2Nd Generation Cpted: An Antidote To The Social Y2K Virus of Urban Design
2Nd Generation Cpted: An Antidote To The Social Y2K Virus of Urban Design
2Nd Generation Cpted: An Antidote To The Social Y2K Virus of Urban Design
In this paper we look at applying new ways of thinking about what we do as crime
prevention practitioners to improve the communities, schools and workplaces we
occupy. We begin with CPTED. There is an emerging belief that some of the basic
assumptions of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) have
been only partly correct. Practitioners, such as urban planners, police officers,
building managers, and theoreticians, such as academics and researchers, have relied
on incomplete practices that have yet to be expanded into a more holistic theory of
human behavior. Currently, such a holistic theory is yet to emerge, but there is an
evolving practice we call second generation CPTED that suggests it is not far
away. A 2nd generation CPTED offers the promise of greatly enhanced, and more
realistic, preventive strategies. Equally important, it offers the possibility of a new
approach for community-building that strikes to the heart of what CPTED is really
all about - what visionary Jane Jacobs was talking about over three decades ago.
In her dialogue on morality, commerce and politics in, Systems of Survival (Vintage:
1992) Jacobs begins with a quote from Emerson who reminds us that all things
have two handles and that we must beware of the wrong one. Perhaps with our
focus on the physical design aspects of CPTED we have, to use Emersonian terms,
grabbed the wrong handle. Have we forgotten that whats significant about Jacobs
eyes on the street are not the sightlines or even the streets, but the eyes? Jacobs
synecdoche using eyes to represent entire neighborhoods of watchers reminds us
that what really counts is a sense of community. When we fail to design our
affective conditions that help generate that sense of community, with the same
careful scrutiny as the physical, we are doing less than half the job. Recently at a
conference when we recommended parenting courses within troubled
neighborhoods and community outreach programs as viable 2nd Generation CPTED
strategies, a respected CPTED practitioner rolled his eyes in frustration and stated,
Thats not CPTED. In terms of what we have been practicing for many years, he
was right. In terms of a more holistic environmental design, he couldnt have been
more wrong. Second Generation CPTED recognizes the most valuable aspects of
safe community lie not in structures of the brick and mortar type, but rather in
structures of family, of thought and, most importantly of behavior. We may benefit
from starting with an examination of the physical aspects of place, but we must end
up looking at the social aspects of home and neighborhood the affective
environment. Before moving on to our consideration of the affective environment,
we should have a quick look at what made us grab that other handle.
Since at least the 1970s, it has been understood that some architectural and planning
designs have unintentionally created areas that facilitate the opportunity for crime.
(Becker, 1975; Brantingham and Brantingham, 1978; Bennet and Wright, 1985;
Saville, 1991; Zehring, 1994). The theoretical basis of this work emerges from what
are now called Rationality models (Cornish and Clarke, 1984). These models
describe how many offenders have some level of rational behavior, especially with
offences in public places. Offenders evaluate alternative courses of action, weigh
rewards, and chose targets.
The Rationality explanation suggests that, on one hand, offenders may follow a
logical decision tree where at each step they choose whether to carry on. This
decision making process is influenced by environmental factors, cues, and this is
where CPTED plays a role. Furthermore, this kind of offender learns which cues
work and which do not, or what the Brantinghams call an offender cognitive
template. If the area fits the offenders template, a target is selected and the
probability and risk of an offence increases.
Conversely, the decision to commit may not have to be optimal, only satisfactory.
From this perspective the offender will rarely have full information on targets to
make optimal decisions. Therefore the offenders learned experiences play a role in
target selection. This is where environmental cues come into play, and it is where the
environmental land uses and neighborhood image encourage, or discourage, the
commission an offence.
The Rationality theory makes some interesting, and debatable, assumptions about
human behavior - namely that behavior is influenced by the physical place. Early
CPTED, including assigning territory, access control, and natural surveillance,
adopts these assumptions. Indeed this has been the reason for its success. By
designing shopping mall parking lots with plenty of natural surveillance crime
opportunities have been reduced. By avoiding construction of movement predictors
that locate potential victims in high-risk areas on their way to work, home, shop,
and play, places have been made safer. Targets have been made harder for offenders
by the use of enhanced lighting, security locks, and fences to control access into
residences and apartment buildings. These are all examples where the rationality
model of CPTED has made sense. And there is a great deal of research that supports
this model.
Applying Rational theory: CPTED in the early years
Oscar Newman (1972) broke the concept down to four key elements:
surveillance
territoriality
image
milieu (environmental land use)
It is interesting to note that, with each element, there are factors that influence crime
opportunities not suggested simply by design alone. These are the limitations of
Rationality theory and they suggest why it needs elaboration into a 2nd stage. The
four elements, and some of their limitations are:
Surveillance
In the UK, proponents such as Alice Coleman and Barry Poyner felt that design of
housing can influence crime by denying, or offering, opportunities for offending.
They also believed that the design of buildings might encourage various uncivilized
behaviors and crime. Today this works in the important British program called
Secure By Design. For example, in this program certificates are awarded to housing
projects when certain surveillance criteria are met: for example, inward facing
residential homes in cul de sacs to encourage residents will see common areas. The
result is that this will reduce the opportunity for such crimes as burglary. (White,
1994; Beavon, 1988; Bevis and Nutter, 1977). But the research has also emphasized
that social dynamics between residents in the cul de sac are also key mediators of
environment, not just design. The Rationality model by itself is not enough in the
case of surveillance.
Territoriality
The design of an area can influence the sense of community or ownership for those
who are legitimate users of the space. When users develop a sense of territoriality
they are more likely to challenge or question those who do not belong.
One design that enhances territoriality is access control. By designing access routes
that specifically define where the general public is welcome and restricting or
monitoring access to private property decreases the opportunities for criminal
activities. Access control of building entranceways and target hardening using
security hardware are tactics used to control entry or egress to restricted areas or
private property. These typically include the use of window locks, dead bolts,
security alarms and closed circuit television cameras (cctv).
Another tactic to enhance territoriality is the design of areas to create land uses that
emphasize local ownership. This reduces the potential for creating conflicting spaces
between different user groups. Tactics include distinguishing between private, semi-
private, semi-public and public spaces. This hierarchy of space can be achieved by
creative landscaping, using symbolic barriers, changing the ground cover, or by
changing the grade. But territoriality is not simply a matter of design. Research has
also shown that territoriality is also influenced by how long people live in an area,
and how central that place is to peoples social lives (Brown and Altman, 1981). In
other words, how those residents form a social attachment to a particular place.
Many places have social attachments that do not conform to basic CPTED
principles. For example, many communities have important memorial sites such as
military or political structures situated out of natural sightlines. These often escape
any form of vandalism or damage. Natural surveillance and access control matter
little with these sites that are crime free: social attitudes matter a great deal.
Schools, churches and individual homes that are valued and respected by the
community often escape the crime that swirls around them. Again, the physical
environment often has little to do with their exemption from criminal or anti-social
behaviors.
Image
Milieu was a more controversial aspect of early CPTED, and for the most part it
refers to environmental land uses. Although not specifically identified as such in
Newmans early work, environmental land use has been seen as a factor influencing
defensible space. It refers to two features: adjoining land uses and the influence of
surrounding activities on a place; and how a site can be protected by specific design
styles.
But there are also areas where zoning has little influence on the amount of crime.
There are diverse neighborhoods with plenty of social mix where crime is rampant,
where people do not exert a territorial influence. Examples exist in cities of
heterogeneous districts under 3000 dwellings, containing smaller, homogenous
neighborhoods of under 500 dwellings, where crime is rampant. The Rational
offender does not always fit into a rational place if the ingredients are not just
right. Clearly there are many things that will motivate an offender, and at some level
many of these factors are social, not physical.
The Dutch CPTED guidelines are instructive. They are all linked to some basic
CPTED strategy: territoriality and access control, natural surveillance, image, and
environmental land use. They also represent some of the most advanced CPTED
strategies to date, as they incorporate the pattern language of Christopher Alexander
and apply them to safe urban design. We believe that at least five of these categories
represent the beginning of a new theory of second-generation CPTED. All of these
have direct links to the social aspects on how neighborhoods work, although we
have some reservations on how they currently apply to CPTED design.
In the late 1970s this CPTED concept was called activity support. An urban area
requires some kind of activity support to help the physical design work to create
defensible space. Of course, merely stating that activities needed to be supporting
did very little actually help it to happen. Few strategies were offered by early
CPTED practitioners to create that activity support. Second-generation CPTED
takes that responsibility and places it where it belongs: in the care of community
members, not planners or architects.
3. Youth clubs. The creation of youth clubs has been a crime prevention and
community-building strategy ever since the Chicago Area Project from 1930s (Shaw
and McKay, 1942). They have become places were local youth can find something
to do, and places where they can learn life skills. Of course these places require the
interest and support of the local community, the resources to run activities, and the
skilled personnel who know what to do. Many high-crime housing complexes have
common buildings and club areas that are underused, or abused by gang members.
Social factors again are directly linked to the environmental influence of CPTED
designs.
Atlas has claimed that there is a need for a community to create barriers in some
circumstances. When there is social breakdown in a place, barricades, road closures,
and guard gates have a function, if limited. These can reinforce proprietorship and
sense of belonging. One of the tenets of defensible space theory is that the physical
environment can create perceived zones of territorial influences (Newman, 1972).
Newman suggested that certain environmental features tend to encourage residents
to exercise territorial control, thereby reducing the opportunity for, and fear of,
crime. (Atlas and LeBlanc, 1997).
We are suggesting that if environmental influences are only one simple step in the
community-building process, then barriers may only reinforce feelings of fear of the
surrounding neighborhood outside the barriers. There is nothing inherently safe
about an internally gated community, except that it may be occasionally more
difficult for the simple rational offender to victimize the simplest target. In the public
realm, building a ten-foot wall around a school yard to keep out guns and dealers
may help, but without true community-building strategies both inside and outside
those walls, will this environmental modification serve anyone but the construction
company? Walls such as these are, in the parlance of our time, a Y2K virus for
future development. For a sustainable, ecological, approach to crime prevention, we
must address the social Y2K virus.
What does this mean? It means we need to live in smaller, locally based,
neighborhoods. We need to live near where we work where we go to school and
where we socialize. We must develop ways to encourage more local contacts for
social, economic, and political interaction. We should have more opportunities for
friendships and family in neighborhood contexts without sacrificing our important
needs for personal space and privacy. Just as we plan physical places, so too must
we begin to plan the affective, social, zones of our community.
We have relied on the large systems for survival: large economies of scale; massive
schools with 2,000 students, empirically-based scientific and tertiary academic
institutions; large organizations, big government and large-scale places of
employment. These are no longer viable in our turbulent social environment. They
are too slow, too inflexible, and too unresponsive. We have been learning about the
advantages of small, sustainable systems: small business and locally-based,
sustainable economies; holistic, and open-minded programs, non-governmental
agencies, not-for-profit ventures, local organizations and flexible companies based
on personal networks. This will not happen in a day, but it can be a future antidote
to the social Y2K virus that currently plagues our communities.
There are many practical strategies that exist, elaborated at length elsewhere, that
can help practitioners incorporate second-generation CPTED (Saville, 1995;
Wekerle and Weitzman, 1995; Sarkissian et al, 1996; Saville and Cleveland, 1998).
Some of them include:
1. Safety audits
2. Search conferences
3. Community accords including capacity for building partnerships
4. Neighborhood restraints
5. Activities, including the framework to implement programs
6. Building capacity for local decision making
7. Community planning for the following:
decision making processes;
conflict resolution; and
social interactions.
These are the hallmarks of the new CPTED. If we are able to effect change by
considering factors beyond the physical we will have grasped our community
problems by both handles. As Thoreau tells us, the highest of arts is to affect the
quality of the day. When our CPTED solutions finally include both the physical and
the social to become truly ecological, we will have enhanced the quality of the day
for ourselves, our children, and for the communities in which we live.
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