Reducing Nuisance in Public Parks

Mechelen focused their action plan in public parks, trying to address the many complaints of citizens regarding their safety. they also looked for technological solutions that could help to increase safety in their city parks. New access control systems and new activities in these parks were tested and developed using the SSA mechanism and a full implementation plan was transcribed into the IAP.

Mechelen has 18 parks, half of them are nuisance sensitive and they all are daily being closed and opened manually by the city guards. On top of that they perform regular visits to parks where complaints regularly come from. The city council plans to create about 10 additional parks.

urbsecurity_mechelen_playground

Viability Test of the use of nudging techniques for Reducing nuisance

Process/method to be implemented when (re)organising a public place, can (partially) be achieved by rearranging an area or a development projects.

Along with local groups, habitants, city departments, police and other involved, the idea is to come up with a guideline, listing elements to consider and pass on to architects and implementing departments.
All is based on the CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design) idea, having 4 guidelines:
• Accessibility and control of it
• Natural supervision and social control
• Functions and managing the decline
• Technological support

urbsecurity_mechelen_relax

Mechelen department of prevention lists elements to be present as well as elements to avoid.

Elements to be present:
• Attract different categories of age. This enhances natural supervision
• Provide see-trough fences
• Reduce the number entrees and exits (max 2)
• Adapt the kind of shrubs to the location like thorny one nearby window
• Make the location of the benches out of the sun but with an overview
• Provide activities for boys as well as for girls
• Use gamification towards the bins
• Provide fibre-connection for monitoring equipment
• Implement active frontages (shop, pub, restaurant)

Elements to avoid:
• Spread areas depending on their function
• Hard fences
• Remove weeds
• Remove broken elements (plays, city furniture, lightning
• Remove shelters
• Bins on hidden locations

The municipality wants to make available in a public park a useful and practical object like a smart bench that allows the user to interact with this equipment. It also wants to test whether by giving visitors to the park a sense of ownership of the equipment, it can improve the atmosphere in the park by improving the feeling of security and thus reduce nuisance.

To be able to define when people visited the park, we needed to gather data using people counting hardware and software.
Besides knowing when and how many people visit the park, we also wanted to know why they did or didn't, hence the survey.

Gathering DATA
To evaluate the outcome of these actions it is necessary to monitor, obtain and work with reliable data, from reliable sources.
The city uses the data collected daily in the questionnaires filled out by its field staff "City guards" and when available in the data obtained by electronic equipment installed at the entrance of some public parks.

urbsecurity_mechelen_staff

Tickets with complaints
City guards can report malfunctions, cases of nuisance, extreme litter.
Since 2019, (till 09/08/2021) 7723 tickets were created. 20% of them are linked to nuisance, another 20% are linked to litter.

Tickets Increased surveillance
City guards also supervise Locations where citizens have complaints about.
About 30% of the supervisions are done in our public parks.
Statistics received from closing the parks
Every day (365/365) City guards also open and close 18 public parks. They have the possibility to record the state of the park. In over 90% of the cases the park is clean while no more than 1% is considered as not.

The electronic equipment installed consists of a hardware sensor and combined with the needed software registers when people coming into a park uses AI to get the gender. These devices collect data related to activity measurements in parks, to get answers to these questions:
- How many people come in park?
- When do people come in park?
- Which days are popular?
- When is park most visited?
- When is a park free?
- Is there an impact of an action done in park?

These data is organized and feed an internal counting website who supplies these information in dasboard and widgets and allows the production of alerts and the output of reports

urbsecurity_mechelen_surveilance

Nudging
Attempt to alter people's behaviour in a predictable way is an attempt to influence decision making based on techniques finding their origin in experiments of behavioural science

This test will be based on the experience that the city of Mechelen already has in applying nudging techniques in public spaces.
The case studies disseminated and shared with the other partners of UrbSecurity network, can serve also as examples for other cities.

Displaying works of art in public spaces with little movement or the use of decorative elements (such as false windows) in corners or alleys, or even the use of illuminated signs in order to motivate the use of public toilets and discourage the use of other spaces.

urbsecurity_mechelen_nudging