From fear to familiar - Reclaiming Oppenheimer Park through SafeGrowth

Source: Google Earth imagery, Oppenheimer Park, Vancouver, Canada.
Screen capture by G. Saville

Guest blog – Ekin Buran & Dixon Ng

Ekin Buran is Programs Manager at the Strathcona Community Policing Centre and Dixon Ng is Victim Services Worker at the Chinese Community Policing Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. They were two of five members of a SafeGrowth team  from a training program in Vancouver last year. Both have worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for over three years, focusing on community safety and crime prevention. Through their project work, they apply SafeGrowth strategies to the community they serve and care about. This story describes one of their projects.

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Oppenheimer Park sits on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples in Vancouver’s historic Japantown. The baseball field where the Vancouver Asahi once played is still active today. The Asahi were a Japanese Canadian baseball team based in the Powell Street area from 1914 to 1941 and became a symbol of perseverance and community pride during a period of widespread discrimination. Totem poles, cherry blossom trees, and cedar trees remain part of the landscape, reflecting both Indigenous and Japanese Canadian history.

Yet despite its deep history and ongoing community life, Oppenheimer Park is often discussed mainly in terms of safety, especially by those less familiar with the space. Media coverage and public discussions frequently focus on encampments, drug use, and police presence, shaping how the park is perceived before people ever visit it.

Our goal was to begin a planning process that could change that perception by building on the park’s existing strengths. Over the past year, following a multi-month SafeGrowth training workshop organized through the Strathcona Community Safety Association, our team began applying the SafeGrowth approach in and around the park.

Walkways in the park on a quiet day

Recognizing that meaningful crime prevention and safety programming is a long-term effort built on collaboration and trust, we began by focusing on relationships. Using the SafeGrowth approach and principles from Third Generation CPTED, we identified two initial goals: 1) to strengthen partnerships among organizations already working in the neighbourhood; 2) to engage more residents by helping them become familiar with the park and its assets.

LEARNING FROM THE PARK 

Our team of five works across four organizations in the neighbourhood, and at least one of us is in and around the park almost every day. We walk through it, meet people there, and park nearby, which gives us a close view of how important this space is to the people who use it.

Our research included observing park activity, conducting safety audits and CPTED assessments, and interviewing park users, nearby residents, and local organizations. Our guiding question was simple: how might safety grow from the relationships, strengths, and sense of belonging that already exist in the park?

We found strong appreciation for the park, clear interest in greater community use, and the Fieldhouse acting as an important anchor for positive activity. We also observed that fear of serious violence appeared stronger than reported incidents, with most calls involving property-related offences.

A survey commissioned by the Vancouver Police Department found that 74% of respondents were concerned about crime in Downtown Vancouver, and more than one-third said those concerns led them to avoid neighbourhoods such as the Downtown Eastside, which includes the Oppenheimer Park area. 

Some data was available through a survey commissioned by the Vancouver Police

Our research uncovered that:

• There is a strong appreciation for the park as a place to rest, connect, and spend time outdoors

• Many people expressed care for the park and a desire to see more neighbours enjoying it

• The Fieldhouse is one of the park’s greatest strengths, providing coffee, workshops, and an indoor gathering space that anchors positive activity

• Fear associated with violent crime was not proportionate to actual risk according to the data which revealed most incidents involving property offences rather than serious violence.

INITIAL COMMUNITY-BUILDING STEPS

Strengthening Local Partnerships

To achieve this goal, we began introducing ourselves to surrounding businesses, community groups, housing providers, daycare centres, and the Oppenheimer Fieldhouse. We wanted to learn more about organizations already active in the neighbourhood and explore ways to collaborate and strengthen connections between groups that do not always interact.

These early conversations helped build trust and created a foundation for joint activities in the park.

Summer Playground Event

In partnership with the Fieldhouse and a local daycare centre, we co-hosted a Summer Playground Event in 2025 that brought more than fifty families into the park. Following this event, another daycare approached us about hosting a similar activity, which is now planned for summer 2026.

Last year's summer playground event to activate the park.
Another is planned for this summer. 

Neighbourhood Walking Club

We organized group walks in and around Oppenheimer Park to encourage participants to spend time in the space, learn about its history, and connect with one another. During these walks, residents shared that the park felt less intimidating than they had previously believed. Spending time in the park together helped participants feel more comfortable and begin to see the space as more welcoming.

Walking club around the park - building familiarity and dispelling fears 

Community Workshops and Gatherings

We began participating in the Fieldhouse’s monthly community gatherings and co-leading workshops, including emergency preparedness sessions, fraud awareness workshops, seasonal events, and informal coffee chats. These activities created opportunities for community members to gather, meet their neighbours, and socialize in a familiar setting.

A number of Fieldhouse programs helped provide crime prevention
education and pro-social activities 

LOOKING AHEAD 

Early results are promising. Seniors already using the park expressed interest in joining future walks. Dozens of neighbourhood families attended park events, and additional daycare providers have requested similar activities. Residents are becoming more comfortable using the park for everyday visits, increasing casual use and natural surveillance. The Fieldhouse continues to grow as a focal point for pro-social activity and community interaction.

These early steps reflect a broader SafeGrowth principle: Safety grows when familiar faces, shared activities, and local leadership become part of everyday life.

Our long-term goal is to sustain this work by increasing resident leadership and involvement. Lasting change in Oppenheimer Park will not come from one event or one project, but from continued presence, relationship-building, and shared responsibility. Oppenheimer Park is gradually evolving into a more connected and welcoming community space shaped by the people who use it every day.

Here's to our students - a life of purpose

Baltimore's Penn train station during our class night-time safety audits

by Gregory Saville

I taught my first CPTED seminar at my home university in Toronto while in graduate school when I was still a police officer in 1986. It launched my teaching, researching, planning, and consulting career. Since then we have modernized and expanded the CPTED program far beyond lights, locks, territorial controls, and target hardening. 

In recent years, with the help of the many smart and experienced members of our SafeGrowth Network, along with some leading academics, practitioners, community residents, researchers, and police officers, the SafeGrowth method has flourished as a powerful way to transform places. But today, after all these years and all this progress, I remain powerfully impressed by our students.

Landing home at the Denver International Airport - reflecting on past training

Landing in Denver last week after a flurry of training projects it struck me that I still revere the intelligence and tenacity brought to our crime prevention classes by the residents, police, city organizations, and community associations. Our recent courses in Madison, Vancouver, Baltimore, Palm Springs, Saskatoon, and New York City again reaffirmed my faith in our students. They have the most to gain and lose because they live in neighborhoods afflicted by crime. We affectionately call them SafeGrowthers, and they are remarkable.

They hold a mix of professional and personal skills and they bring a wealth of experience to the table, often with humor and passion. 

Reading, talking, walking, and thinking
- they engage the SafeGrowth material with full attention

Our students are an impressive bunch

Fighting crime and building neighborhood livability is a massive undertaking with many obstacles. And yet, even when faced with the miracle stupidity of government red tape, jumbled media distortions, and political manipulators, they still somehow manage to stay the course and get the job done. 

Outdoor Safety Audits are a popular part of the training

This year, once again, I listened to the obscene wickedness they face in the crime, drugs, and violence plaguing their neighborhoods. They tell us our training offers them tools and methods to succeed, and for that we are grateful. Yet their stories cause goosebumps:

• In one city, residents and police tackled a high-crime city-owned parking structure and presented the results to the city council, hoping for action to improve safety. A year later, after no action, a resident was robbed and murdered in exactly the way they predicted. Crime prevention is not always easy! 
• In one New York neighborhood, students came to class the day after a shooting homicide of one of their neighbors. 

Some of our students are already engaged in incredible prevention work, such as the Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence organization

• In a Baltimore class, one group tackled school violence in a high school where school administrators refused to collaborate with them. 
• In another city, residents were asked by some managers not to deliver their findings at final community presentations regarding violence at a homeless shelter. They did so anyway and, in doing so, they learned how to speak with diplomacy and candor. They ended up with a positive reaction from the shelter and charted out practical steps forward.
• In some cities, police shone as stellar leaders who engaged with the residents. In others, police never bothered to attend or participate (this being a free class in proven methods of preventing crime). 
• Some students themselves were victims of violence in their own neighborhoods. Others had once been incarcerated for violence, had reformed their lives, and were now community leaders. 

In New York, training occurred in multiple neighborhoods in different parts of the city 

When we speak to our students in class, online, or during virtual office hours, we work to provide the best resources and the latest research findings on preventing crime. Usually, we end up providing emotional support and encouragement. 

During this election season, I know who deserves our vote and whose cause we should ensure politicians support. It should be these peace warriors who do this magnificent work. To all our students from your instructors and from everyone in the SafeGrowth network... Thank you! Thank you! 

Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood launches SafeGrowth

Night walking tour on one of Strathcona's residential streets

by Anna Brassard

Anna Brassard is a Canadian urban planner, CPTED specialist, and a member of the SafeGrowth Network. She was one of the co-authors of the first SafeGrowth book. In this blog, Anna joins our blogging team as she describes her recent experience as co-instructor of Vancouver's first SafeGrowth training. 

Our cities are in crisis. Increasing perceptions of fear, lack of sense of safety, and isolation are messages we are hearing repeatedly in our SafeGrowth workshops. Vancouver BC is developing its own responses to those challenges, among them, becoming the first city in Canada to commit to, and fund, what they are calling a Restorative City.   

Amid all these new responses, Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood chose to sponsor their first SafeGrowth training. Although British Columbia has a long history of 1st Generation CPTED training, going back to the 1980s, this is the first community-based SafeGrowth training in that city and the first-ever training in 2nd Generation CPTED in British Columbia.

Organized and sponsored by Strathcona Community Policing Centre – a police-sponsored organization and tremendous asset in the community -  we began the SafeGrowth journey in April at the Vancouver Japanese Language School, a national historic building, (and another amazing community asset) in Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside.

The Strathcona Community Policing Centre sponsored the SafeGrowth training

The Strathcona class included members of the Strathcona Community Policing Centre, members from other community policing centres, Strathcona residents, local organizations, businesses, and a member from the Vancouver Police. They organized themselves into three teams, each completing a project within the neighbourhood using the SafeGrowth model.  They chose fairly complex issues and selected projects within or near public spaces and parks in the neighbourhood. 

 

THE PROJECTS

HAWKS AND HASTINGS 

Team 1 focused on a sidewalk seating area next to a community garden

Team #1 selected an area adjacent to a community garden. To displace drinking at a bus stop, picnic tables were placed on the sidewalk around the corner from the bus stop.  The city had even tried to respond to street disorder issues by designating the area as a legal place to consume alcohol in a partial effort to control problems on the street.  

Described as a “hot topic for years in the community” the team explored new ways to improve the area to bring more residents and other users into the area, control the disorderly behaviour, and improve retail and commercial activities nearby. They discovered the reality of what 2nd Generation CPTED calls Neighbourhood Connectivity, in this case, it is the complexity of trying to work with the many stakeholders and partners around, and in adjacent, neighbourhoods. 

One example they uncovered was working with the local businesses on Hastings Street along with the group that runs the community garden.  It brought home the central message of 2nd Gen CPTED – the importance of building relationships inside and outside the neighborhood to create a stronger sense of ownership (what architect Oscar Newman once called Defensible Space). 

OPPENHEIMER PARK

Strathcona's Oppenheimer Park was the site for Team 2

Team #2 selected a large park in the heart of the Vancouver neighbourhood called Japantown. The park is frequented by individuals experiencing homelessness and substance abuse, and it has been this way for a long time. It has also developed a reputation for being unsafe. Although it is not uncommon to walk through the park safely and have friendly conversations with people (members of the team did this), Oppenheimer Park has also frequently been in the news and social media highlighting its problems with encampments and conflicts. 

The team explored how to actualize what they, and others, see as the true potential for the park - a welcoming place that mitigates alienation, is inclusive of all people, and a point of pride for those who live and work in the area. While they were aware of other programs at Oppenheimer, they conducted a full assessment and spent time analyzing the crime, conducting safety audits, interviewing people camped in the park, and completing site visits and CPTED reviews. This led to some comprehensive short-term strategies such as lighting, landscaping and beautification, and some longer-term strategies such as different kinds of additional programming. 

Their next step is to include various stakeholders and residents directly at, and around, Oppenheimer Park to put their vision into action – an inclusive and safe gathering space for everyone. 

MACLEAN PARK PLAZA

MacLean Park Plaza was the focus on Team 3

Team #3 also selected a park that was designed as a neighbourhood hub but had been largely abandoned due to disruptive behaviour. The team analyzed why the park declined and they explored the potential to reclaim and reactivate it. 

During their initial research, they looked back at the park's history and became curious about a circle of benches that once existed. Over time the benches were removed and so the team dug deeper into resident experiences in the park. They initially wanted to restore the benches, but through their data collection and interviews with adjacent residents, they learned that, while there was a desire to reactivate the space, residents did not want to reinstall the benches. 

The team began with strategies to improve lighting and other physical landscaping features, but they concluded they needed a longer process of community engagement with local residents in the planning process. That is their next step.

  

Display boards used by the Strathcona community policing centre
for the public presentations

ENGAGEMENT IS KEY 

There were similar themes in all three projects. Each group envisioned public spaces that were inclusive and vibrant, instilled pride, and helped to build community cohesion. The teams all paid careful attention to the central SafeGrowth community engagement principle called TO-FOR-WITH.

Each team experienced why the SafeGrowth model stresses problem-solving “with” the local residents since they are the true neighbourhood experts. They learned the importance of not coming in to solve resident problems by creating strategies “for” them or “to” them. 

Final presentations to the public were held on the last day of the training and people from all across the city – politicians, city planners, police, the business community, and others – came to talk to team members from each project. Ultimately, the teams were asked to bring their poster displays to members of the city council for formal presentations later in the month. This was a major accomplishment for the Strathcona participants and the Strathcona Community Policing Centre. 

Building new cities – Development for whom?

The Living City - Condos for the future

by Tarah Hodgkinson

Oakridge Centre is an area rezoned for a new development in Vancouver, Canada, the largest in the city’s history. It promises advances in urban design and affordability, with numerous public amenities.

It will be a transit-oriented development with futuristic apartments complete with advanced home technology and custom furniture. It will contain shared spaces in each tower that assure a combination of “private life and common life to be a true community.”

The Centre has been receiving kudos for advancements in design, its focus on transit, mobility and accessibility. Oakridge Centre boasts it will have a mix of market and affordable housing, with 25% of its new housing developments allotted for social and non-market housing.

For a city that has been suffering a housing crisis for several years, this should be a huge improvement.

IS IT REALLY AFFORDABLE HOUSING?

Sounds great, doesn’t it? In a country where a quarter of all households spend more than 30% of their gross income on shelter and in a city where the average one-bedroom apartment requires a $84,000 yearly income, or about $2,100 a month - the current Vancouver median household income is $65,000 - obviously, there is a desperate need for affordable housing.

A planning development notice - Ever wonder what's behind them?

But what about affordability at Oakridge? How is it defined? The documents on Oakridge Centre do not offer a metric for “affordability.” They rarely offer any measure of cost or percentage of household income. However, to qualify for BC’s Housing Income Limits rates, household income can not exceed $41,500 for a bachelor suite, $48,000 for a one-bedroom, or $58,000 for a two bedroom.

As such, the competition for these units would be extraordinarily high and do little to address the current housing crisis in the city. For those who earn beyond the Housing Limit qualifiers, the market rates are untenable. Condo pricing starts at $800,000 and peaks at $5.5 million.

WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE” ACTUALLY COST?

Assuming a 10% down-payment, the average person would need an income of $105,000 per year for the cheapest condo, over $30,000 more that the median household income in Vancouver in 2015. Considering figures like these, a review of the available material suggests that social housing is not integrated into the development at all.

Social integration is a large contributor to social capital and it helps the poor move out of poverty, but this example seems to pay little more than lip-service to affordable housing and diverse community-building. It caters to luxury clients while offering self-congratulations for exceeding city targets of 20%.

Condo housing and affordability

We have been writing about the housing and homelessness on this blog for several years. Cities and residents cannot continue to accept development that prides itself on offering a percentage of “affordable housing” while the other 75% is considered luxury and completely unaffordable to the average citizen. Affordability is more than just cheap rentals and social housing. It is a human right.

When the median household income is almost less than half of what is necessary to afford the cheapest unit in a new development, no amount of transit-oriented development, public amenities, or brilliant design will prevent financial desperation or homelessness. If Vancouver, and cities like it, want to build futuristic cities, they need to build cities for everyone.

Tackling the opioid crisis - Safe Injection Sites

Each year 30,000 people in the U.S. die from overdoses

By Tarah Hodgkinson

Safe injection sites have been a point of contention for several years around the world. Some claim drug use is a public health concern needing harm reduction strategies, while others claim drug use is immoral and should remain criminalized.

Over the last few months, I have spoken to public safety organizations and police across Canada. These organizations cover everything from domestic violence to traffic safety, but the topic persistently arising remains illicit drug overdoses. For example, British Columbia recently announced a health crisis resulting from increases in overdose deaths, a situation experts believe results from lacing heroin or meth with intense potency additives like fentanyl.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

Thousands die each year from these overdose deaths, almost 30,000 in the U.S. alone, and the numbers are getting worse. While illicit drug use is not new, public response to it seems to be changing. Communities are shifting away from punishment and looking towards harm reduction techniques.

In Canada, none is more famous than Insite, North America’s first supervised, and legally protected, injection location where clients are given clean needles to use in a safe environment. Furthermore, they are given access to a myriad of health services such as nurses and substance abuse counselors.

In spite of a raft of political attacks by anti-drug organizations, and claims of imperfect science, the overwhelming preponderance of research results to date on the Vancouver drug injection site are positive. This includes a comprehensive 2011 study in the prestigious UK medical journal, The Lancet.

HARM REDUCTION DOESN'T REPLACE COMMUNITY-BUILDING

Other harm reduction models are also emerging across the country. In Ottawa, a managed alcohol program helps chronically homeless and alcoholic individuals seek stability and avoid binge drinking. Harm reduction is an important community-building step to address drug overdoses in Canada.

However, community-building also means better investment in prevention and drug use alternatives. There is still very little investment in long term solutions such as detox and recovery services, job opportunities, community supports and wrap-around models – all demonstrated to have a significant impact.

Hundreds of drug addicts shoot up at, and around, this rail line in Philadelphia

A well-known example is Portugal. Over 15 years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. Since doing so, drug use has declined and overdoses have plummeted. Portugal invested in health care, job creation and other social supports. These alternatives had a dramatic impact on drug-seeking behaviour.

The claim that there are not enough resources for this kind of harm reduction investment collapses when faced with contrary logic or evidence. The fact is it is far more expensive for the criminal justice system to tackle drug crime. Community reinvestment - the basic premise of SafeGrowth - is well worth the effort in dollars and lives.

SafeGrowth in the university - from the classroom to the street

Simon Fraser University main campus quadrangle - Image by Soggybread, Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG: Tarah Hodgkinson is a senior researcher in the Integrated Risk Assessment Instrument Research Group in Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of the International CPTED Association and a certified SafeGrowth instructor. She is completing her Ph.D in criminology at Simon Fraser University. 

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Last spring, I had the pleasure of teaching a fourth year university class on crime prevention at the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The course had not been offered in several years.

I was nervous as this was my first upper year seminar course, but I wanted to provide the students with an experience rarely seen on university campuses today. I wanted them to have a chance to guide their own learning, engage with their own neighbourhoods and finally write a paper that they could use for something more than just a grade.

I set up the class to include the SafeGrowth method and created a problem-based learning (PBL) format to teach it. In PBL the students work together in teams and select a real-life, complex crime problem in a neighborhood. Their learning is based on research-in-action.

PBL IN CRIMINOLOGY

In PBL students conduct a SafeGrowth® assessment on that neighbourhood and work to address that problem. In addition to their field work, students each read a different book that had been key to informing the SafeGrowth philosophy or crime prevention. They then participate in seminars with short interactive presentations on that week’s material, presented by the students themselves.

During their field work they practiced real-life learning in the same way a professional consulting team might engage a neighborhood: they conducted site audits, contacted city officials, learned more about crime mapping and developed an evidence-based plan.

They learned about search conferences and safety audits, not by reading about them, but by actually doing them. Their final paper was a report they could give to a city counsellor or funding agency – hence, not just for a grade.

Located atop Burnaby Mountain, the university overlooks Greater Vancouver - photo SFU

I had no idea how the students would respond since they were so used to lectures and tests. I was sure they would revolt. I feared the worst, but I got the best. When I trusted them to take chances, I saw them flourish. I saw them connect with each other, connect with their neighbourhoods, and learn that they too had a voice.

A THIRST FOR REAL-LIFE LEARNING 

I asked them to write a thirty second pitch about what they learned. Their responses were shocking. Very few spoke about the content. Rather, they told me that for the first time in university they felt that they had made real connections, real friends. In an era when many lament the loss of integration and connection, they integrated and connected.

They discussed the rewards of engaging with their neighbourhoods and realized that they could do something immediately to make changes. They said they felt listened to and that they had finally learned something. In a class where I did not do any traditional teaching, the students learned something. Imagine!

Not only did they learn that learning-by-doing and this intensive collaboration style - the action-based method - is the philosophical lynchpin of SafeGrowth and successful crime prevention. They also learned when I gave up lecturing and classroom control, when I trusted them to work together on real problems that is when real learning happened. It is then when we truly start to solve community crime problems.

...this is a bed

Temporary homeless shelter on city bench - photo Spring Advertising

My blog on London's design out crime spikes to deter homeless haunted my thoughts until I read a recent story from Vancouver.

RainCity Housing is one of those hard-working non-profits we don't hear enough about. They provide social housing, help those with mental illness and addictions and work to get the homeless into housing. Spring Advertising is a creative advertising firm who worked with RainCity to design an innovative bench cover that morphs into a temporary shelter at night.

It's a far cry from homeless spikes. Of course an ad stunt is obviously no solution to homelessness. Then again, neither are the spikes that cruelly dot London's landscape.

We might not have the answer to the problem of homelessness but as the RainCity/Spring collaboration suggests, we can still be humane.

In the day it's a bench... 

...in the night it transforms into a bench shelter.
- photos by Spring Advertising

A line on a map

Seattle and Vancouver on the Pacific west coast - dueling cities

Years ago a police chief told me he planned to hire a renowned criminologist to compare the murder rate in Vancouver to Seattle. He was tired of hearing Vancouver was so much safer. He knew there was a gang war in Vancouver and didn't believe the numbers. Both cities are similar in size, economic wealth, relative policing strength, and age demographics. They are only a 3 hour drive apart.

A murder gap? No way.

That criminologist never showed. Depending on whose version of the story you believe, either the data wasn't available, the criminologist wasn't available, or the study was done but unavailable for public view.

I have a simpler explanation for the Vancouver-Is-Worse-Than-Seattle theory.

It isn't!

Nor is BC versus Washington State. British Columbia has a population of 4.6 million; Washington State 6.9 million. In 2012 BC suffered 71 murders (1.5 murders per 100,000 people) while Washington State suffered 203 murders (2.9 per 100,000, twice that of BC).

On the U.S. side of the border lies majestic snow capped Mount Baker. The view is magnificent from both Vancouver and Seattle. For hundreds of miles beyond the border posts, BC and Washington are separated by only the 49th Parallel - nothing more than a line on a map.Yet if you view Mount Baker from the U.S. the stats suggest your risk of being murdered doubles.

Why?

Washington State has a history of innovative prevention programs.
The Office of Crime Victims Advocacy and Community Mobilization Program (defunded next year due to cutbacks) are considerably more advanced than what BC offers by comparison.

True, BC's CPTED is deeper (Washington lags considerably) and BC's Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers receive more advanced basic training called problem-based learning.

But can that explain the homicide gap?

Next blog: Why the difference?

It was a dark and foggy night in the future

"It was a dark and foggy night in the neighborhood where nothing really happens…so there goes that drama". Caption from photographer Celine Chamberlin's photo

There is a TV show worth seeing and a book worth reading.

The TV show because it is excellent. The book because I think it's wrong but I also think it is excellent. It's an intelligent counterpoint to the depressing malaise in the US body politic, an aspirin to the headache that passed for Congressional politics this past week.

Controversial author and professor in urban development, Joel Kotkin, uses the suburb to tell the story of America in 2050. The Next Hundred Million describes the suburbs of the future. To Kotkin they are a place of hope.

Says Amazon:

"Suburbia is the future, but not the wasteful lonely suburbia of the 1950s. Instead we must fashion a new kind of suburban landscape, one that selectively borrows the successful and vital elements of big city life and uses them to make more vibrant small cities."

Maybe.

But what will happen with the increasing number of suburban poor, spikes in suburban crime, and the class gentrification in American downtowns?

A new TV show called Continuum points in another direction.

This new cop thriller is a well-acted and brilliantly made Canadian sci-fi (with outstanding FX) filmed in Vancouver (Showcase network in Canada and the SyFy channel in the US and UK).

The Continuum storyline pushes Occupy Wall Street, government shutdowns, and corporate greed to a very different place than Kotkin.

Check them both out. Knowing different futures helps us choose more wisely.

Catch and release - Swimming upstream in Vancouver

Vilfredo Pareto's 80/20 Principle

What does a 19th century Italian economist have to do with neighborhood safety? Consider Vilfredo Pareto's principle that the majority of a phenomena can be explained by a minority of causes. Sometimes called the 80/20 Rule, criminology has long demonstrated a small number of chronic offenders cause a significant portion of crime.

Reflecting on my Comstat and police leadership blogs recently, I came across a fascinating news documentary Pareto would have loved. It's called Lock Em Up.

It's about competent policing and quality leadership in an unlikely place - Vancouver, BC. I say unlikely because, with all my harping on the skid row tragedy in that lovely city, one might assume I blame the cops or their chief. Not so. In Vancouver at least, I don't think that's the case. Jim Chu, Vancouver's Chief and their Chronic Offender Unit - COU - have put research to good tactical use. Similar to the Winnipeg auto theft solutions project I mentioned two years ago, this seems like a winning ticket (though, as you'll see below, in Vancouver there is a number missing from their lottery ticket).

A DENT IN CRIME

Property crime is rarely seen as a serious matter, yet it comprises 75 percent of all crime. In 2009 Vancouver had over 21,000 thefts and 5,000 break and enters. As Pareto might warn us, chronic offenders with multiple offenses cause a significant number of those crimes.

What is a chronic offender? Vancouver defines a Chronic as someone with over 39 convictions (that's a lot of convictions). There are also Superchronics, a group with over 79 convictions each. That's convictions, not crimes. They committed far more than that. One offender interviewed in the film below says he has broken into well over 1,000 homes.

How many chronic offenders are there and how many property crimes to they cause in Vancouver?

The COU and the Vancouver Police planning section report that over 5 years, 379 chronic offenders were charged with over 12,000 offenses, roughly 10% of all yearly property crimes. It is of course much higher since chronic offenders were not charged for all of their crime, only a small number. The reality is probably more like 25% - an educated guess I'm sure both Pareto and COU detectives would confirm.

Vancouver Police report, 2008

In other words, out of a half million people only 379 cause between 10% to 25% of all property crime in Vancouver! Their research report is available for review by clicking here.

If there was ever a case where chronic offenders should be removed to protect us, this is it. Remove them for drug treatment, incarceration, or both. But, get them off the street.

What do police do in Vancouver? Since a small number of chronic offenders create a significant portion of crime, police strategies target habitual offenders to break that cycle. Vancouver Chief Jim Chu is behind the approach.

Criminological research, where it is done well, is fairly clear. It shows that arresting Chronics and getting them off the street works, at least until the courts release them again. That's the missing link in this chain - the Vancouver court system, one of the most lenient in Canada. Stunningly, their study showed length of incarceration actually got shorter as the Chronics committed more crime. Worse still, over half of the Superchronics received less than a month in jail - and 25% of the Superchronics received less than a day in jail.

CATCH AND RELEASE

In short, cops caught them so judges could release them. Talk about frustrating! The report says:

as these offenders tend to specialize in low‐level property offences, their sentences tend to be relatively short. These short sentences do not serve to incapacitate them and protect the public for any significant period of time, nor, in most cases, are they long enough to allow for admission into appropriate addiction treatment programs.

Makes one wonder, who are the real culprits? Unaware, ill-considered and lenient judges? That's what the CTV documentary suggests. What about criminologists failing to inform decision-makers? Where is the Canadian research? Of 30 habitual offender studies cited in the report, only 4 were from Canada (two of those were graduate student theses).

As I said in a previous blog, when social tragedies happen like the public housing fiasco in St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe and gang infested Jane-Finch corridor in Toronto, someone is asleep at the wheel.

In Vancouver, it's definitely not the cops.

Vancouver - the madness continues

At the beginning of this year I wrote about a slum in Vancouver.




Pain and Wasting in Vancouver

Today's Globe and Mail newspaper makes it clear: The madness continues!

The madness is called Vancouver's Downtown East Side - DES - Canada's fetid slum persisting for decades. It will greet the world throughout February's Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. It's message will not be the glowing success of multi-cultural diversity in which Canada so prides itself. As the world looks to the young and shining athletes striving for medals in one of the world's best cities, it will also see the faces of the drug addicted, welfare-dependent, and depressingly poor who inhabit the streets of DES.

There have been many attempts to fix problems there, including over $1 Billion over a decade. Some successes persist, an exciting new community court, a safe injection site that succeeds in spite of federal government hostility, and others. But they are not enough.

Says Vancouver housing expert Aprodicio Laquian, the residents of other parts of the city don't seem to mind concentrating mind-numbing poverty like this as long as it doesn't infiltrate their neighborhood - NIMBYism at its worst. He also thinks the very social activists who claim to be helping are actually hindering. They oppose what they see as "gentrification" as it will de-place the poor classes for the richer classes and displace povery elsewhere.

For those who know about urban crime, it is clear both ideas are absurd. Concentrated poverty and crime never ends up concentrated. NIMBYers will always be running away.

Secondly, worrying that gentrification will displace a viable neighbourhood elsewhere assumes there is a viable neighbourhood in DES...there is not!



More than anyone, those who make a life in DES deserve better than drug dependent prostitutes, homelessness, street assaults, out of control Hep C and HIV rates, and gang murders. The prostitutes, crime victims, homeless and infected themselves deserve better.

NIMBYism, squabbling welfare agencies, incompetent policies, failed program after program. When will it end?

How can we learn from cities like Bogota, or Portland who have done so much better at tackling festering urban cancers like this?

Long time DES advocate Jim Green (a former New Yorker who remembers the poverty of the Lower East Side) describes how public policies made a bad situation worse - moving the mentally ill out of institutions onto the street, taking out single family homes, are two of the nastiest.

Says Green, "women and children are what gives strength and security to any community. A community that is overwhelmingly single males is going to be really difficult to build, to go forward. By building housing that has mothers and children reintegrating back into society, by democratizing the processes in the community - that's how we are going to move forward. Just doing that makes it a better community, makes it safer."

Vancouver's city council claims, unlike the last world exposition there a few decades ago, it will not cover up the poor nor hide them in a displaced neighborhood far away.

That is as it should be. The world should see the beast with the beauty. It should see Vancouver's shame.

Pain and Wasting in Vancouver - A slum facing the 2010 Olympics

I recently attended a workshop on "community engagement" in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. One year from now the winter Olympics will be there. And while reading local media I was reminded that in the heart of Vancouver is the downtown eastside neighborhood - DES - with an infamous reputation for crime, disorder and poverty.

To most locals the DES is the Skid Row area, especially along streets Main and Hastings - what locals call Pain and Wastings.

It's not that Canada doesn't have slums. It's more like this is probably the worst. Stats back that up.

It is the poorest postal code in the country. By some accounts it has the highest HIV infection rate in North America. Thousands of homeless people, drug users, prostitutes, and rampant crime. At one point in 1998 the area averaged one death per day from drug overdoses.



What has been done?

One report claims government has spent over $300 million for housing and support in DES - about $1 million each day! Social activism is rooted here with anti-poverty, housing rights, and social groups waging campaigns and running programs of all sorts.

Over 90 agencies providing health and addiction recovery services. A community court was set up last year. Long overdue plans for redevelopment are finally underway.

The 9 year old "Vancouver Agreement", was supposed to coordinate local, provincial and federal efforts. A Vancouver paper reports a provincial politician saying that agreement has now "largely fallen by the wayside because of lack of political will." Then there is the famous "safe drug injection site" run by the government, the only one in North America.

Study after study, program after program, decade after decade.

If it wasn't so tragic, would it be too obvious to say that the same kind of thinking that got us into this mess will not get us out? It would seem to me a very different kind of imagination is required.


Click here for Lee Hamilton's excellent blog on this