Can you avoid unintended consequences?

 

The story of unintended consequences at 
the Leaning Tower of Pisa - photo Arne Müseler 
by CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons

by Larry Leach

When we work in large and small neighbourhoods, conversations about safety often focus on surface-level solutions. Residents may notice thefts or disturbances and jump to straightforward fixes: put up a fence, lock the gate, install cameras. While those steps can help, they rarely address the deeper roots of the problem. What if the real solution lies far beneath the surface, not just in reducing harm, but in preventing it altogether?

Jane Jacobs, in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, wrote:

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

If the narrative is that people are stealing from our backyard to support their drug habit, does building a fence or locking your gate solve that? Probably not, unless that fence convinces that person to decide they need help to better their lives. This certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build the fence, but to say it’s only a tiny part of keeping your property safe. 

Connecting with your community and establishing solid plans to work on the root causes of the problem will be the long-term solution.

Building a fence and locking a gate certainly will help for a short time, but what will change the behaviour of the would-be thief? Will they victimize your neighbour, who might be more vulnerable and unable to afford to build that fence? Will they break your fence to get in, causing you more costs? Either way, the fence is not likely to stop them from their anti-social behaviour. But what will?

The 1950s public housing "Pruitt Igoe" apartments in
St. Louis - constructed with good intentions
- Public Domain (US federal government)

By the end of the decade, crime and vacancy were 
so bad at Pruitt-Igoe, the entire project was emptied and demolished
- Public Domain (US federal government)

ENGAGEMENT IS THE MAGIC

This blog has featured many examples about how organizers use engagement tools to help trigger engagement and SafeGrowth examples from the Vancouver Strathcona Community Policing Centre.

The magic is to get involved with your community. Learn and understand your community. Who is in it? What are the local issues? Are there folks struggling? Who visits our community? These are all things that good SafeGrowth training and engagement can help to parse out.  At the end of the day, true safety includes the success of all who live, work, and visit in the community. One might call that “livability” as we do with third-generation CPTED.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point”, he discusses a major unintended consequence. One community’s overstory was a monoculture of high-achievement attitudes that turned into a ripple of suicides among young people. The local society obviously didn’t intend this, but clearly didn’t factor in what kind of pressure that might potentially place on a young person to win at sports and achieve high marks academically. Dig deep and question your assumptions before deciding what your community’s story is.

A local example of this is a wonderful group in Calgary called “Brown Bagging for Calgary’s kids” that makes lunches for students every day in Calgary, who may not have one in school. The essence of this is the idea that kids can’t learn on an empty stomach. A noble and remarkable goal to achieve, but once you get to the kids that needed it (maybe only for a short time) and it’s available to all, do you demotivate parents’ responsibility to feed their own children? 

The unintended consequences of fences

I have blogged about other issues and topics for meaningful engagement, such as the Good Neighbour Agreement. 

Ultimately, without a research study, factors like parental demotivation and the effectiveness of Good Neighbourhood Agreements are difficult to assess. They may have unintended consequences that need further examination. 

DO FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBOURS?

Lastly, it’s good to be aware that what looks like a good security measure can result in looking unapproachable and unwelcoming. The fence mentioned earlier is a great example of this. If a Community Hall puts up a fence, it may prevent the very thing a community hall should be welcoming. Designing a welcoming space comes with certain vulnerabilities, but if you can strike a balance between security and approachable you can hit that “sweet spot”, helping the community to feel more connected and livable. 

To hammer the point home, a local grocery store posts printed grainy photos on their front door of people that they allege stole something from their store. While this might seem like a good deterrent for criminals to the store management, what they miss is how it makes it’s customers feel as they enter the store. We have blogged before about fences and unintended consequences.

We advise in our classes that it is always wise to consider different perspectives when looking at crime prevention plans. SafeGrowth and CPTED have many examples showing how to make a safer, more livable, place, considering all the potential unintended consequences.

Tucson's urban fabric

Declining neighborhoods can be transformed

The urban fabric of a place is what we see in our daily lives. The details of the physical environment matter. Details make the difference.

I recently visited Tucson, a city in the desert of Arizona with a half million residents. It was a place of residential fences. I've never seen so many. Everyone, it seems, gates their property.














The old pithy saying proclaims; Good fences make good neighbors. I've always thought good neighbors make good neighbors. Too many fences actually make streets ugly. Here, too many streets were corridors of fences.

Yet even in this fence infested city there are ways to beautify. Tucson has some great examples of community branding and neighborhood art, what SafeGrowth calls community culture. Planners know this as placemaking.

Signage branding in the university district

One lower income neighborhood marked their entranceway with a decorative entranceway, lined nearby freeway walls with murals, and organized to get funding to build a beautiful park.

Murals to beautify

In the university area a lively bohemian street was branded with signs and street art. Even at night-time the eye was treated to a warm orange pallate on parking lot walls with what would normally be insufficient low pressure sodium lighting.

Low lighting can work if done properly

The devil is clearly in the details of our urban fabric. Now if only we could get placemaking details into commercial suburban strips!