-Dr. Russell James
Dept. of Housing & Consumer Economics
University of Georgia

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

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