Placemaking and civic safety

Winnipeg building mural and frontage - missed opportunity

I get great ideas from friends. Here is one.

Walking around Winnipeg Manitoba this past weekend a friend pointed out the irony of this building mural. The beauty of the former building front on the mural; the sad reality of failed expectations on the actual building front.

The idea of placemaking has made regular appearances on this blog. Placemaking is about creating positive social life in public places. How does one do that?

The fellow who pointed out the irony of the Winnipeg mural was Gerry Cleveland, my colleague and co-creator of 2nd Generation CPTED. Second Generation CPTED promotes placemaking by activating residents, getting them involved, helping them learn how to take action and teaching basic organizing skills. That's the future.

Harbinger for better times - Winnipeg's fork at the river

Water tours and a Winnipeg skyline

Far from a tourist's trip of the river, Downtown Winnipeg this week looks bleak and hollowed out. It's a story of one-way streets, homelessness, shuttered storefronts and drunken disorder.

There are bright spots like the Exchange District. And not far away a few other gems…Osborne Village and Forks riverside park on the historic Red River. Harbingers of what the city could be?

Elsewhere, downtown is another story.

A recent Globe and Mail article says "The city’s population in 2006 was 633,451, but of those, only 13,470 lived downtown."

Bicycle lanes are as rare as a prairie ski-hill. In peak hours streets are vacant. Are these vacant streets the same ones in a 1905 museum photo of a crowded downtown?

2011 - Downtown Winnipeg

1905 - Downtown Winnipeg

They are.

What befell this place?

A few years ago I wrote about some exceptional local initiatives by
the Winnipeg Committee for Safety and an award-winning prevention program that cut auto theft.

Sadly, that's not enough. Winnipeg still has the worst robbery rate in Canada.

Frontier Centre is a right-wing think-tank on public policy with views about rehabilitating downtown Winnipeg.

Be warned: Wide-angle views from Frontier can seem Twilight Zone-ish, for example reconsidering justice policies like zero tolerance for domestic abuse - a policy that research shows actually reduces future violence.

Yet zoom in a bit and Frontier's images are less scary. Two papers in particular are worth a read: Turf war between cops and BIZ patrollers about security patrols to reduce disorder, and Fixing Winnipeg's Downtown about subsidies for the poor, removing one-way streets, and new zoning to revitalize shops.

NHL Hockey returns downtown

This week the NHL announced a hockey francise will return to the downtown MTS arena. That might spark good times.

More good news: The city has been spearheading new construction, renovation projects, and a new mixed use zoning bylaw. Says that Globe article "Winnipeg is desperately trying to realign itself, drawing life back to its centre as a way to sustain its economic core."

Says Planetizen "Winnipeg has joined other North American cities in trying to reverse its suburban expansion by targeting its downtown".

Frontier published an article describing how immigration helped Winnipeg: Can the Winnipeg Model save Detroit?

From what I saw, Winnipeg should save itself before it saves others.

Beat cop shows skills at river Forks skate park

One way out

Boundary route in Winnipeg. Deserted and car friendly.

What, I wonder, do public spaces have to do with livability and crime?

A week ago I spent a few days walking downtown Winnipeg. Some streets seemed very walkable. Others, not so much. Some streets, occupied by the indigent and homeless, reflected a nasty social distress. Other arterial streets functioned as links between areas - boundary routes - little curb appeal, no adjacent shops, poor walkability. They are public spaces where territorial control and eyes on the street don't exist. Boundary routes are for cars, not walkers.

When I was there people were everywhere on downtown Winnipeg streets (in daytime at least)! All this in spite of Winnipeg's ranking in the top crime rate cities in Canada. Then I thought about walking downtown Houston a year ago where people were far more scarce. City comparisons are always risky, especially crime comparisons. But they are interesting.

Houston is a vast, sprawling city of many millions. It has crime problems, placing in the top 10% of high crime cities in the US.

Winnipeg also sprawls, but it has less than a million. It too has crime problems, ranking in the top 5 highest crime cities in Canada.

Houston is valiantly attempting to bring more people downtown and increase walkability, especially in the Theatre District and with the new light rail. Winnipeg has plenty of downtown walkers in summer (my visit coincided with a public celebration), and extensive elevated walkways for winter. Then I noticed traffic flow.

Houston's downtown is more or less a 20 street by 11 street span between I-45 and the Easter Freeway. In spite of extensive expressways about 80% of downtown streets are one-ways.

Winnipeg's downtown is more or less a 15 by 20 street span from the CPR rail yard to the Trans-Canada Hwy and between the river and Route 62. With no expressways to speak of, over 30% of those downtown streets are one-ways.

Is that why walkability seems more palatable in Winnipeg?

Great signage, but few people to read

Walkability is more than parking the car to walk or jog. Walkability is useful destinations within reasonable walking distance - corner stores, schools, food stores, library's and other community activities. Walkability won't stop crime on it's own. However, it's an excellent place to start.

The Houston story is by no means written, as I wrote in a SafeGrowth blog entry last year. Houston has outstanding preventive efforts by many groups, such as Houston's LISC, to build local capacity with programs like their SafeGrowth strategy.

In Winnipeg too there are exceptional preventive efforts, such as community groups tackling crime and award winning problem-solvers cutting auto theft

All those are marvelous and necessary.

Still, I wonder. If downtowns were dominated by people and walkable public spaces versus one-way streets and boundary routes, how many more wins would our preventive efforts celebrate?

Winnipeg auto theft solutions

Image via Wikipedia

I've covered Winnipeg's innovative efforts to tackle crime in earlier blogs.

Here is the latest.

Far too rarely we celebrate crime prevention success stories. I remember reading an article a decade ago in a Canadian criminology journal claiming good news prevention stories make it into papers less than 1% of the time. Given the info-tainment that passes as news, that's no surprise.

For a decade Winnipeg Canada has been the auto theft capital of North America. The headlines said it all: Too many stolen cars; Police chases of stolen cars; Too many victims.

No more.

An award finalist at this year's International Problem Oriented Policing conference was the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy. It's not really SafeGrowth. It's more targeted policing and design out crime. Yet those are great tools in the SafeGrowth toolbox and this project shows the excellent work they have done to tackle crime that can be adopted by a full SafeGrowth community. And it looks like that's exactly where they are headed. Read their latest report on crime prevention planning.

When you've done that, check out their auto theft program.

Even the CBC is getting in on the action and telling some good news on crime.

The media and the tip of the iceberg

Not long ago Winnipeg, Canada was listed by a national magazine as one of the highest crime cities in the country, especially car theft. read MacLean's Magazine article

I've been many times to Winnipeg and I'm always amazed how a place can feel so very different than the what the media and the stats tell us.

As we've seen so many times in this blog, stats tell only a very small part of the picture. Proof: One of my talented SafeGrowth colleagues in Winnipeg, Brody Grusko, is launching some exciting new work in that city. He posted a SafeGrowth entry in their city website with some feedback. Looks like there are excellent opportunities to expand neighbourhood governance and city repair projects.

Brody's blog entry

I especially thought his chart was one of the more interesting diagrams I have seen for describing the SafeGrowth methodology.


Brody is coordinator of the Winnipeg Committee for Safety. It's a pretty dynamic group. They are worth keeping an eye on. If you haven't seen their website, check it out.
Winnipeg Committee for Safety site