Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

88
Urban crime and violence
Box 4.2 The key propositions in the European Pre-Standard on Urban Planning and Crime Prevention
Key propositions
• Urban planning can affect different types of crime and the fear
of crime by influencing both the conduct and the attitudes of
key people, such as offenders, victims, residents and the police.
• Some types of crime, such as burglary and vandalism, are
particularly amenable to urban planning activities.
• Crime and the fear of crime need to be seen as different but
related phenomena.
• Fear of crime is an important issue in its own right; but to be
tackled effectively, it needs to be separated out from a much
broader range of feelings that people have about their living
environments.
• Strategic approaches to the creation of securer and safer
cities and neighbourhoods that examine the physical and
social environments can be successful.
• As well as looking at planning and design issues, policy-makers
and practitioners must also focus on maintenance issues.
Appropriate strategies
Planning strategies: include respecting existing physical and
social structures, creating liveliness, creating mixed-status areas, and
achieving reasonable urban densities.
Urban design strategies: include achieving visibility, addressing
issues of accessibility, creating a sense of territory, making environments
attractive, and ensuring that basic artefacts (such as
windows, doors and street furniture) are robust.
Management strategies: include target hardening, maintenance,
surveillance, rules for the conduct of the public in public places, the
provision of infrastructure for key groups (such as youth), and good
communication with the public.
Source: CEN, 2003, pp5–6, 15–17
At the national level,
responsibilities and
involvement in
relation to crime and
violence issues vary
remarkably
tools in support of the crime prevention processes it
promotes.
■ European Pre-Standard on Urban Planning
and Crime Prevention
A final example of a form of international cooperation that is
different from the first three is the work which has been
done to create a European pre-standard for the reduction of
crime and the fear of crime through urban planning and
building design. Essentially, a technical committee reviewed
both the available literature and the current practice within
current and aspiring European Union (EU) member
countries, paying particular attention to project evaluations
where these existed and drawing on several important
applied traditions, including, in particular, CPTED and situational
crime prevention. This resulted in the publication of
the urban planning component of the European pre-standard
in 2003. 11 This identified six broad propositions about the
field, and fifteen types of strategies that might be applied,
grouped together under three broad headings: planning,
urban design and management. The six broad propositions
and the underlying strategies are summarized in Box 4.2.
In effect, this is a distillation of good practice across
Europe as perceived by the technical committee, recognizing,
as it did, that practice in this field was very variable. As
such, its particular value in the short term is probably in the
help that it offers to those parts of the EU and to countries
aspiring to membership where practice is less well developed.
In the long term, the pre-standard may play a more
formal role in helping to develop EU policy and practice in
this field. It should be noted that some of the strategy
recommendations in the European pre-standard are not
without controversy. 12 For present purposes, though, this
serves as a useful example of one of the particular ways in
which international cooperation can be very valuable.
These four examples – the United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the
work of Interpol, the UN-Habitat Safer Cities Programme
and the European Pre-Standard on Urban Planning and
Crime Prevention – show something of the variety to be
found in forms of international cooperation and in the
purposes behind initiatives of this nature.
National level
At the national level, responsibilities and involvement in
relation to crime and violence issues vary remarkably. This is
largely due to the structure of government responsibilities in
each country. Key elements of the differences relate to the
level of guidance or policy initiative that is provided by the
national level even for local intervention, and the level of
decentralization of responsibilities in this field. The US and
the UK, for example, have many matters in common in
relation to this field; but one of the most striking differences
between them relates to the respective roles of the national
government in both countries. 13
■ Examples from the UK and the US
During recent years, the UK has seen a strong policy drive
from the national government level to get crime prevention
concerns embedded within the planning process, supported
by extensive central government published advice. 14 This
process is summarized in Box 4.3 and reflects the gradual
development of policy over a period of some 11 years, during
which there was a change of government in 1997. The
British model would not necessarily be appropriate for other
countries; but what is interesting about this example is not
merely its contents, but the process of policy development
that has led up to the current situation.
In the US, on the other hand, where initiatives of this
kind exist it is because action has been taken at the state or
local level. The US constitution makes clear the respective
roles of the various levels of government and in this field the
main rights reside at state and local levels rather than at the
federal level. Nevertheless, national security concerns will
always be a matter of considerable importance to national