Personal journey into CPTED - A planner's story

Marriott Bessborough hotel - historical landmark in downtown Saskatoon, Canada

by Elisabeth Miller

As a SafeGrowth advocate and senior urban planner in one of Canada’s major cities, Elisabeth Miller was one of the first Canadian planners to apply CPTED to her everyday work. She is an ICCP-certified CPTED professional with the International CPTED Association and an executive board member of that organization. She is an author of the book SafeGrowth, and a consultant to cities across Canada, the US, and Australia. She helped establish Saskatoon as the first city in Canada to adopt both CPTED and SafeGrowth as administrative policy. This is her story.

I am always curious when I meet other CPTED professionals or practitioners, what their background is, and how they arrived at incorporating CPTED into their professional work. CPTED, especially Second Generation and Third Generation CPTED, speaks to my heart and I can see how proper and inclusive application of CPTED would be helpful to any community. 

I first heard of CPTED at a British Columbia conference about 25 years ago in the mid-90s. It sounded very interesting and an excellent way to help make my community safe. Shortly after this conference in 1996, I attended a 5-day training on CPTED, a course that taught both 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED. I was hooked!

Elisabeth Miller - A personal story from her 25-year history
with urban planning and CPTED

My planning experience up to this point included neighbourhood planning and working directly with communities. Prior to that, I worked on municipal Concept and Sector plans, Land Use and Zoning Bylaws, and other policy related projects – activities that will be familiar to most urban planners. I believe I had a good variety of planning experiences.

The CPTED class was a very interesting combination of police (mostly police) with a few planners thrown in. It offered lectures, group work, site visits, buzz groups, and other problem-based learning activities to situate the learning in our brains. It was a very intense training environment – I loved every minute of it!

Once trained, my task was clear: Implementation!

And THAT was a big deal.

IMPLEMENTATION IS THE KEY

Fortunately, I had a very supportive manager. He also saw the benefit of including CPTED in the way we planned our city and encouraged me to include it wherever I could. So, I included it everywhere! I did not ask, I just included it and decided if the powers that be pushed back then I would deal with it then. 

I added knowledge of CPTED to job descriptions, reviewed plans and commented even if I wasn’t asked. I crafted an “elevator speech” to use on senior management and City Councillors whenever I had a captured audience in the elevator, and I brought various departments to work together to review civic projects.  The idea was, I help you and you help me.

Today, CPTED designs show up throughout Saskatoon
- in this case at the downtown transit center

Working together worked well for all. We decided it might be time to make this a formal part of a planning review, but how should we do this? It meant working with all the different departments that would be involved or who would benefit from a CPTED review. As a corporation, the City of Saskatoon made a conscious decision to start with our own civic projects before moving on to the private sector. This was a very interesting and challenging process.

I interviewed every departmental, divisional, or section manager responsible for projects that would benefit from the application of the principles of CPTED. That was almost a full-time job for a few months. Some were informed, others worried about added time, and there was a small group that really did not care. It was all part of the story that I uncovered. The next step was to get the private developers on board!

We met with local land developers to ensure they understood the process and that it would not cost them more time or money. That led to the establishment of The City of Saskatoon CPTED Review Committee.

Saskatoon's design guideline book provided for urban designers

In 2008 we created a formal administrative policy identifying what would be reviewed, who would do the reviews, and when they would be reviewed. The whole journey took years to accomplish and nowadays the Neighbourhood Safety section looks after the CPTED Review Committee as well as a number of other programs and activities that incorporate the principles of CPTED. 

Over the past 20 years, we managed to offer CPTED (and now SafeGrowth) training to over 400 staff members and others from the community. I believe that Saskatoon today is a safer city due to the work done by the Neighbourhood Safety section and the incorporation of CPTED and SafeGrowth into the planning process.

So, to my professional planning colleagues and other urban designers, the next time you notice someone excited to find out you are a planner at a CPTED activity or conference, it’s probably me. Say hello!

David slew Goliath - Money doesn't always rule in city development

Arvada is an historic, independent city in the western suburbs
of Denver - photo Creative Commons

by Gregory Saville

Amazon is a global, corporate superstar. Arvada is a suburban city 15 miles from downtown Denver, with 120,000 people spread in dozens of residential neighborhoods. The annual Arvada budget is $250 million compared to Amazon’s $1.6 trillion. It's David and Goliath. 

So you might wonder how Arvada could resist when Amazon showed up with a plan to build a 112,000 square foot distribution center - a delivery hub - onto a 36-acre undeveloped site. Amazon came with an offer of 2,000 jobs, tax revenues, and a green buffer to shield nearby housing. 

Yesterday Arvada council rejected the proposal. 

Triggered by a local citizen anti-development campaign, and a petition of 10,000 residents who opposed the plan, City Council voted 5-2 to reject the Amazon proposal. Why? And what does this have to do with neighborhood crime?

WHY?

Did the residents oppose Amazon’s taxation history (e.g.: media stories that they don’t pay enough)? Nope, that was not a main point of contention. Were there complaints about Amazon’s global environmental record? Nope. In fact, Amazon co-founded the Climate Pledge and Global Optimism program aiming for net-zero carbon in the next 20 years, ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, and spent $100 million into the Right Now Climate fund to focus on solutions to climate warming. Wow! That should impress even the naysayers. 

Not so in Arvada.

Local news coverage of the controversial Arvada vote

One environmental group complained that the development would destroy a nearby active wildlife habitat. But it was traffic congestion that carried the day, namely, complaints about hundreds of delivery vehicles and a 1,000 vehicle parking lot.

In a car-dependent suburb, where walking takes second place to driving, vehicle congestion is the thing.  It obviously was on the minds of the 5 councillors who voted it down. I’m sure 10,000 opposing petition signatures caught their attention.

HOW IS THIS CRIME RELATED?

The vote, of course, might have gone the other way. Amazon made a strong case and everyone loves to get stuff delivered promptly by Amazon – especially during this pandemic. Add to that two thousand jobs - not an insignificant number! 

But traffic jams and growing congestion is a powerful motivator in the face of a weak bus system and a new, but grossly underutilized, commuter rail line to downtown Denver. In American suburbs, cars rule!

Site rendering of the Amazon proposal from the Project Indiana website

The takeaway? When it comes to changing future cities for the better, it is crucial that we understand the politics, dynamics, and economics of land acquisition and usage. All the slick 3-D renderings, public statements, comprehensive plans, zoning regulations, and design guidelines, (such as CPTED design guidelines), do not matter one iota if resident expectations are unfulfilled.  

Nor does it matter to complain about racism, gentrification, or the “flat white urbanism” planning bias if new developments flail and falter at the altar of public expectations. (Not that any of those things were part of this story).

A REALISTIC WAY FORWARD

If we want to bring forth a new form of neighborhood safety planning (and in SafeGrowth, we do), we need to dive deeply into the mindset of local residents. We need to avoid NIMBY name-calling and figure how to work alongside residents from the get-go. 

In SafeGrowth we use co-planning workshops, Livability Academies, and other types of intense neighborhood engagement. This must happen long before development proposals are written up in some distant office. 

I’m unsure if a more exciting and beneficial outcome might have emerged from a more collaborative planning process. I suspect the answer is yes. This week in Arvada, the answer was no! David slew Goliath.

Designing Out Crime? Not!

San Antonio, Texas doesn't sound like a place where urban designers can see how to build successful places for the future. You might not think so, but you'd be wrong.

I just spent time exploring the fabulous San Antonio Riverwalk. It is not what you might expect to find near the Alamo in western Texas. 25 years after planning began it has become a lively and vibrant connector between businesses, restaurants, shops, and apartment/condos in the heart of the city. It runs along a redirected canal-like waterway of the San Antonia river. Lined by Cyprus trees, much of it lies below city streets.

I can't speak about other parts of San Antonio. But this part is a joy to experience. It was very busy with walkers, joggers, and tourists. Riverwalk looks like a jewel in the city. An excellent example of neighborhood planning (formal and informal).

Is it a taste of Amsterdam in Texas? Perhaps! Both are similar in city/region population size. The Riverwalk architecture and arched pedestrian bridges echo feelings of Hollands' romantic canal walkways.

But stepping outside the Riverwalk area, I wonder!

Amsterdam, with 26 murders in 2007, makes it among the safest larger cities anywhere. Despite complaints by locals of drug excesses, the liberalized drug business in Holland ends up with fewer drug users than in the U.S.

San Antonio, in spite of recent declines in violent crime, suffered 122 murders in 2007. For US cities that's middle of the pack and it also has a nasty rep for property crime.

Numbers like these, of course, say nothing about culture, demographics, and access to handguns - all part of the urban crime picture. Numbers also don't tell the whole story. But here they do tell one thing, in case it still needs saying:

Urban design and planning alone cannot do the job to make places safe.