Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

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Towards safer and more secure cities
Urban planning
systems contribute
in important ways to
the broader process
of environmental
stewardship by the
opportunity that
they provide to
think strategically
about improving
places for people
some early evidence that these kinds of approaches are
beginning to play a part in reducing, or at least containing,
crime in African cities. 10 But more still needs to be known
not just about what appears to be working, but about why
this seems to be the case. Nevertheless, the breadth of this
listing does demonstrate the scope for contributions of an
environmental stewardship kind to initiatives to tackle crime
and violence.
■ Improving places for people through crime
prevention design and planning systems
Urban planning systems contribute in important ways to the
broader process of environmental stewardship by the opportunity
that they provide to think strategically about
improving places for people. If properly done, such
processes have the potential to contribute considerably in
these terms, especially if they are successful in encouraging
the design process to consider crime prevention from the
outset. To do this, a critical step is the need to develop
appropriate policies and practices about planning for crime
prevention. This is a technical challenge for planners individually
and collectively; but it is also a major challenge for
urban governance since properly resourced and supported
planning systems are essential if this potential is to be
realized.
There is clear evidence that there are moves taking
place in this direction in some parts of the world. 11 But the
pace of change needs to be accelerated if this is to be fully
integrated within the challenge that planning systems face in
coping with the tide of urbanization expected in many parts
of the world over the next few decades. This is not just a
problem for the developing world since it is clear that the
transitional countries of Eastern Europe still have some
distance to go before catching up with the work that has
been done in other parts of the European Union (EU) to
move towards establishing European standards in this
field. 12
Community-based approaches to enhancing
urban safety and security
With respect to community-based approaches, Chapter 4
argued that there are two main types: those where the
community is not in the lead but is involved in a project in
various ways, and those where the community is, essentially,
the driving force behind a project and where the public
sector plays an enabling role. Although there is no reliable
data on this, the probability is that where formal responsibilities
for engaging with the public in formulating and
implementing public policy are part of the law or expected
practice affecting local authorities and other public bodies,
the former approach, with its many variations, is much more
commonly found. This model is more typical of the developed
world 13 than it is of the developing world, where the
role of the state at local level in promoting public engagement
does not appear to be as fully developed. Nonetheless,
there is a wide variation of practices to be found within each
of these two broad groupings, and this is affected by several
factors. Thus, comparisons between societies are not easy to
make meaningfully, and in many ways this might be less
helpful than looking at how individual societies and cities
develop their own thinking and approaches over time.
■ Changing community-based approaches
There are two other elements that are important in this
discussion. One of these is a recognition that the role of
community-based approaches is likely to change according to
the project in hand. For example, a long-term strategy for
tackling crime and promoting public safety across a large
urban area is a very different thing from an individual project
in a specific locality scheduled to be implemented at a particular
point in time. In the former case, a common situation is
that the lead on this will be taken by a public-sector agency,
probably working with a partnership structure, with the role
of the community being essentially around information
provision and consultation on drafts. Even here, community
representatives can play a more proactive role than this by
utilizing their membership of the partnership to raise issues
and to promote ideas that emanate from within communities.
In the case of a specific project, it is possible that the
idea originated within the community and is implemented
with community members playing leading roles, with the
role of public-sector agencies being that of providing
support. Both of these approaches may be perfectly appropriate
to the particular situation, although in both instances
there is considerable scope to develop the roles of key
players and to see each particular initiative as a learning
opportunity that can contribute to future developments of
this nature.
■ Community types, interests and diversity
The other critical factor is the nature of communities
themselves. There is huge scope for discussion about how
communities are defined, in the first instance, and given the
fluid population structure of many cities, it is important to
bear this in mind rather than to treat it as being fixed once
geographical definitions have been arrived at. Another way
of looking at this is to think not just in terms of geographical
communities, but in terms of communities of interest,
which may well not correspond to communities defined by
residential location. An example here would be work on
employment development opportunities for young people,
which is likely to transcend particular geographical boundaries.
However, this may well need to take account of those
localities where youth unemployment is high, and where
there is a significant risk that young people will drift into
criminal lifestyles.
Many cultural or sporting initiatives are also of this
kind since they are often about facilities that can only be in a
limited number of locations but draw users from wide areas.
Even where this is thought about in terms of residential
location, it is not always the case that the communities in
these areas are homogeneous. Homogeneous communities
do not always show unanimity of view, and so it is important
to have processes in place that go beyond relying on a
handful of people to say what the ‘community view’ is since
they may only represent part of it. All of this implies that it
is important not to take an overly simplistic view of ‘commu-