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Reducing urban crime and violence241available to planners and doubts about how readily and howfully the planning community picked this guidance up. 7 Inmany parts of the world, planning systems are relativelyrecent arms of urban governance, struggling with limitedresources and problems of access to sufficient skilled personnelto cope with large-scale development pressures. Manyplanners, faced with this situation, will undoubtedly betempted to feel that being expected to start thinking aboutissues of crime prevention is yet another pressure on themthat they do not need.Nevertheless, planning must surely be concernedwith the quality of urban living, as well as coping with thepressures caused by its scale. From this perspective, thinkingabout how planning can contribute to crime prevention isimportant because there is ample evidence from citizenfeedback studies that crime and safety are top priorities inresidential neighbourhoods, especially for the urban poor. 8This issue is undoubtedly a challenge for planners, theirprofessional bodies and for the process of planning educationsince crime prevention has not achieved prominence inplanning dialogues. But it is also a challenge for urban governancebecause if planning is to make its full contribution tocrime prevention planning systems, and structures are to beproperly established and resourced, planning staff need to beproperly trained and the political process needs to supportplanning systems in undertaking these tasks.■ Integrating crime prevention withinplanning policy and practice: The BritishexampleIn most planning systems, an important step in the chain ofeffective action is the need to create planning policy toolsthat planners can apply consistently and with the expectationthat their actions will be supported. The most commonform with which this drive to create appropriate tools startsis the need to get basic policies about planning for crimeprevention written into development plans and associateddocuments since both shape how planners deal with submittedapplications for permission to develop and send outmessages to the development community about what theplanning system is looking for.British practice may offer useful lessons for developmentsof this kind in two ways. First, it demonstrates a fairlyhighly structured set of relationships between planners andpolice architectural liaison officers (these are the staffmembers in the police service who provide advice aboutcrime prevention in relation to physical developments),which means that there is a process of securing police inputsin development decisions made by the planning service.Second, there is a range of advisory documents availablefrom both national and local government levels setting outwhat the planning system is trying to achieve in seeing urbansafety as an integral element in achieving sustainable development,which is the primary purpose of the UK planningsystem. 9 All of this does not imply that the British system hassolved the problem of integrating crime prevention withinplanning, or that even if it had, the British system would becapable of being transplanted to other locations. Rather, thisis an example of a planning system that has taken work inthis field further than many others and thus contains usefulexamples of tools and approaches that may provide lessonselsewhere.■ Integrating urban safety within planning andservice delivery: The UN-Habitat SaferCities Programme exampleApproaches of this nature are also typically part of the UN-Habitat Safer Cities Programme. The starting point for thishas to be a recognition that, in many instances, the existingstructures of urban governance had not done much of thiskind of work before. Thus, introducing what are newprocesses and practices is likely to be a long-term process,raising important issues of skills, resources, training and staffdevelopment, as well as causing debates about priorities forplanning systems. UN-Habitat has identified a range ofplanning, design and municipal service delivery initiativesbased on the experience of the Safer Cities Programmes inAfrican Cities (see Box 10.2).The wide range of activities summarized in Box 10.2provides a good indication of the kinds of initiatives that arepossible under the broad heading of environmental stewardship,which is the theme that links these activities. It iscrucial that the results of evaluations of how effective initiativesof this kind have been, and under what circumstances,are made widely available. Other cities can then design theirprogrammes with the benefit of this information. There isBox 10.2 Urban planning and design and municipal servicedelivery initiatives in Safer Cities programmes inAfrican citiesThinking about howplanning cancontribute to crimeprevention isimportant becausethere is ampleevidence…thatcrime and safety aretop priorities inresidential neighbourhoods,especially for theurban poorUN-Habitat’s range of planning, design and municipal service delivery initiatives have beengrouped together under seven broad headings; the key actions in each instance are summarizedas follows:• Integration of safety principles within the planning or upgrading of neighbourhoods, publicplaces and street furniture, including planning for mixed uses (including, in some cases, amultiplicity of uses) and animation, signage and physical access, vision and lighting,frequency of use and access to help, as well as safety audits.• Surveillance of streets, equipment and public spaces through formal and informal mechanisms,including CCTV and patrols of various kinds (usually by community-basedorganizations rather than the police), incentives for increased human presence throughoutthe day, and partnerships with private security service providers.• Design and intervention in neighbourhoods, including lighting, access roads, cleaning andwaste removal, removal of abandoned vehicles, elimination of graffiti, and the maintenanceand repair of street equipment.• Management of markets and public ways, including updating, integration and enforcementof municipal by-laws, urban renewal of particular areas, and interaction and dialogue withretailers’ and hawkers’ associations.• Management of traffic and parking, including updating, integration and enforcement ofmunicipal by-laws, specialized squads and car guards, and sensitization campaigns.• Control of bars, including the regulation of opening and closing hours, the periodic controlboth of juveniles and of activities, and promoting the responsibility of owners.• Securing homes and neighbourhoods, including sensitization campaigns on safetymeasures, technical assistance to homeowners and tenants, surveillance and mutual assistancebetween neighbours, neighbourhood watch activities, and access to help.Source: UN-Habitat, 2006e, p33