Planning Safer Cities

Planning Safer Cities

Safety and security are becoming key strategic goals of any urban policy. By nature, urban security will always be under a strong regulatory framework defined at regional, national, and even in some cases at EU level, but at the city level, local authorities can play an important role to bring these measures to the ground, promoting safety and quality of life.

The UrbSecurity APN proposes to address urban security using an integrated approach in close collaboration with local stakeholders. The idea is to bring safety and security to all levels of governance, preventing social exclusion and anti-social behaviour and ultimately improve the quality of life of their citizens. By nature, safety security will always be under a strong regulatory framework defined at regional, national, and even in some cases at EU level, but at the city level, local authorities can play an important role to bring these measures to the ground, promoting safety and the quality of life of their citizens. This article will discuss some of these approaches and present some case studies of their possible applications, hoping that other cities can found it useful in the development of their local strategies and action plans.  

Same challenges, different solutions 

The design of urban public spaces and urban planning are constantly challenged by how cities are used and how citizens occupy and make use of its spaces. The introduction of new trends and necessities and the increase in problems and conflicts among users brings rapid changes on the local urban authorities’ procedures regarding the design and the management of a city. It is therefore essential that the “user’s experience” is considered as a main input on the analysis of how the spaces are used and what conflicts or are taking place. Joining these pieces together will create more impact than simple isolated measures that address a specific security issue. This is a “chicken and egg” kind of problem since different policies influence security in a several ways. An inclusive approach to spatial design may help to bring different people together by designing public spaces that don’t segregate age, gender, culture, or income. To address these challenges, cities take different approaches to their action plans. 

Leiria (PT) – a participatory approach to urban security
Leiria has a problem with some areas of the city centre where people feel concerned to walk during the night. So, the city focused on building a stronger participative process that could look at the many different aspects of the problem, engaging local police forces and other stakeholders in a serious game specifically designed for urban planning developed in collaboration with a research team of Coimbra university. The city is also organizing guided walks around the city with students and other stakeholders pinpointing problems found. These inputs help the city to set priorities of future actions, as well as get an integrated perspective of the situation and design also an integrated response to those problems. 

Giannitsa (Pella) – Street campaign and schools’ participation (GR)
Similarly, the city of Giannitsa addressed the perceptions of safety in the streets, implementing a campaign with students from local schools to sensibilize drivers and shop owners for the occupation of sidewalks and other public spaces. A pilot was implemented proving the action to be quite effective, particularly because the message was sent in a positive way, and not as a matter of law.

Mechelen (BE) and Parma (IT) - public parks 
Mechelen and Parma, focused their development in public parks security issues, trying to address the many complaints of citizens. “Perception” is not easy to measure or change, so Parma focused on participation, bringing key stakeholders to the decision process of the renovation of Parco Ducale, by building a discussion forum from architects to city officials, from citizens to local police forces to devise the best design solutions. Mechelen looked for technological solutions that could increase safety in their city parks. New access control systems and new activities in these parks were tested and developed.

Madrid (ES), Puerta del Sol - Security by design 
On the other side of the spectrum, Madrid focused in Puerta del Sol, one of the main squares of the city, crossed by thousands every day. Here the main concern was to coordinate the urban design of the space to have in mind security issues, such as terrorist attacks or controlling mobs, establishing a collaboration channel with city officials to tackle the problem, for instance removing physical barriers and “blind” spots, following the CPTED rules. Different situations led to different approaches but with a common goal, to fill in the existing gaps in planning for safer cities.

Longford (IR) and Mátészalka (HU) – Integrating policies
Both cities focused on the integration of different policies already in place in the city, while adding over it a programme of revitalization that included, for instance, promoting urban art initiatives, redesigning walkways or improving lightning to prevent anti-social behaviour. The goal is to change people’s perception of overall safety in the city. In fact, mainstream and social media coverage tends to focus on high profile, negative news stories, incidents and events. To counter this negative perception, a set of activities are foreseen to  build community spirit and outline positive interventions and events in the city that can help to make a safer urban environment.

Michalovce (SK) - Opinion map
Another interesting approach was taken by the city of Michalovce, in Slovakia. The city was developing a document called “Manual for safer areas“ with the set of rules for future investments in urban renovation. However, the city wanted to hear citizens and assess their sense of security in several public areas, and input these contributions into the manual. To achieve this the city developed a software tool called “Opinion map“ which worked as a social survey of residents that not only could express their complaints, and propose as well what in their opinion could be the possible solutions.

Unione della Romana Faentina (IT) - Governance model
Another approach was taken by Unione della Romana Faentina; as a regional body, the main focus was to promote changes in the governance model of the whole region regarding safety and security, including the engagement and commitment of the local community under a coherent system.   Increasing coordination across different bodies, promoting a dialog with the local police, bringing new stakeholders from local communities.

Cooperation with the Urban Agenda and other initiatives 

The ongoing collaboration UrbSecurity – Urban Agenda partnership “Security in public spaces”, led by Nice, Madrid and Mechelen under the Urban Agenda Initiative  has been quite successful and brought interesting exchanges between both networks with UrbSecurity partners contributing to the deliverables of the partnership, namely to “Rules of Thumb for Security by Design” that provides valuable guidelines for cities in rethinking their urban planning under the light of promoting safety and security. Some ideas and results from the UA partnerships were presented and discussed with partners, effectively promoting the knowledge exchange between both networks.
Another ongoing collaboration of UrbSecurity is just starting and will promote exchanges with the H2020 project IMPETUS. This project is focused also on security of public places but from the technological point of view, assessing technologies and the problems that prevent their wider use in the EU, namely ethic and privacy issues. There was a particular interest in new surveillance techniques using AI that help to solve the scaling problem of the CCTV system in place. In fact, as the number increases, it becomes problematic from a human factor perspective to watch and note any alerts. New autonomous systems using AI technologies can raise alarms based on suspicious behaviour or can help to search for past events or for a specific suspect. AI technologies can be much help to tackle the scalability problems as more cameras are installed in public spaces.

Building a security policy in the EU

There are no predefined recipes, but there are good practices that are systematised in numerous case examples. It is up to society, as long as it is better organised, civilised and informed, to naturally have the propensity to design and build safer urban environments. In that sense, the network is preparing the publication of document with guidelines for planning safer cities, detailing these different approaches across the network, hoping to help other cities to put in place a strategic plan for urban security in the future.  

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Planning safer cities
By Pedro Soutinho 
Lead Expert of UrbSecurity APN