Creating a diverse city - How Edmonton is doing it

City skyline of Edmonton, Canada - photo Wiki Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG - Lilit Houlder is an urban planner working with a consulting firm in Edmonton, Canada. She is the most recent member of the SafeGrowth team and in this blog, she describes how the City of Edmonton is crafting diversity into their City Plan at a large macro scale, just as SafeGrowth does the same at a smaller micro scale. 

SafeGrowth strives to apply citizen-led visions and goals into practice. In our experience, this results in strong communities and active partnerships which in turn link neighbourhoods together and improve their resourcefulness. Neighbourhoods can then begin to address challenges on their own, using the vast repository of resources gained through the SafeGrowth process.  

What might this look like within an official city plan?

Edmonton recently approved its new City Plan. The City Plan came about with a goal to create a feeling of home and give the ability for diverse groups of populations to participate in their communities, groups such as women, children, indigenous people, migrants and immigrants, and seniors. 

Indigenous parks in Edmonton - photo Explore Edmonton

How can such high-level concepts be realized in communities? Right now, Edmonton is working on a new zoning bylaw that aims to transform its current legacy of segregation.

The zoning bylaw describes what can or cannot happen on one’s property and it is a tool used to implement visions found within higher-level documents like the City Plan. 

BIG MOVE: INCLUSION OF INDIGENOUS RESIDENTS

Edmonton is a leader when it comes to the inclusion of its indigenous residents and neighbours – the Enoch Cree Nation to the west. The key is to strengthen this relationship through initiatives that increase indigenous participation in the city’s workforce, support indigenous community-led initiatives, and many others. With Edmonton located on the Treaty Six First Nations Territory and as the home of the second-largest urban indigenous population in Canada, prioritizing diversity and inclusion is no small task. 

Perhaps more symbolic than practical, Edmonton has recently approved the renaming of its 12 wards to indigenous names (in different languages). 

This process was led by a committee of 17 indigenous women. Additionally, the Indigenous Art Park was opened in 2018 that permanently exhibits artwork from indigenous artists across Canada.

COMPARISON OF APPROACHES 

SafeGrowth begins with big ideas – the vision and goals. These vision and goals are turned into implementation tools resulting in outcomes that can be seen on the ground. Similarly, Edmonton’s City Plan presents a long-term vision of inclusion and diversity, and the zoning bylaw regulations ensure that this vision is implemented on the ground. 

The City Plan and zoning bylaw encouraged extensive public participation at various stages of the process. It is a great way to empower communities to make decisions about what’s best for them. In this case, they sought to empower women, children, indigenous people, seniors, and newcomers to Edmonton. 

As with the SafeGrowth principle to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion, Edmonton’s City Plan aims to build sustainable, empowered, and interlinked communities. Mateja Mihinjac’s blog Cities of Neighbourhoods - Are We There Yet? describes how SafeGrowth links neighbourhoods through pedestrian-friendly design. 

Edmonton is attempting to achieve similar goals by reaching out and representing its diverse population in decision-making. It is a work in progress that shows how large-scale city planning might adapt to the demands of a diverse society.

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.

What to do about alcohol-related assaults in entertainment districts?

North Queensland, Australia, features some amazing scenery
- and some troubled entertainment districts

by Tarah Hodgkinson

For years we have shown the power of locally created solutions to solve entrenched crime problems, even when those problems do not have an obvious explanation. This is especially the case when neighbourhoods have the benefit of targeted research and prevention programs to use in their safety planning. This is the essence of the SafeGrowth planning method.  

I spent some time a few weeks ago in Northern Queensland facilitating a conversation with local stakeholders, community agencies and police to address an increase in assaults, particularly alcohol-fuelled assaults. There didn’t seem to be an obvious explanation (increases in tourism, etc) as to why. 

City of McKay, Northern Queensland and the Pioneer River
- photo Creative Commons license

The first reality in understanding such problems is that any change in crime rates in the past year must be considered in light of the impact of COVID-19 on crime. Many of those impacts show up in our blogs such as de-policing in Denver, social distancing in Victoria, and exceptional event theories.

More often than not, police-reported incidents declined dramatically during the initial lockdown period and most have returned to pre-pandemic levels. However, this is subject to how officials implement lockdowns and the kind of restrictions they put in place. In the case of assaults in Northern Queensland, this increase was a part of a ten-year trend.  

In recent years, different states across Australia have implemented some significant policy and legislation changes to address night-time assaults in entertainment districts. These include “lockout laws” in certain districts called Safe Night Precincts. In these locations, they reduce alcohol serving time by two hours and ban the sale of takeaway alcohol after 10:00pm and the sale of shots after midnight.  

Risk-based licensing includes rules of behaviour

Some precincts have introduced Risk-Based Licensing (RBL) which requires establishments to pay licensing fees that reflect the venue’s propensity to create harm. This is intended to encourage venues to improve safe service practices and reduce violence on their premises. 

As complaints emerged about the loss of income, legislators rolled back many of these approaches in favour of ID-scanners to ensure underage patrons were unable to enter these precincts. 

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES 

Over and above the loss of income to these areas, strategies produced mixed results in terms of crime. Recent studies of the lockout laws indicate that they have yet to show a decline in alcohol-related assault. 

Furthermore, they may create displacement to precincts that don’t have these requirements. In addition, some studies have found that these legislative changes also result in patrons arriving at the precinct more intoxicated and later in the evening, impacting the level of control the venue has for reducing harm. Unfortunately, RBL’s have yet to demonstrate a decline in alcohol-related harm. 

So then, what works? 

Facilitated meeting in Northern Australian community. As in our
SafeGrowth work, collaboration and community engagement is vital

Unsurprisingly, research suggests that multi-stakeholder strategies are most effective in reducing alcohol-related assaults. This includes coalition building to bring together volunteers and leaders across the community. They have produced some impressive results, including:

• improved training for individuals who serve alcohol including conflict resolution training, 
• developing local policies that make sense to the local context, 
• improving venue design – including ventilation and lighting, 
• supporting alternative, non-alcoholic nighttime activities, and 
• increasing roadside checks. 

This strategy – Community Trials to Reduce High-Risk Drinking (RHRD) – shows success in multiple sites in reducing alcohol-related assaults, sexual assaults and motor vehicle crashes. 

Rather than simply implementing broad sweeping legislation, the success of RHRD is a result of clearly identifying the problem and developing a local solution with all necessary stakeholders. This is unsurprising considering the success we see with SafeGrowth strategies in neighbourhoods around the world. 

When local leaders come together, discuss the problem, identify a solution and work collaboratively to implement that solution, we see amazing results. Based on these successes, community leaders in parts of Northern Queensland are starting the same process across the region. 

How to build a youth-friendly city for a post-COVID world

Throughout the pandemic, children craved outdoor activities

by Mateja Mihinjac

A year ago, at the surge of the COVID pandemic in Europe, we wrote about the importance of staying socially connected at times of "social distancing" and about building personal resilience during this global traumatic event, especially that of children and youth. 

During lockdowns, some children and youth sought social connection with their peers despite the imposed restrictions. Others expressed their dissatisfaction by demonstrating against school closures, damaging public property and public messaging through graffiti tagging. Yet others isolated themselves from others and confined themselves to their four walls. 

A YEAR LATER…

A year into the pandemic, I have been following with sadness the news about the growing numbers of mental health issues in youth and children due to the pandemic and major disruptions to their lives during lockdowns and restrictions to their daily routines.

Many young people turned to tagging to vent their frustrations

In France, mental health hospitalizations of youth under 15 have gone up 80% during the pandemic. In NYC suicidal children spend days waiting to be hospitalized.

In Slovenia, for the first time ever, the demand for hospital beds reserved for children and youth requiring mental health care has exceeded the capacity and now the hospital only admits children who are suicidal.

These are not isolated stories. The effects of these stressors endure and lead to neuropsychiatric challenges in adulthood as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yet, while many adults and parents may be struggling to gain some sense of normalcy themselves, we all need to support our children and youth with the smooth transition to the lives outside of their four walls and computer screens.

What can be done?

Some children require slow and gradual adjustments to
socializing before casting them into a sea of people

TRANSITIONS

Humans dislike sudden changes to their routines and, while very adaptable, children struggle from sudden alterations to their routines more than adults. 

To help children and youth, psychologists Phillips and Ehrenreich-May suggest that home and school need to permit slow adjustment to more active and interactive lives. For children who may require more handholding during this transition, they suggest open conversations, more patience, and help with scheduling the new routines of young people. 

Others emphasise school and home settings and, in the spirit of SafeGrowth, I believe we should include local neighbourhoods and neighbourhood organisations where children and youth spend most of their time. Here are some simple tips:

• Perhaps the staff and volunteers from community organisations and services could learn some basic psychological skills for interacting with children and youth, which would make the transition smoother and less traumatic? 
• Perhaps we could offer additional activities to support children to socialise freely in safe and controlled public spaces (instead of vilifying their gathering as loitering or anti-social behaviour). 
• Perhaps we should pay more attention to reaching out to hard-to-reach youth whose participation in public life is limited. They too need to learn socialization skills as COVID restrictions fade.

Even if we can’t do everything, we can all do something! It takes a village to raise a child. Why not make our villages more children and youth-friendly, especially during these difficult times? Why not use all our neighbourhood resources and organizations to help them build their personal resilience? 

This is our vision for a youth-friendly SafeGrowth city in the post-COVID times.

The peaks and valleys of crime

Monarch Pass mountain range, Colorado - photo Wiki Creative Commons

 

“Just because the average has improved massively, doesn’t mean there is not severe problems of unequal distribution.”

by Gregory Saville  

The above quote is from the controversial psychologist, latter-day populist, Jordan Peterson, someone to whom I seldom pay much attention. To me, his views are too politically motivated and aligned with the far right, even though he claims otherwise. He is addicted to cultural drugs that I don’t take. 

Yet there I was, watching Peterson, recently returned from his traumatic medical crisis, in a long discussion with radio host Russell Brand talking about the power of community and the powerful global trend of incremental rational progress - topics I thought he discounted. 

Peterson was discussing the difference between the overall average conditions versus the relative conditions around the globe. It is the difference between the average altitude of a mountain range and the peaks and valleys. Both are important. 

Consider the altitude crowd: The progressive incrementalists, people like Hans Rosling, Steven Pinker, or Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy’s landmark book Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know, argue that things in the world are getting better and the evidence is conclusive.

Then look at the peaks and valleys: We’re in the midst of a global pandemic, social unrest and riots continue in certain countries, and just two weeks ago some local kid in my neighborhood shot up a grocery store with an assault rifle and killed ten people. 

Sure doesn’t look good from this altitude!

WHO IS RIGHT?

Peterson has nailed this – the incremental progress people are right and the sky is falling crowd are right. Both are happening at the same time.  

Take, for example, crime rates around the world. Whether you get your stats from the World Bank, the World Development Indicators index, or the United Nations, the stats show an undeniable incremental improvement. 

In spite of some alarming homicide increases in American cities this past year (discussed in a prior blog), the overall national homicide rates per 100,000 people have been plummeting in country after country. 

This is true in the United States...

U.S. homicide rates per 100,000 - source World Bank, 1990-2018

... in Canada

Canada homicide rates per 100,000 - source World Bank, 1990-2018

... in Australia

Australia homicide rates per 100,000 - source World Bank, 1990-2018

...and the Netherlands

Netherlands homicide rates per 100,000 - source World Bank, 1990-2018

Then I came upon some Canadian policy planners inviting a Dutch criminologist to Canada to describe the remarkable crime reductions in the Netherlands. If you look at the murder rate declines in both countries, you see that the rates in both countries are fairly similar, except Canada’s decline started from a higher rate than in the Netherlands. The Netherlands should be asking Canada how it was so successful!

Apparently, Canadian policy planners are paying attention to the peaks and valleys and ignoring the averages!

Or consider Mexico, in one of the world’s regions where crime rates are not declining.

Mexico homicide rates per 100,000 - source World Bank, 1990-2018

Let’s not do what Mexico is doing! We are told by criminologists that Mexico’s crime problem is driven by opportunistic drug cartels taking advantage of illicit drug demand in the U.S. If so maybe we should do what some Mexican politicians suggest – de-criminalize drugs. Since the primary reason for Mexican crime is uncontrolled illicit drug demand in the U.S., decriminalizing would cut demand and thereby, cut crime. 

Or is that a case of the pot calling the kettle black? Maybe Mexico should deal with its own drug cartels who create the drug supplies and not focus on the U.S. market that creates the demand? In any event, for ten U.S. states, the marijuana de-criminalization process has already been in place for years, and yet Narco crime has not subsided.

WHAT TO DO?

Ultimately, while averages – especially overall crime rates – are improving, it is difficult to see that in everyday life. It is in the valleys and peaks where we suffer every day. Gang wars, deprived neighborhoods, and crime concentrations still plague our cities and too many people suffer needless violence. 

In SafeGrowth we commit to our discovery that the most powerful way to improve quality of life and prevent crime is to work within the neighborhood with local groups and to provide the capacity for community safety planning by residents. Building community capacity at the local level is, ultimately, the way forward.

Portrait of a COVID response for the homeless

Edmonton's summer skyline - photo by Matthew Boonstra, Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG - Lilit Houlder is an urban planner working with a consulting firm in Edmonton, Canada. She is the most recent member of the SafeGrowth team and in this blog she describes her observations of the urban homeless in the middle of a global pandemic – a situation far too common across the developed world. 

Edmonton has the largest number of unsheltered homeless people living within a Canadian city - approximately 1,070 persons. 

While there are many support services, there are not enough beds or shelter spaces. This poses a problem for Edmonton, which is a place also known as a winter city. With temperatures dropping significantly below freezing during its long winter season, the city has an emergency plan. 

For temperatures below -30 Celsius, the city’s Sector Emergency Response program gets activated to provide free public transportation, essential services, security, and a place to sleep. The city encourages citizens to keep an eye out for anyone in distress during the extreme cold and contact the city response team. The program consists of 25 partner organizations that communicate with each other and share resources. Partnerships such as this strengthen the municipal capacity to address an intractable urban problem.

Rundle Park - one of many in Edmonton. Unsuitable for the homeless in a
sub-zero winter city - photo by Kmw2700, Creative Commons

HOTELS

The city mustered money with support from provincial and federal governments to purchase and repurpose underutilized hotels and to run 24/7 shelters. All necessary supports are given in one place, and people can socially distance themselves to avoid the spread of COVID. This is similar to British Columbia’s legislation last year to use motels for the homeless, as reported in Jon Munn’s blog. 

Purchasing and repurposing hotels is an initiative created by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to adopt more non-profit housing for homeless Canadians. Edmonton purchases hotels that would otherwise operate at extremely low capacities and become a financial burden on the landowners. 

REPURPOSED FACILITIES 

Some cities like Portland are creating temporary community support shelters, such as those reported by Tod Schneider. But with Edmonton’s much colder weather, another approach emerged that is showing up in cities across North America - repurposing civic facilities. 

The city turned the Shaw Conference Center into a 24/7 shelter that offered space for socializing, COVID testing, treating basic medical and mental health needs, and connecting to other support services. What made this venue different is that it was large enough to provide users space for self-isolation if showing symptoms of COVID. Smaller spaces, such as local churches or community halls or community support shelters would not have had sufficient space to accommodate this unique challenge. 

Shaw Conference Centre, Edmonton - photo WinterE200, Creative Commons

2ND GENERATION CPTED 

Although deployed across an entire city versus a single neighbourhood, each of the municipal strategies underway in Edmonton emphasize the power of 2nd Generation CPTED principles as a way to respond to municipal social problems. 

For example, connectivity tactics included linking to upper-level governments for resources and funding. Finding a civic space with enough capacity to house such a large population is, by definition, the very heart of the connectivity principle. It was the same for connections with the 25 organizations in the Sector Emergency Response program – they had the ability to bring food, health, financial support, clothing, and other resources to alleviate the suffering of people with no place to sleep. 

Another example - By educating people about the needs of the homeless during the coldest time of the year, citizens across the entire city participated in watching for vulnerable people during extreme weather. Social cohesion at such a large scale in Edmonton illustrates that, when integrated into part of urban culture, citizens who are organized to work together on a common purpose can go a long way to making life safer for the most vulnerable.