A 25-year experiment - the International CPTED Association

A 25-year experiment in crime prevention through environmental design
- photo Wiki Creative Commons

by Gregory Saville

Twenty-five years ago I participated in an experiment. Paul Wong, Barry Davidson, and I decided to sponsor an international conference on crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). We had no idea if it would work, a vague hope that something bigger would come out of it, but no guarantee that anything would occur. 

We met in Calgary with 70 other CPTED acolytes including (among others) Stan and Sherry Carter from Florida, Tim Pascoe from the UK, Tom McKay from Peel Region in Ontario, Patricia and Paul Brantingham from Burnaby, BC, Mike Sheard and Brian Foote from Vancouver. The International CPTED Association (ICA) grew out of that conference.

This year the ICA celebrates its 25th Anniversary with hundreds of members all over the world. The current ICA President is from Chile, the Vice President from South Africa, the Executive Director is from Slovenia, the Secretary, and Treasurer from Canada and Board members from the U.S., Australia, India, Malaysia, Ecuador, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, Mexico, and New Zealand.

But things were not always so rosy and, like CPTED, the ICA ebbed and flowed with the political currents of the day. The ICA was born following a period of criminological research in the 1980s, some of which led to new ideas like situational crime prevention and environmental criminology, and others that led to the broken windows theory and routine activities theory.

Downtown Calgary, Canada - home of the inaugural ICA conference
- photo Wiki Creative Commons

HOT AND COLD RESEARCH

Some of that research was revolutionary: Situational crime prevention gave us practical prevention strategies; environmental criminology showed how crime clusters along pathways and urban nodes; the geography of crime described crime hotspots.

But not all new theories were helpful. Some were Mr. Potato Head theories – full of holes and bland in taste. Others were saturated with fancy euphemisms that complicated simple ideas. Yet others removed the social aspects of CPTED and replaced them with target hardening. 

Then there was broken windows theory, which some consider CPTED. Broken windows transformed into zero-tolerance enforcement – a controversial police enforcement tactic for anti-social behavior. Broken windows back-fired spectacularly, especially politically. While it cut crime in New York, crime also declined by the same rate in San Diego with zero broken windows tactics. Broken windows tainted the original CPTED message. Even today, unwitting activists still claim broken windows is CPTED. 

Broken windows co-creator, Professor George Kelling, once told me he could not fathom how his theory went so far off track. In my view, broken windows ended in the hands of police managers suffering institutional autism – an inability to communicate outside their profession and themselves. Distortion comes easy to those who do not read history. The same thing happened in CPTED when practitioners, falling victim to slipshod assertions, adopted target hardening and CCTV cameras and ignored the social world where crime actually happens. 

The 2005 joint conference of the ICA and the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers. Loyola Marymount University overlooking Los Angeles.

THE ICA  AS  OCCAM’S RAZOR

Fortunately, the ICA is a practitioner-oriented organization more interested in what works than what sounds good, a kind of self-correcting organizational Occam’s Razor. In the early 2000s, it began introducing more holistic strategies, such as certification programs. ICA conferences travelled from Canada and the U.S. to Australia, the Netherlands, Chile, and Mexico. 

Within a decade the ICA had online training resources and a network of experts around the world. Gerard Cleveland and myself introduced 2nd Generation CPTED at ICA conferences in 1997 and 1998, which brought social factors back into CPTED. Since 2017 the ICA has dramatically expanded with webinars, course accreditation, online masterclasses, newsletters, white papers, and new guidebooks. This past year the International Standards Organization published the first-ever CPTED ISO, which ICA members helped to create. In short, the ICA is flourishing.

Introducing the ICA at the first-ever CPTED conference in Honduras, 2017

AND WHAT ABOUT CPTED...? 

In some places today CPTED remains mired in target hardening – a buffet of lights, locks, and cameras with hedge trimming for flavor. Poorly trained practitioners still use these methods to exclude groups, thereby promoting what is called ‘hostile architecture'. Social activists have caught on and, rather than figure out the true nature of CPTED and how hostile practices deviate, they label all CPTED as racist using the same biased reasoning that they blame on CPTED practitioners. 

In truth, the ICA has a formal code of ethics opposing hostile architecture. Sadly, too many CPTED practitioners are not ICA certified, not all courses are ICA accredited and they are not required to follow the ICA code of ethics. As they say, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

In other places, CPTED has grown into community-planning practices called SafeGrowth. On this blog, you will find a rich history of neighborhood development, community-building with social and economic programs, and personal development through neighborhood programs like Livability Academies. Both 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED play a role in SafeGrowth, but the quality of life (what 3rd Generation CPTED called neighborhood livability) plays a bigger role. 

Happy 25th birthday to the International CPTED Association!

If you want to learn more about the ICA, or attend the 25th Anniversary ICA virtual conference, Nov 2-4, 2021, check out their website.

Long time running - Crime severity in Canada's "crime capital"?

North Battleford water tower at night - photo Creative Commons

by Tarah Hodgkinson

North Battleford (NB), a city of 14,000 in Saskatchewan, has since 2009 held the title for the “crime capital of Canada” with the highest crime severity index (CSI) in the country. This led to a flurry of media coverage trying to understand how this small community could be so dangerous. 

Throughout this period, Herb Sutton and Ryan Mackrell, crime prevention advocates, residents, and SafeGrowth practitioners, were on the ground working to figure out what was happening and how to fix it. Enlisting my help, we conducted a city-wide survey of crime and victimization. 

Findings showed that residents generally felt safe. Violent victimization was low, and property crime was the most common issue. Residents identified a few areas in NB that felt unsafe but generally, they liked their community.

HIGH CSI BUT LOW VICTIMIZATION? 

So, what was happening in North Battleford? Why was the CSI so high if victimization was relatively low and people felt safe? 

Unlike crime rates that simply divide the total number of crimes by the population and multiply by 100,000, the CSI assigns a “statistical weighting” based on the seriousness of each crime included in the numerator.

Serious crimes like assault and homicide are weighted more heavily; for example, one homicide is weighted the same as 306 assaults. Apparently, this allows for a comparison of crime seriousness across the country. 

However, like crime rates, the CSI is also impacted by population size. In technical terms, the total crime severity of all crimes, divided by low population size, is going to produce a higher crime severity index. It’s simple math. Just look at the highest crime severity indices for last year.  Every one of them is a small community. 

MacLean's Magazine labels North Battleford the "most dangerous place"

What does this mean for NB? First, they were labelled as the crime capital. That meant they had to fight a national stigma. Second, they still had very little information on which problems they might actually need to address. They had run a SafeGrowth training course in their city to analyse how to create more effective safety planning. But that didn’t change the government statistical reporting problems. 

A NEW STATISTICAL TOOL

Enter the crime location quotient (LQ). The location quotient addresses some of the limitations of population-based statistics. LQs do not suffer from the same issue of population size. Instead, LQs use total crime for the area rather than population figures and they produce a figure for crime specialization. For example, assaults within NB, can be compared against assaults for the province of Saskatchewan, as a whole. The LQ addresses areas that are over or under-represented for certain crime types. 

Main Street, North Battleford, Saskatchewan - photo Creative Commons

This allows practitioners to better understand which types of crime might be a concern (which type of crime specialization appears in their community) and how this specialization compares to other communities. 

I conducted these LQ comparisons in a recent article in the Canadian Geographer and demonstrated that in 2018, similar to other years, North Battleford did not specialize in violent crime compared to the other 14 municipalities in Saskatchewan. In fact, when examining violent crime, non-violent crime, and eight crime types, NB specialized only in mischief. 

While NB has held the record for “crime capital” since 2009, when using a geographical measure of crime (LQ), North Battleford drops to 12th place for violent crime and 3rd place for non-violent crime in Saskatchewan. Furthermore, in 2018, NB is under-represented for violent crime, assault, break and enter, theft of motor vehicle, and very under-represented for sexual assault. 

THE RELEVANCE OF CSI

Is the CSI an inappropriate measure for understanding crime in Canada? My study questions its relevance. While the CSI offered another way to look at crime, its limitations have serious unintended consequences. Unlike what the CSI claims, this LQ study demonstrates that NB is not particularly “dangerous.” 

Placemaking community work underway to enhance community pride

The labelling of a small community like NB as the “crime capital” of Canada has damaging implications for the people who live there. It stigmatizes the community and disempowers local residents. My research suggests the media characterization of NB is largely unwarranted. 

Lately, the media has turned to another Canadian community – Thompson, Manitoba – and they now claim that is the new “crime capital”. To residents and policy-makers in Thompson and elsewhere in Canada: Please consider carefully the weight, and truth, of such statistical statements. Instead, we suggest it is better to spend time and resources seeking out more effective methods of local capacity-building and neighborhood resilience. 

Who rules us? Who serves us?

Recent anti-government demonstration in Slovenia - 
photo Adriana Aralica

by Mateja Mihinjac

On June 1 of this year, 4265 tiny Slovenian flags appeared in the capital’s city park. The flags symbolised the number of lives lost in the preceding 12-months from the day the military jets flew over the country to celebrate the presumed “victory” over COVID. It was the day the Slovenian government declared the end of the epidemic following what the government claims were only 108 COVID-related deaths. Little were we prepared for what followed.

The sight of all those flags made me reflect with sadness on the unprecedented crisis over the past year. It also reminded me of the importance of local trust in governance – and good governance itself – to support the nation in times of crisis.

In the SafeGrowth movement, we put emphasis on building local trust and we teach problem-solving and community development with diverse teams within each neighbourhood. The goal is to promote democratic neighbourhood self-governance with the objective of creating safe, liveable, inclusive, and cohesive neighbourhoods. 

Our focus is on individual neighbourhoods at a micro-scale. But this process can be difficult when there are large, macro-scale obstacles halting progress – such as poor governance and an intense distrust of those who govern.

4265 Slovenian flags for each COVID death

TRUST 

I have blogged regarding public concerns about the Slovenian government and the misuse of powers during the crisis some months ago. While the current crisis has deepened distrust, for over a decade 80% of Slovenians have indicated low levels of trust in the national government and its legitimacy.

The OECD also reported a significant 20% drop in trust in Slovenian governance between 2006 and 2017. Conversely, in that same period, Poland, (also a post-communist country like Slovenia), has observed a 42% increase in trust. Clearly, there are things governments can do to create conditions of trust.

Low trust in Slovenia has been attributed to the perception of poor integrity, transparency, and fairness. According to OECD’s findings, the Slovenian government is much less open compared to other OECD countries, which impacts the levels of institutional trust. 

When it comes to a functioning democracy, trust matters a great deal. It has been common to hear accusations that national governments have acted abusively and granted themselves special powers beyond those necessary to address the pandemic. Those accusations now have support from research that confirmed this creeping threat to democratic countries. 

How do we move forward in such times?

GOING FORWARD

As anthropologist Margaret Mead said, thoughtful and committed citizens are the key to progress. Others have added that organised collective action is just as paramount:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, organized citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

 

Lake Bled, Slovenia - some of the most beautiful waters in the world
- photo Adiel Io, Creative Commons 

I recently witnessed some bright moments of democracy prevailing. Just this past weekend an overwhelming 86% of voters rejected the new Slovenian Waters Act due to provisions that would permit construction in the areas where it could threaten natural drinking resources. The referendum – with the second-highest turnout in Slovenian history – succeeded due to extensive efforts and organised action by citizens and civic organisations.

Some issues also require democratic actions on a local neighbourhood level. 

For example, very recently, in my local village, a group from the local community worked together to demand the removal of the company responsible for illegal waste storage in the neighbourhood. It demanded immediate action and the residents organised a news conference with attendance from the mayor, representatives of companies responsible for the waste, and the news networks. This collective action prompted the government to act. 

The way forward is a commitment to change coupled with organised action. Those are excellent ways to address both macro and micro issues. This reaffirms our SafeGrowth philosophy that an organised approach by informed and engaged local citizens is the key to forward momentum and effective problem-solving with communities large and small.  

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.