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      • 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

19/9/2019

MEETING IN MEXICO

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by Gregory Saville

A few weeks ago we ran our SafeGrowth Summit just before the annual International CPTED Association conference. Both events were held at a sunny beach resort in beautiful Cancun, Mexico, and they were a study in contrasts.

The SafeGrowth Summit included an intimate group of a dozen SafeGrowth Advocates who ran informal workshops in person (and online) while the ICA conference featured over 500 delegates in formal presentations. Yet both events brought people from around the world and both were smashing successes.


SAFEGROWTH SUMMIT

This was the 6th SafeGrowth Summit comprising small, brainstorming sessions where those of us in the SafeGrowth network share successes and failures and also develop new strategies to move the concept forward. We reflected on project work this past year and examined the politics of change. We saw architectural renderings of neighborhood hubs designed by one of our Latin American members and we learned the results of a recent beta-test of our new GPS digitized field observation software.

There were inspiring accounts of the Philadelphia Livability Academies now underway and we discussed a new methodology to track our success after neighborhood projects. We talked, discussed, ate, swam, planned and, best of all, laughed.
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The 2019 venue offered sunsets and great facilities

CPTED CONFERENCE

The ICA conference followed immediately after at the same venue and produced the largest audience in ICA history. Over 500 delegates came to share successes and failures, but they focused their work on different versions of crime prevention through environmental design. While SafeGrowth uses both 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED, it does this through the lens of planning safer neighborhoods, community development, and social capacity-building.

The ICA conference featured the first-ever, commercial Expo, as well as case studies from cities around the world. Many of our SafeGrowth Advocates delivered presentations at the ICA conference. Best of all, two of our SafeGrowth Advocates, Mateja Mihinjac and Carlos Gutiérrez, won international achievement awards from the ICA.

Congratulations to all for great work to make neighborhood lives safer and more vibrant.

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10/9/2019

TRACKING FEAR - MEASURING SAFETY PERCEPTIONS IN SASKATOON

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Picture
Saskatoon river trail at night

​by Mateja Mihinjac

This summer, I led a team of eight city planners and set out to explore how the physical and social environment in downtown Saskatoon, Canada influences perceptions of personal safety. This was the first-ever micro-level, fear and safety project to use a specially tailored, digitized software app to map and analyse downtown safety in Canada. This is something geographers of crime and environmental psychologists have been studying for decades, but often without the precise measurements that we were about to uncover.


MEASURING PERCEPTIONS OF SAFETY

Perceptions of safety have been understudied in the field of criminology despite knowing that they may affect people’s use of the public realm more than actual crime. Moreover, from Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design - CPTED - we know that features on the streets, parks, and neighborhoods where we live may promote or reduce fear in that environment. Yet, we rarely measure this association.
Picture
Downtown Saskatoon street research locations

​As a criminologist specializing in SafeGrowth and CPTED, the City of Saskatoon planning department hired me for the summer of 2019 to develop and pilot this downtown project.

The first step included the development of the field data collection survey, a modified version of the Neighbourhood Safety Audit that incorporates the principles of CPTED. The survey was then digitized in a GPS location-based data collection app called Fulcrum, that allowed us to capture and record data with our mobile devices for use in subsequent analysis.


DATA COLLECTION

We formed two research teams of four participants from the Saskatoon Planning & Development Division. Each participant had undergone CPTED/SafeGrowth training and was knowledgeable about urban design and safety. Teams collected night and daytime data within the downtown area over 13 days.
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Daytime audits were combined with evening audits of the same locations

​Because we were interested in perceptions and fear at a very micro-level, the study area was confined to the blocks and laneways within a four block area. We used our new app to collect information from 108 micro-spatial locations within a radius of 30 meters (100 feet) of each location, and then we also collected 596 additional intercept surveys with members of the public on the street at the time.

Detailed fieldwork like this is laborious and time consuming, but teams were diligent and we were able to gain invaluable insights, in some cases uncovering findings about fear that were previously unknown.
Picture
Fear and safety perception maps can be correlated with actual crime maps

​PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

What did we learn?

  1. The social environment influenced perceptions much more than the physical environment. Respondents often couldn’t point to particular land use or design features impacting their perception of safety, but they were able to note people who increased their comfort levels, such as local employees, shoppers, and people running errands. Erratic and unpredictable behaviour on the street increased their anxieties. 
  2. Lack of activity in particular blocks due to underactive land uses impacted perceptions of safety, such as the 29 vacant storefronts in our study area. These vacant properties both lessened street activity and reduced “eyes on the street”.
  3. Interestingly, the respondents’ night-time perceptions did not appear as negative as we expected. Some parts were so inactive at night that we obtained very few interview responses. While CPTED surveys conducted by one team concluded these underactive areas were anxiety-provoking, when late-night social events and festivals activated the area, it positively influenced the perceptions in our surveys with the public. 
  4. Both the public participants and the CPTED team appeared reassured by the uniformed presence of community patrol officers in the Community Support Program. They particularly praised the Program for contributing to increased feelings of downtown safety. Many asked for expanding the program. 
Picture
One of the city planner audit teams during night field work

​FINAL THOUGHTS

In our SafeGrowth training we often say: Once you learn CPTED you’ll never again look at the environment the same way. However, CPTED novices often forget that the environment encompasses both physical and social. This research provides evidence about the interplay between the physical and social environments on public perceptions. Clearly, physical and social CPTED strategies are equally important and must be part of all planning and prevention.

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SafeGrowth® 2007-2025
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© 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