SAFEGROWTH®

SAFEGROWTH® BLOG

regular contributors
GREGORY SAVILLE · MATEJA MIHINJAC · LARRY LEACH 
SUBSCRIBE TO RECEIVE BLOG UPDATES DIRECTLY IN YOUR INBOX
  • HOME
  • WHO WE ARE
    • SAFEGROWTH NETWORK
    • SAFEGROWTH MOVEMENT
    • FRIENDS OF SAFEGROWTH
    • LIKEMINDED
  • WHAT WE DO
    • FOUR PHASES
    • SAFEGROWTH & LIVABILITY ACADEMY TRAINING >
      • Past SafeGrowth & Livability Academy projects
    • TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE & CRIME PREVENTION
    • CONSULTING & ADVISING
    • SUMMITS & SEARCH CONFERENCES
  • ABOUT SAFEGROWTH
    • History
    • Method & Philosophy
    • Theory
    • What makes great neighborhoods
  • RESOURCES
    • VIDEOS
    • Publications
    • SafeGrowth documents
    • TED-Ed tutorials >
      • SafeGrowth - Crime & the 21st Century City
      • Vision-Based Asset Mapping
    • Recommended readings
    • Press
    • SafeGrowth language
  • BOOKS
    • Building neighborhoods of safety & livability
    • Hope rises (awaiting publishing)
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • TOOLKIT (PASSWORD ACCESS)
    • SAFEGROWTH RISK ASSESSMENT FOR NEIGHBORHOODS >
      • SAFEGROWTH RISK ASSESSMENT MATRIX
      • RISK ASSESSMENT CATEGORIES
      • 5 Steps & Report guidance >
        • Report structure
        • Sample reports
      • Readings for download
      • Glossary
    • Notes for SafeGrowth teams >
      • NEW YORK - HARLEM (2025) - COMPLETED
      • NEW YORK - BRONX (2024) - COMPLETED
      • NEW YORK - QUEENS (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE - BALTIMORE POLICE CLASS #2 (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE - BALTIMORE POLICE CLASS #1 (2024) - COMPLETED
      • MADISON (2024) - COMPLETED
      • SASKATOON (2024) - COMPLETED
      • VANCOUVER (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE (2024) - COMPLETED

29/8/2011

BIKE TRAILS AND CRIME - THE PINELLAS TRAIL

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
A Florida bike overpass rivaling highway cloverleafs

"The homeless man said he believes the trail ought to be closed at night for safety." That's an ominous quote from an unlikely source. It regards a new bike trail winding through a rough part of Seattle called The Jungle.
​
Concerns about crime near bike trails are not new. Beyond Seattle they have surfaced in Los Angeles, and Virginia Beach.

The takeaway message? There are ways to master bike trail design and ways to botch it.

This blog has shown how proper analysis and design can humanize and insulate urban designs, from ATMs and street furniture to lighting and trails.

Last month I spent time in St. Petersburg, Florida on the Pinellas Trail. It is an award-winning bike/jogging/walking trail that runs 40 miles from Tarpon Springs and Clearwater to St. Petersburg. The trail is 20 years old and I was impressed at the extent, quality, and resources the community invested in making this work.

Along the Pinellas trail you find art, bike shops, and bus stops located nearby for walkers who decide to bus home. Pinellas encourages vendor concessions and adjacent parks with places for wedding photos. In CPTED these are called activity generators. 
Picture
Pinellas bike trail overpass

Parts of it run through downtown St Petersburg, where some crimes do occur. For example about a dozen robberies are reported each year, mostly teens stealing from other teens (but not always). 

Consider that a quarter million residents in St Petersburg experience over 1,000 robberies each year, and crime on Pinellas Trail seems remarkably low. 

The day I visited there were walkers, joggers and bikers. It has an emergency response system and fairly strict rules (no alcohol, daytime only operation, no headphones permitted while biking).

Here's the question: Do municipalities demand a proper crime analysis, safety consultation and CPTED review before they construct bike/jogging/walking trails? If SafeGrowth planning was part of municipal development, that question would be irrelevant.
Picture

Share

0 Comments

21/8/2011

RIOT NIGHTS, CITY LIGHTS

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty - Loving Spoonful, 1966

Depressed from riot news, I silence static from clueless TV pundits by tuning down the volume. Just watching images it seems the worst violence and looting happens at night. Biased news reporting perhaps? I wonder how street lighting impacts the locations of violence and looting? Can we use that knowledge for prevention? 

There are online clues. There is a problem-oriented guide for police on improved street lighting.

That guide is less about tactical design and more about analysis, evaluation, and public support (all valuable, especially for police). It lists 8 US studies in which half show no impact and 3 UK studies that show more promise. There are 2 examples of police-led lighting improvements, one of which cut thefts from cars from 27 to 4.

For urban designers and developers looking for specifics you'll find more tactical designs in the ICA guidebook for professionals, CPTED and Lighting: reducing crime, improving security by Randy Atlas.

In addition to diagrams, photometric maps, and site photos, Atlas provides details on perimeter lighting, new technologies like LEDs, lighting controls, and the IESNA lighting guidelines for minimum lighting levels.

LEDs to the rescue

According to The Atlantic magazine, the yellowish glare of sodium street lighting may be fading forever in favor of low-energy, white LEDs and crime had nothing to do with it. Energy saving and the recession did. 

There has been an explosion of LED (light emitting diode) technology. Cities like Seattle and Pittsburg have been racing to install LEDs. LA will replace 140,000 of the city’s 209,000 streetlights with LEDs.

I have blogged on lighting and crime before, especially in Toronto,Oakland, and Los Angeles.
Picture
Photo from ICAs lighting guide. Atlas, 2010

Now Arlington, Virginia is replacing 4,200 high pressure sodium street lights with LEDs. Apparently they may switch out all 12,000 street lights to cut costs. 

According to the LA Times, LED technology still has glitches. No matter. The Great Recession is charting our future in ways we don't expect. 

For better or worse, street light LEDs are on our horizon.

Share

0 Comments

14/8/2011

JUST A MATTER OF TIME

0 Comments

Read Now
 
An easy prediction following urban riots: authorities will blame anarchists and ne'er-do-wells for criminal behavior. Normal citizens, so goes the myth, would never do such a thing. (Sometimes they may be right. The Battle of Seattle in 2000 comes to mind.) 

In truth, riots emerge from many causes, like middle-class blowouts following sporting championships. Vancouver's recent hockey riot comes to mind. One Vancouverite deludes herself, "this isn't the real Vancouver!"

Of course it is! Two championship losses, two Vancouver riots! Says one normal person caught rioting in Vancouver, "the riot would continue happening with or without me, so I might as well get my adrenaline fix." That's no criminal or anarchist talking. 

In criminology I was once told it is too simple to blame poverty as a cause of crime because the eradication of poverty would eradicate crime. I have since learned ignoring poverty and deprivation is misguided for both crime and riots. Recent riots didn't break out in Beverly Hills, Greenwich, or Hampstead. They broke out in the poorest, most deprived, neighborhoods with the highest crime: Tottenham (UK), Villiers-le-Bel (France), Cairo, and Tripoli.

True, some criminals may seize on urban mayhem to loot and pillage. We must not let their opportunism distract us. Also, some short-term tactics might work, like tampering with rioters cell-phone planning. We must not let tactics for secondary factors distract us.

Neighborhood capacity-building in communities must be the goal of economic policy. Political power that concentrates at the top and ignores local capacity-building cannot last. That is one message of recent riots.

Here's another: Festering poverty and neighborhood deprivation dries up community branches of goodwill, what Hobbes and Rousseau called the social contract. Silencing people through unfair economic conditions or political repression splays those branches into a tinderbox. A recent NY Times article describes that tinderbox - people in "an uprising fighting for an accessible future."

Igniting that tinderbox is not a matter of youth acting like a jackass on speed. It is not a matter of crime. It is a matter of time. We should not be surprised. ​

Share

0 Comments

10/8/2011

SOME TRAILS ARE HAPPY ONES...

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
"UnHappy Trails? Where's the research?"

No doubt considerable fear exists on the streets of London after this week's riots. Whole books are written on urban crime and fear. What about rural places far from urban mayhem? The Gabriola Island murders from last blog suggest rural crimes too ferment fears of public places like nature trails.

This is ironic. Parks and trails are statistically far safer than bars at closing time or inside homes when domestic strife turns violent. Study after study tell us public trails are safe, such as Tod Schneider's article on bike trails back in 2000.

Yet those are urban studies. Research has yet to examine rural nature trails and crime. CPTED was born, after all, in the city.

I was recently interviewed by a horticulture magazine about trees and crime asking these very questions. The article, Trees Thwart Shady Behavior, described a study on crime and residential trees by examining 2,813 single-family homes in Portland, Oregon. 

Controlling for visual appearance, presence of barriers, and street activity, the study showed "houses fronted with more street trees had lower crime rates". That was all crime rates, including vandalism and burglary. 

Read it HERE.

Share

0 Comments

5/8/2011

FALL FROM PARADISE - MURDER ON GABRIOLA

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
Gabriola Island, British Columbia - unlikely murder scene

Small towns are safe. Big cities are not. That's the myth. 

Like many small communities in the Gulf Islands off the British Columbia coast, Gabriola Island is draped in lush rain-forests and magnificent beach scenery. It has miles of walking trails and hiking paths. Gabriola's 4,000 residents have the lowest crime ratesanywhere. Until now. 

With most myths, facts intrude. This week one shattered Gabriola's calm. 

A knife attack left a mother dead and her son in hospital. Residents were ordered indoors and to stay off the trails. Today police apprehend a suspect hiding in some bushes near the scene of the crime.

This is Gabriola's second murder in 6 years. Two murders, of course, does not a trend make. Low numbers tell volumes about low crime risks. 

Still, small towns do not necessarily produce low crime. Counting the current murder, Gabriola's murder rate is 25 per 100,000 (16 times higher than the rest of the country). What can be done?

I've blogged before about the catch-and-release courts in British Columbia. After sentencing, the murderer in Gabriola's last homicideserved 2 years in prison (he beat his roommate to death with a hatchet). 

Courts are clearly not in the safety or prevention business.

Walking outdoors next week may seem different on Gabriola. More frightening than last week. Lockdowns and wandering killers can have that effect.

True, these murders were indoors. Yet fear is insidious and civic places need a public space. How can small towns project confidence onto public spaces like paths and parks? Can we design out this problem? Do we really want cameras on hiking paths? 

Is this the price we must pay for vigilance?
Picture
Natural surveillance by ducks?

Share

0 Comments
Details
    SUBSCRIBE TO RECEIVE BLOG UPDATES DIRECTLY IN YOUR INBOX

    REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS

    GREGORY SAVILLE
    TARAH HODGKINSON
    MATEJA MIHINJAC

    CATEGORIES

    All
    15-minute City
    4S
    AI
    Alcohol
    Alternative Development
    Art
    Artificial Intelligence
    Biophilia
    Black Lives Matter
    Bladerunner
    Bus Stops
    CCTV
    Change Agent
    Civility
    Collaboration
    Community Building
    Community Empowerment
    Community Engagement
    Community Safety
    Connectivity
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    CPTED
    C. Ray Jeffery
    Creativity
    Crime Analysis
    Crime Displacement
    Crime Disruptors
    Crime Opportunity
    Crime Prevention
    Crime Rates
    Crime Severity Index
    Criminology
    Culture
    Cure Violence
    Defensible Space
    Design Out Crime
    Diversity
    Downtown
    Drottninghog
    Emotional Intelligence
    Entertainment Districts
    Environmental Criminology
    Ethics
    Europe
    Evidence-based
    Eyes On The Street
    Fake News
    Fear Of Crime
    Feminism
    Food Access
    Future Cities
    Global Warming
    Governance
    Graffiti
    Green Spaces
    H22
    H22 Smart City Expo
    HACE
    Harmscapes
    Health
    Helsingborg
    Homelessness
    Housing
    Human Scale Design
    ICA
    Immigration
    Inclusiveness
    Indigenous
    International CPTED Association
    Laneway
    Latin America
    Law
    Law Enforcement
    Lighting
    LISC
    Livability
    Livability Academy
    Local Capacity
    Local Democracy
    Local Trust
    Location Quotient
    Loneliness
    Lovability
    Mental Health
    Motivation
    Neighborhood
    Neighborhood Asset
    Neighborhood Governance
    Neighborhood Hubs
    Neighborhood Livability Hierarchy
    Neighborhood Transformation
    NIMBY
    Operation Ceasefire
    Partnerships
    PBL
    Philadelphia
    Placemaking
    Policing
    Politics
    Populism
    Predictive Policing
    Problem Based Learning
    Problem-based Learning
    Professionalization
    Protests
    Public Health
    Quality Of Life
    Restorative City
    Restorative Justice
    Rural Crime
    SafeGrowth
    Safety Audits
    San Romanoway
    Science
    Second Generation CPTED
    Security
    Self-governance
    Sitability
    Situational Crime Prevention
    Smart City
    Smart Growth
    Social Cohesion
    Social Distancing
    Social Ecology
    Social Isolation
    Social Justice
    Social Unrest
    Space Activation
    Street Walkability
    Suburbs
    Successful Places
    Surveillance
    Sustainability
    Sweden
    Target Hardening
    Technology
    Theory
    Third Generation CPTED
    Third Places
    TOD
    Transportation
    Urban Decline
    Urbanism
    Urban Planning
    Violence
    Youth


    ARCHIVES

    July 2024
    October 2023
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009


CONTACT

[email protected]


​AlterNation LLC is the parent company managing the SafeGrowth Alliance. 
Check out our website: www.alternation.ca

Picture

SafeGrowth® 2007-2025
All rights reserved.

© A registered product of AlterNation LLC

SafeGrowth® is a philosophy and theory of neighborhood safety planning for 21st Century.

​SafeGrowth® is available all over the world for creating new relationships between city government and residents. Any city can adopt this philosophy thereby creating empowered neighborhoods resistant to crime with residents engaged in planning their own future.


  • HOME
  • WHO WE ARE
    • SAFEGROWTH NETWORK
    • SAFEGROWTH MOVEMENT
    • FRIENDS OF SAFEGROWTH
    • LIKEMINDED
  • WHAT WE DO
    • FOUR PHASES
    • SAFEGROWTH & LIVABILITY ACADEMY TRAINING >
      • Past SafeGrowth & Livability Academy projects
    • TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE & CRIME PREVENTION
    • CONSULTING & ADVISING
    • SUMMITS & SEARCH CONFERENCES
  • ABOUT SAFEGROWTH
    • History
    • Method & Philosophy
    • Theory
    • What makes great neighborhoods
  • RESOURCES
    • VIDEOS
    • Publications
    • SafeGrowth documents
    • TED-Ed tutorials >
      • SafeGrowth - Crime & the 21st Century City
      • Vision-Based Asset Mapping
    • Recommended readings
    • Press
    • SafeGrowth language
  • BOOKS
    • Building neighborhoods of safety & livability
    • Hope rises (awaiting publishing)
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • TOOLKIT (PASSWORD ACCESS)
    • SAFEGROWTH RISK ASSESSMENT FOR NEIGHBORHOODS >
      • SAFEGROWTH RISK ASSESSMENT MATRIX
      • RISK ASSESSMENT CATEGORIES
      • 5 Steps & Report guidance >
        • Report structure
        • Sample reports
      • Readings for download
      • Glossary
    • Notes for SafeGrowth teams >
      • NEW YORK - HARLEM (2025) - COMPLETED
      • NEW YORK - BRONX (2024) - COMPLETED
      • NEW YORK - QUEENS (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE - BALTIMORE POLICE CLASS #2 (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE - BALTIMORE POLICE CLASS #1 (2024) - COMPLETED
      • MADISON (2024) - COMPLETED
      • SASKATOON (2024) - COMPLETED
      • VANCOUVER (2024) - COMPLETED
      • BALTIMORE (2024) - COMPLETED