New SafeGrowth book on Amazon

SafeGrowth book in soft cover and Kindle from Amazon

by Gregory Saville

We are thrilled to announce the publication of our new book, SafeGrowth: Building Neighborhoods of Safety and Livability! This book chronicles a decade of implementing and teaching SafeGrowth, along with methods like 2nd Generation CPTED, to turn troubled places back from the brink of crime.

This is part of the back cover:

"Do we really seek more CCTV cameras on public streets to protect us from the supposed enemy at the gates as we cower behind our doors? When did we agree to a public life with more razor wire, chain-link fences and cops zooming from one call to another, sirens blazing? There is a better way to create safer cities and, while some programs have existed for years, few offer a coherent way to plan cities in partnership with residents. 

SafeGrowth is a new model for building crime-resistant and vibrant neighborhoods in the 21st Century."

While a decade of SafeGrowth training programs (and this blog) represent building blocks, this book frames the latest and most complete version of the model. It is the first full statement of the SafeGrowth theory. I edited and authored the book with others who attended and facilitated three SafeGrowth Summits, starting with our inaugural Summit in Canmore, Alberta in 2015 coordinated by our own Anna Brassard.

A few of the participants from the Canmore, Alberta SafeGrowth Summit, 2015

Part 1 of the book describes recent years as a time of transformation and it places social unrest, crime, and urban development into a larger historical context, especially chapter 2, "Stirrings of a New Idea".

The book then recounts the findings from three SafeGrowth Summits, particularly the first one at Canmore, Alberta where thirty participants created new ideas for planning safer neighborhoods with chapters on “The Hub Concept”, “Urban Villages” “Block Level Development” and “Livability Academies”

CASE STUDIES AND THE FUTURE

Part 3 includes case studies from the cities of Red Deer, Alberta and New Orleans, Louisiana. Another case study includes a chapter by International CPTED Association board member, Elisabeth Miller called, “SafeGrowth in Saskatoon”.

The final chapters of the book, written by Mateja, Tarah and myself, describe four principles of SafeGrowth theory. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our hard work and see how SafeGrowth offers a 21st Century blueprint for anyone who loves safer cities.

You can order the book here.

Parks, yoga & activating public spaces

Activating public parks with yoga - Photo courtesy of Dallas Delahunt 

by Tarah Hodgkinson

Outdoor yoga has become an important ingredient of summer fun. In cities across Canada and elsewhere, local yoga studios and yoga teachers are setting up weekly yoga classes in parks and other public places.

Some yoga classes are incredibly expensive and at times exclusionary, but outdoor yoga is accessible and plays a crucial role in creating healthy neighborhoods. Above all, it activates public parks and, as research illustrates, well-used parks can enhance both public health and social cohesion.

Most, if not all, outdoor yoga classes are free or donation-based and they boast of accessibility and an “open to everyone” motto. This is evidenced by the number of classes attended by families with kids, the elderly and even pets.

Free Parliament Hill yoga in Ottawa attracting 1,200 yogis
Photo courtesy of Dallas Delahunt

In Ottawa, for example, local government employees and the community come out for weekly lunch hour yoga on Parliament Hill from May to September. Some of these free classes have boasted over 1,200 people. 

FIGHTING CITY HALL FOR YOGA

Perhaps you think that outdoor yoga is merely a fad for Millennials looking to sport their Lululemon purchases and get a tan. But consider the community’s reaction last year when Vancouver’s park board attempted to shut down free yoga classes in a park because the instructors didn’t have a permit.

The yoga classes were free, or pay what you can, making it difficult for the instructors to fund the permit. This pay structure was done purposely to make the yoga accessible to everyone, regardless of income.

The community came out in droves against the decision and, after a barrage of emails and letters to the city, the city agreed to wave all the fees for the permit.

Free, fun and open to all ages - Photo courtesy of Dallas Delahunt

For cities like Vancouver and Ottawa, public yoga has become a part of the local culture. It is a chance for people from across the age and ability spectrum to come together and connect, while also taking care of their health. It is a public engagement strategy for the 21st Century that community leaders and parks officials everywhere should encourage.

CPTED on a pendulum

Relaxing in Central Park made easy with benches, clean walkways
and something interesting to watch

By Mateja Mihinjac

Embedded within SafeGrowth practice resides a number of tactics, one of which is CPTED - crime prevention through environmental design. CPTED is often criticized for being simplistic and reductionist in its solutions and for promoting fortressing while displacing undesirable activity.

In January, Greg reprinted an article he wrote a few years ago about the exclusionary nature of CPTED when it disregards some at the expense of others.

These side effects may seem unsurprising considering that the word “prevention” implies attention to undesirable behaviors. However, years of experience teach us that not every crime problem will benefit from simply restricting behaviors; we also need to provide alternatives and support desirable conduct.

Not all dogs agree, but even in rain, dogwalking is pro-social

This does not infer a binary approach to CPTED but rather attention to details because, when it comes to intended and desirable outcomes, context matters! It is therefore prudent to outline some of the 1st Generation CPTED principles using a pendulum between restrictive and desirable behavioral outcomes.

Talented street artists can beautify unpleasant areas

THE CONTEXT PENDULUM

A broader view of CPTED is nothing new; it can be observed in the early writing of CPTED by the original authors. For example, we know from Oscar Newman’s work on defensible space that territorial influence is most powerful when it combines “latent territoriality and sense of community” when residents care for shared spaces and each other.

Tactics to uncover latent territoriality include designing visual contact between residential areas and building semi-private areas where neighbors can congregate, factors that still emerge today in research.

Methods to enhance the social climate of an area include getting people to better know, and care for, each other with cultural and recreational activities.

Street markets provide a fun reason for going outside

Newman predicted this latent territoriality promotes ownership through supporting pro-social behaviors while concurrently deflecting unwanted use without the need for physical reinforcement.

Similarly, Jane Jacobs extended her discussion of “eyes upon the street” and argued that streets are safe when they provide opportunities for desirable activities by offering people a reason to occupy them, as we described in recent blogs on sidewalks and alternatives to bollards.

There is no shortage of other methods to create desirable locations, for example through tactical urbanism and placemaking that build pro-social activities and informal supervision.

Street busker activating a public plaza

FINDING BALANCE

Mainstream 1st Generation CPTED continues to undermine the need for investing in social capital as the underlying prerequisite for effective and sustainable crime prevention.

In SafeGrowth, we employ 2nd Generation CPTED to promote social cohesion, local pride and social interaction. The goal is to swing the pendulum towards pro-social conduct and away from an anti-social, target-hardening mantra. Ultimately, the key for quality of life in neighborhoods is finding the right balance between the two.

What's up with sidewalks?

Dr. Jekyll lives on the left.
Poorly lit sidewalks with sodium streetlights meant for cars, not people

by Greg Saville

What’s up with sidewalks? Walkability might be the gateway to a friendlier and safer city, but it requires a high-quality place to walk with interesting destinations. My walks of late uncovered some big-time flops. What are designers thinking when they create sidewalks?

Shrubs 1. Sidewalk 0
Too narrow and obstructed by private landscaping

Some sidewalks are inappropriate for people with disabilities. Others have street signs in the middle of the sidewalk forcing walkers onto the street. Yet others are dark at night, in disrepair, too small or are encroached by yard landscaping.

Salvation lies elsewhere.
This church dismisses walkers by fencing front stairways

Some municipalities require homeowners to keep sidewalks clean in front of their home and, in winter cities, free of snow. That is reasonable. But cities often expect too much, such as when public sidewalks are worn or damaged and homeowners are required to pay thousands for repairs.

Too often sidewalks are poorly designed and they end with no destination.

Logic lost!
Warning walkers of a crosswalk, but forcing them to walk
onto the street to avoid the sign

SMART GROWTH 

In the planning movement called Smart Growth, walkability plays an important role. One attempt to measure walkability is The Walk Score, but it is far from ideal (try it).

Activating a sidewalk with lighting, benches, and a night-time economy

My current address has a measly Walk Score of 46, making it car dependent. Yet, nearby are trails, a lake, park, and mountain views. My former address scored a dazzling 84; In one direction there were great restaurants, parks, a library, coffee shops, school, and trails. Yet, in another, you could just as easily get caught between gang shootings. Obviously, Walk Scores say nothing about neighborhood quality.

Interesting design, colors & lighting attracts people

Recent Smart Growth designs include the SmartCode concept, an attempt to replace restrictive zoning practices of the past. As yet, it’s unclear SmartCode prescriptions are any better at triggering the creative, bottom-up placemaking shown in a few of these photos. But it’s a starting place.

Street artists at night bring culture to dead streets

To "Phoenix" - We can help you do better

Walking Manhattan streets on a rainy day last week

by Gregory Saville

Last week I walked rain-soaked streets in Manhattan and in ten blocks, 15 different homeless people approached me asking for cash. A few suffered mental illness, some a demon intoxicant, and others the unfairness of circumstance. One reached out for dollars with his left hand while he clutched a cell phone in his right. Everyone's story was different - except they were all on the street.

I often feel an apoplectic irrelevance at moments like that. Why does homelessness persist? What can be done? We have blogged many times about homelessness in Reducing homelessness, part 1 & 2, Sidewalk sleeping in Toronto, Hostile architecture and CPTED, and Dignity Village.

I’ve coauthored an ICA White Paper, on the topic, and Tarah Hodgkinson heads an ICA Homelessness committee to seek alternatives. But blogs and White Papers don't solve the problem. What can we do?

ALTERNATIVES

Big cities have always had homeless but for the first time in a very long time, the number of unsheltered homeless people is rising. Bucking a decade-long decline, homeless numbers have been increasing since 2017.

No surprise: New York and Los Angeles - the largest cities - had the largest numbers (over 130,000 combined).

Big surprise: Seattle and Silicon Valley’s San Jose had the 3rd and 6th largest homeless populations. Apparently, street living in those high tech cities bypasses the riches flowing from companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook who also reside there.

Of the smaller cities, all but 2 of the 10 worst homeless cities were in warmer climate states (Florida, California, and Hawaii) where winter snows are absent.

Hostile architecture in the affluent Upper West Side, NY

Overall, numbers are down. Some kinds of homelessness continue to decline, child homelessness and veteran homelessness. Further, some states do much better at taking care of homeless people with overnight shelters. New York and Massachusetts house almost all of their homeless overnight (95% each). On the other hand, California, Nevada and Mississippi house only 49% to 68% of their homeless overnight.

There are some good news stories from Canada. Since 2015, the Canadian city of Medicine Hat, Saskatchewan (population 60,000) has eradicated homelessness in their city.

Rain lifting from a foggy NY evening. Lifting homelessness
from city streets - a lofty and worthy goal.

Clearly, negligent cities have much to learn from others, including the homeless themselves.

SafeGrowth advocate Kallan Lyons worked at a Toronto homeless shelter and helped produce Streets to Script, a book of writing in the words of those in the shelter. One resident, Phoenix, writes:

I sit and ponder,
Why life has turned out this way,
I had thought my life would turn out differently…
I will make a better life for myself,
So I sit and ponder,
How my life can move forward.

Yes, Phoenix, you can move forward. We all can do better to help you.

New York returns the cop to the beat

With towers as a backdrop, New York is a city of neighborhoods

by Mateja Mihinjac

Once considered a breeding ground for crime and violence, today New York City is one of the safest large cities in the USA. While this cannot be attributed to any single strategy, there is no doubt establishing close and positive relationships between public and police promises effective problem-solving and quality of life in the long run.

It was not always so! In the past, the NYPD employed a number of strategies to improve public safety. Some of the best-known and controversial tactics include broken windows policing and stop-and-frisk. Between 2005 and 2013, the NYPD relied extensively on stop-and-frisk. Unfortunately, in 2013 the way they applied the tactic was ruled unconstitutional.

In addition, research found no correlation between this tactic and crime rates and, given increasing tensions between the public and police, NYPD rethought their approach.

NEIGHBORHOODS ARE THE KEY 

In 2015 NYPD introduced a neighborhood policing model. The focus of the approach is permanently locating an officer - an NCO - within a neighborhood and building personal relations with residents on a daily basis. While this echoes earlier, often criticized, forms of community policing, the New York NCO  program attempts to take advantage of the intense personal knowledge of local areas.

It also provides officers with "sector integrity," allowing them time within their beat away from calls for service and assigning them to that neighborhood long enough to develop personal relationships.

NCOs focus not only on developing leads to tackle serious crime, but they also partner with residents for long-term problem-solving. As the NYPD website says: “sector officers play the role of a generalist cop who knows and feels responsible for the sector, and who provides the full range of policing services there.”

Before radio was used, beat policing and
call boxes were the norm in neighborhoods

In effect, this is a resurgence of the local beat cop of pre-radio days, except with a problem-solving focus and without the old style police call box. The NCO program also resonates with our methods in SafeGrowth where we teach residents how to partner with police, create planning teams, and target unsafe activities to create neighborhood safety plans.

NCOs - NEIGHBORHOOD COORDINATION OFFICERS

The cornerstone of NYPD neighborhood policing are the NCOs - Neighborhood Coordination Officers whose daily presence within the assigned neighborhood and respectful demeanor help build relationships.

New York NCOs and residents team up to solve problems

I witnessed the positive effect of this approach on several occasions while in New York: residents would greet their NCOs with hugs while NCOs would share their personal phone number with the residents should they need assistance with crime-related issues. The goal is for officers to be part of the community and be seen as an ally as opposed to an enemy.  

According to the New York City Police Foundation, in neighborhoods implementing neighborhood policing since 2015, shootings have declined 58% faster and the number of arrests declined 10% faster compared to the rest of the city. In the past two years, NCOs on foot patrol have met thousands of residents in hundreds of meetings, thereby building deeper local relationships in neighborhoods throughout the city. 

As NCO policing continues to expand to precincts across all five New York City boroughs, the approach has been recently applied to transit. NCOs will patrol the same subway stations and train lines to provide safety and build relationships, in this case with frequent riders. The beat cop, so common in another era, has now returned to the neighborhood.