CPTED Works Great But What’s Missing?
There is no doubt that Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) is effective and that many communities are embracing it more today than ever before. Although it’s methodology continues to evolve, there is often a few important things missing – Leadership, Social Planning and Community Support. It’s these things that make CPTED a recipe for success. These ingredients help create safe communities and neighbourhoods that will be successfully transformed, empowered and better able to face adversity in an ever-changing human-made environment. Without them, it gets a failing grade!
It’s always nice to brag about your own community and what’s great about it. As a CPTED consultant living and working in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, we are on the right track. Our municipality clearly understands CPTED and how it can benefit every resident and business owner. However, this article is also about good leadership and those that support it. It’s spring finally and this reminds me of a book my wife recently read called Let Your Life Speak, by Parker Palmer. It’s a great little book that asks it’s readers to “Listen for the Voice of Vocation” in each of us. It reminded me of some of the leaders I have been working with during the past few years. This list of names would be long but it’s clear that each of them are leaders in their vocations. I consider them more than simply colleagues, they are critical to my success as a CPTED practitioner. They come from various city departments such as community services, social planning, licensing and inspections, parks, recreation, culture, planning services and the list goes on. Various businesses, non-profit organizations, residents and certainly our local RCMP also play primary leadership roles in the successful implementation of CPTED.
There is no doubt in my mind that social planning plays a tremendous role in designing out crime and improving community safety. For those that truly think traditional CPTED practices are a panacea for crime, they’re missing one of the key ingredients. Since last year, I have been privileged to participate in several important groups, one for high-risk youth and the other, a social marketing campaign for our homeless and other vulnerable community members. It has been a tremendous learning experience and I realize that the success of CPTED requires feedback and support from these groups and those we are helping. I’ve been offered a unique opportunity to “see” the environments they work in and those people they are interacting with each and every day. We are not the only city pushing the envelope and challenging ourselves. Teens are taking to rebuilding communities all over the world. Take for example the Build On Program and the dedicated teens serving their community in Detroit. For them, it’s all about giving back and trying to help create safe streets and neighbourhoods.
Finally, without community support various programs and new initiatives will never be successful, including CPTED. This is required at all levels and from all sectors. I often say that “it’s not about how well we work alone, it’s about working together. We are starting to hear a lot more about companies, big and small, stepping up to the plate and being more socially responsible. For many of these companies, it’s helped create a shift in their way of thinking and how they conduct business. They are not just considering their ROI, they are seriously embracing Social Return on Investment (SROI). I’m hoping that we all begin hearing more about SROI in the near future. More importantly, let’s start practicing it. Find your true vocation and ask yourself – What inspires you?
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Right on Steve. SROI is very important. Social developement is also important. To make these all work together, we must garner community support. Our communities, no longer have any real definition. As a matter of fact, you can often go into a different community and find the homes and streets often look and feel the same. There is very little in the way of diversity. You cant tell by looking at a house who lives there. I think we have built a society that wants everyone to conform and the builders, developers and planners have built our communities based on a strict building criteria. So strict that there is very little or known culturalism at all. We are slowly building a melting pot, that pumps out expectations based on the need of providing homes for the masses. We need to take a good look at why this is happening. We have all the terminology and the acronyms to match. Somehow we need to get back to basics and stop a lot of confusion. One city cannot be compared to another when it comes to CPTED, CPTSD and SROI.
Here in Calgary we are trying to include all of these strategies. It is paramount that we all come to a concesus of how this should all work together. Many things I would like to do with CPTED can be very difficult, especially when we are working with several inner agencies of one group, like The City of Calgary. I am not saying that it doesnt work, but it is very difficult to get everyone who is a stake holder in one room to design new communities and take action and utilize best practice strategies. Communication, Communication, that is the key. Once we open up these lines of communication, I believe we can truly make an impact. There was a time when we had the Safer City Initiative and we had all the key decision makers in one room and decisions were made immediately. When I see sound barriers that tower over back yards and essentially close them in from the outside world, it reminds me of gated communities. When you finally find the entrance, it is like the entrance to a gated community and once you are in those areas or subdivision, you will experience the economic impact on the classes, because they are grouped into their little sub-communities. There you will find a definate seperation of classes, economically and socially. How do we get everyone to work together for the same goal when we are faced with such seperation. Isn’t it time to change the mindset of how we build or communities and in fact change the cookie cutter housings styles? I think we have bylawed people to extremes where there is no indivduality. I know when I drive home at night, I dont see any individualism. I see large congested streets, houses that are all the same and communities where people lock the door and stick to there backyards. I see wooden fences that are built for privacy, not for community involvement or communication. Because I live on the Corner of 2 streets and my deck is elevated to have a view of the neighbourhood, I feel like I’m the watch dog. We have basically fenced ourselves off from the world around us, for the sake of privacy. We need to teach people how to have privacy, but to also communicate with their neighbours.
Block Watch is a way of accomplishing some of this. Because it is a back alley/watch program and a street of houses know each other and continue to foster good relations and a caring attitude, Block Watch can work, It’s time to educate the community on CPTED and CPTSD and Block Watch could be a great venue for it. I think we need to get back to some of the programs, like Block Watch and get involved in our communities again, by getting to know who lives on our block. At this point training and training the trainer is a good start. I recall a gentleman in one of my classes who wasn’t allowed to have Block Watch on his street (one that he was willing to run as a Block Capain. He was told there was no area cordinator and asked to take on way more that he wanted to. He declined to be the area coordinator and was told he could not run his own Block Watch. I was appauled at the notion that communities must rely on a governed group who can simply say, sorry you dont fit the criteria for your own Block Watch.
The other issue I have, is there are so many people in groups, who report themselves as the experts, when in fact they do not know enough about the grassroots of crime prevention and community cohesiveness. I have been invited to so many meetings where the CPTED and CPTSD specialist or practioner is called in last, after all the plans are already written in stone and there is very little movement for change. There are many different teams and groups trying to do there own thing, that they dont know what each other is doing and in most cases, dont know another group exists. This is frustrating to say the least. Duplication, redundancy and in some cases mayhem. Its time to get back to the people, educate them and give them the tools to move ahead to building a safer, healthier and more cohesive community.
Gerry
Thanks for the comments Gerry. It’s nice having other practitioners like yourself and various community members providing their perspectives.
There is certainly some frustration in what we “see” day to day and hear when we are truly listening to community residents and their concerns. I believe it’s up to us to try and bring various groups together and help facilitate the CPTED process and include the other essential ingredients I wrote about.
The larger the city, the more challenging this becomes. CPTED really needs support from top city officials. We are fortunate to have that support here in Red Deer. It also sounds like the primary principles of CPTED and best practices such as Safe Growth need to be adopted by The City of Calgary. This would ensure compliance and you would not be experiencing the level of frustration you seem to be facing.
Steve
Thought you might be interested in a presentation related to CPTED that I just posted to slideshare.net. It is open and available for anyone to download at
http://www.slideshare.net/rjamesuga/crime-design-cpted
-Dr. Russell James
Dept. of Housing & Consumer Economics
University of Georgia
Thanks Russell, sharing information and resources is what this site is all about – Steve