Safe Cascadia Unveiled

SAFE CASCADIA Newsletter #3 December 2008

Safe Cascadia unveiled

October 10, 2008 marked the unveiling of Safe Cascadia at the 12th Biannual Conference of the International CPTED Association - ICA - in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Members of Safe Cascadia attended and presented the new CPTED / urban development model called SafeGrowth. The SafeGrowth presentation was delivered by Greg Saville and included examples of the model in practice, such as a neighborhood from Milwaukee and another from Toronto. Elisabeth Miller, an urban planner from Saskatoon, Canada, presented that city's version of SafeGrowth which was implemented this past year. A sample of Elisabeth’s presentation is available for download at http://www.cpted.net/PDF/FormalizingNeighborhood.pdf The ICA conference also included presentations on  design standards taking CPTED into account  rescuing public places  CPTED in high rise buildings, and  a new method for conducting multi-site risk assessments. The next ICA conference is slated for 2010 and members from ICA asked about the possibility of a joint ICA / Safe Cascadia conference in 2009 somewhere on the west coast. This will be brought to our board meetings for further discussions.

[Note: I’ve no idea who the party-animals shown above are, but they are clearly very excited about SafeGrowth! Plus, they made it to the ICA Conference. Wish I was there!]

1 SafeCascadianista makes good:

The NewsTribune.com Bad guys chased out of Tacoma's McCormick Park

SCOTT FONTAINE; [email protected] Tacoma’s tiny McCormick Park was overgrown and crime-ridden a year ago. Drug dealers and prostitutes hung out amid the shrubbery, and transients slept on the benches and the grass.

“If you would have been there at this time last year,” Tacoma police Lt. Shawn Gustason said this week, “you would’ve run through the park.”

But thanks to “crime prevention through environmental design” – an approach that combines landscaping changes, fences, equipment upgrades and community involvement – the pocket park sandwiched between South Fawcett Avenue and Court E has been transformed. Crime is down. The lighting is better. No one is camping out on the grass.

The improvements aren’t expected to be completed for months, but the positive benefits are already surfacing. Gustason, the sector commander whose territory includes McCormick, said calls for service to the park are down to almost zero. He doesn’t believe any officers have been called to the park in months.

That’s the aim of the CPTED program.

“It’s a holistic approach,” said Mike Teskey, a program specialist with the city’s Public Works Department who’s coordinating the effort. “The thing about CPTED is that it’s not about one thing. It’s a combination. It’s not lighting alone or visibility alone or fencing alone. It’s all those things. And it’s about getting people to use the space in the proper way.”

Tacoma will spend about $200,000 bringing the program’s principles to about 20 sites this year. The improvements to McCormick Park and Tacoma Park, a smaller greenspace one block west, will cost about $40,000.

The city hopes to incorporate CPTED designs into new projects and renovations and encourage people to adopt similar principles at home, Teskey said. Public Works will soon have a brochure available that includes advice such as starting a Neighborhood Watch program, placing alarm stickers on windows, marking all valuables (making it harder for burglars to resell them) and installing adequate outdoor lighting. An educational piece for businesses is also in the works.

The renovations to McCormick and Tacoma parks should be completed by midsummer, but many of the changes are already apparent. Ornamental iron fences line the walkway and street entrances; they guide visitors along, block access to low-visibility corners and give police the option to lock gates if needed.

Archways will soon appear at both ends of the park, which Teskey said will give it “a celebration of entrance and a sense of place.”

2 McCormick and Tacoma parks also are undergoing landscaping changes. Bushes and low-lying tree limbs that have blocked visibility have been removed or pared down. Lawns will be replaced with bark mulch or prickly Oregon grape to discourage sleeping.

“Before they did the changes, you couldn’t even really see in the park from Fawcett,” Gustason said.

Lighting has been improved, and the benches will receive seat dividers.

Community involvement is crucial. When more people use the park, Teskey said, troublemakers will be discouraged from hanging around. Events such as arts and crafts shows or outdoor concerts could raise its visibility, and a food stand that operates during the day could provide a permanent presence in the park.

Teskey also hopes a neighborhood committee will perform regular litter pickup and communicate with the city about the public’s needs.

“When a space has no ownership,” he said, “that’s when the bad guys move in.”

Reaction, though, has been mixed at times. Teskey said some people worried the city would remove all the trees. And when a local blog posted in May about the upcoming fence installation, the comments were critical.

But CPTED isn’t just a fad, Teskey said. The board of directors of the International CPTED Association represents nations from every continent except Antarctica. Locally, Federal Way and SeaTac have ordinances to incorporate the process into development of public grounds.

“Basically what we’re asking is what we can do with environmental design to help lessen crime,” Teskey said. “We’re trying to establish a CPTED culture in Tacoma, and we believe we can help that by starting with our own properties.”

Scott Fontaine: 253-320-4758 blogs.thenewstribune.com/street

3 Here’s an article from the L.A. Times about a decade ago I thought you might like: L.A. Neighborhood Gives Gang a New Role: Park Design Consultant

By Eleanor Yang January 13, 1999 in print edition B-1

Note This article includes corrections to the original version.

When residents of a neighborhood near USC decided to build a park, they enlisted the help of school architects, the city Department of Recreation and Parks–and the local street gang.

To avoid creating a park only to have it taken over by gang violence, residents in the West Adams district went to the Harpys gang’s hangouts, homes and friends’ homes, pleading with members to plan the park together.

“If you exclude the gangbangers, it’s defeating the purpose. The main reason we want the park is to have a place for children and the youths to play,” said Jennifer Charnofsky, a teacher and grandmother who helped begin the park campaign four years ago.

The inclusion of gang members is the most distinctive feature of a grass-roots effort that will finally lead to groundbreaking next month. Residents have won a city park grant, raised tens of thousands of dollars and persuaded the owners of a vacant one-third-acre lot to donate it.

“It’s a whole bunch of ordinary folks who are saying, ‘OK, we need a park. We’re not gonna just go to the city; we’re going to do something about it,’ ” said Melanie Stephens, director of community development at Esperanza Community Housing, a nonprofit, neighborhood-based development organization. But, she said, “if we knew it was going to be that long and hard, we never would have done it.”

Trying to coordinate volunteers’ time with gang members’ whims and schedules was a headache. The group’s one organized meeting at a church took more than a year to arrange, because different invited gang members kept returning to jail.

Some of the park’s features will be as novel as the planning process. It will be circled by an 8-foot- tall iron fence with a gate that a neighbor will unlock every morning and lock at dusk. It will be dedicated by a pastor, and eventually become part of the city parks network.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Jose Martinez, 22, a former gang member who attended the church meeting last year. “This way gang members can see what good things you can do for the community.”

4 The idea of a park took shape when concerned West Adams property owners wanted to clear a deserted lot, set among large Craftsman and Victorian homes mixed with worn apartments. Some residents suggested planting flowers. Others pointed out the dearth of parks in the neighborhood.

The lot is in Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas’ district, which has the fourth-lowest number of parks among the city’s 15 council districts. Some children have to walk eight blocks, crossing two major streets, to find a patch of grass to play on.

Using that argument, neighborhood organizers talked the owners of the vacant lot, who had moved out of the area, into donating it.

Then they turned to deal with the prospect that gang activity, which has curbed community use of many inner-city parks for decades, might ruin their dream. Organizers reasoned that if gang leaders were given a stake in the planning, they might not try to dominate the park when it was completed.

Residents got in touch with Gaby Padilla, a local gang counselor, who talked to some members of the Harpys about participating.

Finally, an unlikely group including gang members, community activists, a police officer and a pastor congregated at St. Agnes Catholic School on a Saturday afternoon last year to plan the park.

After listening to gang members’ initial complaints about police harassment, the group found unity in money: Several artists commissioned by park planners offered a few gang members paid positions to help paint a mural at the back of the park.

Gang members started speaking up: How about an eagle on the mural? Or the name of the gang? They butted heads with the neighbors, but the seed of interest had been planted.

In the weeks after the meeting, several gang members approached Padilla, asking when a follow-up meeting would be. They’re still waiting; organizers say they want to wait until the rest of the park is built before discussing the mural.

“The park is something good for us too,” said Aristidez Flores, a gang member who has two young children. “We’d like to have a handball court over there to play on.”

Planners say the park, whose construction is being financed by a $253,000 grant from a voter- approved property tax assessment, will include a basketball court, a gazebo and picnic tables.

The owners of the vacant lot at 2700 S. Budlong Ave. were Elinor Richardson and her brother-in-law, Don Richardson, both retired administrators for the Los Angeles Unified School District. After they moved out of the neighborhood, their house fell into disrepair and was eventually removed.

5 The family, which had turned down offers to sell the lot, was persuaded by community members to donate it–a gesture that was worth about $100,000 and will result in the park being named Richardson Family Park.

“We know that there was a need for children to play, and so we thought the park was an ideal situation,” said Elinor Richardson, 84, who now lives in Pasadena.

Other groups, including USC students, have donated their time and skills in designing the park. USC faculty members have contributed nearly $35,000 to supplement construction.

FOR THE RECORD Neighborhood park–A caption in Wednesday’s Times incorrectly described two participants in the creation of a new park near USC as gang members. One, Jose Martinez, is a former gang member. The other, Mark Wilson, works for a youth program that counsels gang members. ↩

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Related Articles

 Making a Stand Nov 12, 2000  In Ladera, It’s a Beautiful Day in the Intranet Neighborhood Nov 30, 2003  Community Rallies to Help Family Mend After Shooting Oct 15, 2000  Consequences of a Tragedy Dec 04, 2000  Neighborhood Activists Rally for End to Gang Violence Feb 19, 1999

More articles by Eleanor Yang More articles from the California | Local section

6 Tod’s Excellent Adventures

First, let me say that it’s pretty hard to compete with Greg’s globe-hopping in the Middle East (see photo), but I do want to pass on a word of advice: when it gets this bad, Greg, it’s time to pull over and ask for directions! I’m fairly certain he was facilitating international peace talks, but his cover story is that he was teaching problem based learning to police. Okay, sure. Twist his arm and maybe he’ll tell you about it.

That aside, I did manage to have a few minor adventures of my own this quarter:

The Deep South. Jackson State University, Mississippi, brought me in to present a pre- conference workshop based on a course I taught at UO a while back, Roots of Violence, Seeds of Hope. It was well received by most, although I think I may have offended one gent in the audience when I criticized the Klan.

Schwarzenegger country. Another trip took me to Sacramento, where the forward-thinking DOE, despite wrestling with survival in a State that has maxed out its credit cards, pulled together about 70 folks from around the globe to talk about the future of California’s school facilities. Two themes clearly emerged: (1) that new schools shouldn’t be built on the old factory paradigm, and (2) that schools need to re-connect with the real world. The implications for school security are pretty significant, and quite interesting. Security seems a lot easier in a thoroughly controlled environment, such as a prison, but too often that’s what a school ends up feeling like, which is not a good thing. Still, artful application of CPTED has made it possible to

7 build inspirational schools that could still be secure. Alas, the envelope is being stretched once again. Just when the school security world thought it had a universal seal of approval for extensive access control. The educational world has shaken the snow globe (how’s that for a seasonal allusion) and scattered all those nice ideas about. They want connectivity – which is a great thing from an advanced CPTED perspective – but they want it to such an extent that the site becomes semi-porous: citizens of all stripes can come visit; students of all types can go out into the real world for internships. Access control and territoriality are severely compromised. Poor us! So now what do we do? My advice is: roll with it. Options to build on include:

1. Improved surveillance – if we can see what’s going on, at least we can respond. 2. Rapid response – if we can respond quickly, we can prevent or mitigate damage. 3. Improved communication – in school case law, the duty to warn is much clearer than is the need to protect. Instant communication gives everybody a chance to take cover or provide assistance. 4. Connectivity – the more connected students, staff and the community feel, the more likely they are to support each other.

I’d rather see schools built on their greatest hopes than on their greatest fears. Let hope and vision be the driving forces for initial designs – schools should be inspired places. Then look for ways to maximize the effectiveness of the safety-oriented tools we’ve got left.

DesignShare. If you aren’t familiar with this site already, take a look! It’s a treasure trove of innovative school designs from around the world. After the California project, architect Randy Fielding invited me to contribute an article on locker design, which is now somewhere on the site. http://www.designshare.com/index.php/articles/locker-options-thinking-outside-the-box Randy’s working on a school design for Saskatchewan that brings together many resources at one location – an application of the connectivity concept everyone’s so excited about.

Uncle Bunkle. I work by day under cover of my identity as a pre-crime officer (you’ve seen the Matrix, right?) and CPTED inspector, but by night and occasional mornings I’ve been gradually developing my Uncle Bunkle persona. That’s my secret identity, as a mild mannered story teller and song writer. I’ve been teaching the Second Step violence prevention curriculum to second graders the past few years, and have gradually inserted my repertoire, which we all like better anyway. This past month I got picked up by Equus Multimedia which is putting together my premiere CD (working title: Please Don’t Sneeze on the Bananas). Watch this space for more details!

Greg’s Recommended Reading:

Where’s the Evidence? Studies on CPTED research and what they say

Angel, Shlomo. (1968). Discouraging crime through city planning (paper No. 75). Berkeley, CA: Center for Planning and Development Research, University of California at Berkeley.

In this early work the author alludes to the infancy stage in which the field of CPTED (not yet called CPTED) then lay. This was a summary of his doctoral research study on the concepts behind CPTED – the first ever. This pioneering work preceded CPTED-related publications by C. Ray Jeffery and Oscar Newman. Angel concluded his summary paper by saying, "We have examined some possibilities for environmental crime prevention through (urban planning). We

8 have tried at this stage to work out a theoretical structure in which this type of crime prevention can be made possible. There has been at this point no serious attempt to face the difficulties of implementation of these proposals.....I have taken the position of advocate planner in suggesting possible modifications....to meet particular needs for safety." The paper is brief (37 pg.) but includes sketches to illustrate proposed layouts.

Welsh, Brandon C. and David P. Farrington. (2007). Surveillance for Crime Prevention in Public Space: Results and Policy Choices in Britain and America. Criminology and Public Policy: American Society of Criminology. Vol 3, Issue 3

The present study assessed the comparative effectiveness of two forms of surveillance in preventing crime in public space: formal surveillance, in the form of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras, and natural surveillance, in the form of improved street lighting. Based on the highest quality available research evidence on these two measures -- from systematic reviews incorporating meta-analytic techniques -- it was found that they are equally effective in reducing crime. More detailed analyses showed that improved street lighting was more effective in reducing crime in city centers, that both were more effective in reducing property crimes than violent crimes, and that both measures were far more effective in reducing crime in Britain than in America.

And a follow up note from Tod: In an earlier newsletter I passed along a note regarding the Inclusive City, a splendid tome on progressive urban planning suitable for any self-respecting planner’s coffee table. The publishers were pleased and sent me a copy of the book, which is lushly illustrated and about twice the size of the Seattle phone book. Next time you’re down this way I’ll even let you look at it!

THE SAFE CASCADIAN NEWSLETTER IS EDITED BY TOD SCHNEIDER. SEND YOUR OWN UPDATES, WORDS OF WISDOM, ETC. FOR THE NEXT QUARTERLY ISSUE TO TOD AT: [email protected] 541-682-8186