

A market-goer pedaling her own smoothie

Located in the suburb of Windsor in Brisbane, Australia, Northey gets swamped by both stallholders as providers of sustainably grown local produce and Brisbane residents as its consumers. It is, however, more than just a market.

Northey Farm is also a welcoming community garden that has been open since 1994 as a non-profit community organisation offering economically sustainable produce and community building activities through permaculture.

On a daily basis this place is activated by a number of placemaking activities; tours around the Farm, courses teaching how to start a community garden, how to garden and plant, cultural events, and playgroups for kids. The place also offers a quick meal and a cuppa at the garden’s café or you can maintain your own vegetable garden within the Farm community.

Offering ample opportunities for refreshment and interaction

Translating these ideas across the whole city offers the prospect for building a vibrant city with positive interpersonal relations. It will help connect people with their environment while offering opportunities for fun and exploration.

Northey Farm symbolises the ideas stemming from Jane Jacobs’s vision of a modern urban city—to become a safe and liveable ecosystem. Because it is sustainable, it demonstrates how we can create thriving urban ecosystems in the years ahead.

View of the cafe at the centre of the market

The cult of the mouse - Celebration

Idyllic design does not eradicate crime

This week I visited a lovely central Florida town. Annual family income: twice the Florida average. Poverty rate: same as similar towns elsewhere. Crime rate: low. (It did recently suffer it's first murder in 14 years and another troubled fellow committed suicide).

Of 100 homes sold this past year 40% were foreclosures, just like other towns suffering the Great Recession.

For a small town this is all fairly typical, except for one thing. This town is the world-famous, Disney-built, Celebration.

This is a model of new urbanism, a place of NY Times feature stories, and a place where best selling books are written.

Truman and Stepford's wives would love Celebration

Celebration is a cultural archetype; think films like Stepford Wives and The Truman Show. One Celebration street runs straight into Disney World.

Acolytes glorify Celebration as a return to Mayberry. In 2001 the Urban Land Institute called it the "community of the year". They ignored the lack of elected government and the control by a corporation that owns Celebration. Definitely not typical!

Detractors revile Celebration as the cult of the mouse. They describe an "oppressive Declaration of Covenants" restricting political signs, house colors, unruly pets and so on. They ignore that restrictive covenants are common in suburbs everywhere!

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

What I saw:

• A picturesque, downtown and enchanting lakeside boardwalk
• Relaxed strolling areas, rocking chairs, beautiful architecture
• Abundant shoppers and walkers - most, it seemed, were tourists
• No downtown grocery or drug stores (walkability?)
• A closed-down cinema but open ice-cream shoppe
• No visible graffiti or vandalism.

When it comes to urban habitat, we tend to judge everything. Our yardsticks range from aesthetics and walkability to prosperity and safety. By some measures (aesthetics and environmental sustainability here versus gas-guzzling suburbs) Celebration succeeds over other places. By other measures, less so.

Celebration offers a special kind of lifestyle choice. Some would not choose it. Others would.

It's fascinating. I've blogged before about urban scale and crime. As the recent murder and suicide confirm, idyllic large-scale design cannot eradicate all social ills. Yet I would probably try living there.

At least for awhile.

LEDs - New technology to light up your life

Night-time lighting in many cities is awful

GUEST BLOG

When it comes to safety on the street, we've talked about the role of walkability and lighting. Last week we talked about sustainability and green spaces in our civic DNA. Today guest blogger Randy Atlas introduces a new technology that combines natural surveillance with environmental sustainability.

Randall Atlas is a nationally recognized criminologist and architect specializing in CPTED. He is author of numerous publications about CPTED including his most recent book 21st Century Security and Crime Prevention: Designing for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Crime Prevention.

A similar version to this blog will appear in the upcoming CPTED Perspective newsletter.


The LEED rating system has become the driving force behind the green building movement in America. This program is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

One of the most effective methods in CPTED is the use of natural surveillance. Natural surveillance limits the opportunity for crime by taking steps to increase the perception that people can be seen, thereby naturally reducing the risk of crime. Jane Jacobs formulated the natural surveillance strategy based on her work in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Nighttime lighting helps promote natural surveillance. A well lit parking lot or outdoor area is an extremely important feature of public spaces for numerous reasons. Not only does it deter crime and vandalism, it can attract customers, facilitate traffic and pedestrian safety, and increase economic development. Proper lighting provides an individual with choices on movement: whether to go forward or back from a particular area.

Lighting can also be energy draining and costly, harming the environment. The Light Emitting Diode - LED - is a new technology appearing in North American cities with superior energy efficiency and excellent lighting characteristics. LED also is more durable and has lower operating costs than traditional outdoor lighting.

New LED technology is so efficient it can light up sports stadiums

THE OAKLAND EXPERIMENT

The Emerging Technologies Program of Pacific Gas and Electric Company in Oakland, California recently studied the applicability of LED luminaries in a street lighting application.

After concluding from the first phase that “no significant concerns (were) so identified” of the likelihood of any negative safety impacts from the installation of the LED luminaries on a public street, the project moved into the second phase. This involved the replacement of fifteen 121 watt high pressure sodium lights in an Oakland, CA neighborhood with the same number of new ‘Beta’ LED 78 watt lights from Ruud Lighting.

The results indicate that the LED lights drew an average 35% less power than the standard high pressure sodium lights used by most cities. Over the course of a year each LED light saves 178 kWh.

Lighting that is poorly planned may waste energy, decrease vehicle and pedestrian safety, and may result in light pollution. It is important first to identify energy efficiency and safety goals and then explore all the options, such as LED lights. That is the key for finding a proper balance between LEED and CPTED. It is also how we will improve urban developments and our way of life in future.

Sustainability and safety - Civic DNA for the 21st Century

Built in the 1960s, Toronto's iconic city hall became an architectural landmark

I walked around Toronto's city hall yesterday. It reminded me of the unnecessary conflict between environmental sustainability and safety. This is particularly curious given the greening of urban streetscapes in recent years.

The emerging dialogue about security, safety, and sustainability is important. Last year the Built Environment journal published a series of articles on the topic. This year there will be presentations at the International CPTED Conference.

Environmental sustainability rarely makes it into CPTED recommendations. Practitioners over-trim trees or over-light walkways like a floodlit night-time game at a stadium.

Removing trees, paving land, and burning excessive energy are not sustainable. They are not the only options for safety. Being blind to this is not only unfortunate. As anyone who reads science knows (or has read any legitimate environmental story in the past decade) climate change is real. Ignoring it is unethical.

It need not be so.

There are plenty of safe options. Urban gardens humanize vacant land, for example in Boston and Philadelphia. Live walls prevent graffiti. All which brings me to Toronto's new city hall. More specifically, the recent opening of the massive green roof and public garden.

Roof garden for the public

Trees, shrubs and landscapes now cover once desolate slabs of cement sameness. Sitting areas offer respite and ample emergency phones provide access to security. The greenery enhances the iconic structure of the building. Why, I wonder, wasn't it done when the structure was built? The advantage of retrospect perhaps?

Best of all I watched people taking respite from the busy streets below. Legitimate "eyes on this street" provides what Oscar Newman called defensible space.

Safety and sustainability can become part of our civic DNA if we learn how to make it part of the CPTED and SafeGrowth message.

Sitting areas, safety phones, and respite from the street

NIMBYism, slum dwellers and fear of the "other"

Noted Australian social planner, Wendy Sarkissian submitted a guest blog last year regarding fear of the "other". Here is another entry from Wendy she kindly lent from her own blog at Kitchen Table Sustainability (you'll find her blog at Community Sustainability Handbook under the Toolkit section on the right of this page)


Trouble in Paradise

Tomorrow evening my neighbours are meeting to decide whether or not to try to ban dual occupancy (commonly called accessory dwelling units) in this eco-village of 43 dwellings on 22 hectares [54 acres]. The whole process has me mightily confused.

Imagine the contradictions. Here we are living on half an acre in a Permaculture community committed to self-sufficiency and sustainability principles.

We live in a low-income community (Nimbin, population 350) with a desperate shortage of housing, especially for lower income residents. And most of us do not grow much food – if any – on our properties. I think every lot has at least one car. We’re highly automobile-dependent and we’re certainly not secure in terms of food production.

A permaculture community

But we’re trying. The Jarlanbah community, designed by formidable Permaculture designer, Robyn Francis, who lives down the road at the Djanbung Gardens Permaculture Education Centre was established in 1993 and the first residents moved in in 1994.

Now many of us are ageing and looking for opportunities to age in place and to have the possibility of a caregiver living on our house block. Or to have an income stream from renting a small dwelling on our land.

Recently, the Jarlanbah Review Sub-committee rejected a proposal by one of our neighbours for a dual occupancy arrangement on his block. In North America, this is generally called an “accessory dwelling unit”.

This case, which is likely to go to a formal mediation session, has caused a huge amount of discussion in our community. Some of us, citing global sustainability principles, Peak Oil, automobile dependence and the needs of an ageing, rural population, want to be able to have two dwellings on a lot. We can’t see how this would differ – in planning terms — from, say, a house with four or more bedrooms for a large family or shared household. We don’t see that the impacts on our road infrastructure would be that dramatic.

Not everyone would want to have another dwelling on their lot (perhaps half might – eventually) and those who did could pay extra to reflect the wear and tear that another vehicle might cause (assuming that vehicles would not be shared).

"It'll turn Jarlanbah into a slum"

But not all residents feel this way. Others are afraid that having a few more dwellings will open the floodgates. “It’ll turn Jarlanbah into a slum and a ghetto,” remarked one of the long-term residents, while another claimed that she did not move to Nimbin “to live in cluster housing.” “This is not inner city Redfern,” [a high crime community in Sydney] claimed another.

As a Jarlanbah resident who has spent a whole career (since 1967) working in housing and planning, I am curious to understand what this really means.

Where would these road-wrecking new slum-dwellers come from? How could a ghetto emerge as a result of density increase?

Nevertheless, this small village community is about to embark on an open, democratic, community discussion on this matter.