Planning and Crime - forum topic
Crime and planning is RUDI's forum topic (June 01, 2006). Visit our new forum pages to join the debate and have your say...
There are a handful of aspects of town planning and urban design which make elected Committees especially jumpy. One is contaminated land, because it gives rise to the fear that future residents might be deformed or harmed in some way. Another is the design of roads, because it gives rise to the fear that people will be killed or maimed in traffic accidents.
On topics such as these there is an industry of experts who will advise on what are real risks and dangers but who will present the risk as an absolute, with no relative value when compared with other risks. Such experts, who are always so certain about their advice, will retreat when all else fails, to play on fear. What Committee dare face down the awesome advice of an expert when lives are at stake? And what a refuge for scoundrel experts is that fear: there can be no consideration of 'balance', they say, for the situation is non-negotiable!
A relatively recent addition to the list of subject areas in town planning which play upon fear, and allow 'experts' to hide behind apparently non-negotiable rulings, is crime.
 | The kind of places that would be built, if the fear of crime is embedded as a primary consideration, would be horrific, intolerable and unsustainable. |
| Most police forces in England now have an Architectural Liaison Officer with the job of commenting upon planning applications. Unlike other consultees, however, the police perspective can easily exploit the fear of crime to scare Committees. The advice given is rarely offered in the spirit of being a consideration to be weighed in the balance, but more often as pseudo-scientific authoritarian pronouncements from the Dark Side, that a lay Committee ignores at its peril. I quote from a consultation response from the 'Force Architectural Liaison Officer' in one of John Prescott’s growth and regeneration areas (the writer already showing, in his presentation of his job title, unhealthy Darth Vader associations). 'My main concern', writes this miserable soul, 'centres on the fact that the residential layout proposal evidently fails to recognise the relationship between access and crime (because) The applicant’s Design Statement emphasises the need to create 'ease of movement' and 'maximise connections' '. What a heinous error to promote such objectives! Even though they are well established current best practice in urban design, and embodied in government planning guidance, the Force knows better. The man says the Force wants 'defensible space' which is 'an essential element of community safety, whilst highly permeable environments are likely to increase levels of anonymity and facilitate offenders’ search behaviour'. In that dense sentence the Force presumes an understanding of the concept of 'defensible space' (which is OK if you are old enough to have bought Oscar Newman’s book and patient enough to have seen Dr Alice Coleman pedantically discover it for herself all over again a few years later, is something with which many of us are familiar); the meaning of the new urbanist jargon word 'permeable' (not difficult); the meaning and significance in planning of 'anonymity' (I give up on this one); and the meaning of 'offenders’ search behaviour' (which I guess means that the very large number of nasty convicted criminals that fill our streets enjoy moving around easily and looking out for stuff). We must not doubt or challenge this expert because the writer from the Force says 'I will evidence this further if required'. This is a typical way for an 'expert' to say 'I have the mysterious knowledge and I’ll bore you to death if you dare challenge me'. The writer from the Force embroiders his commentary on the planning application by picking up sentences from the Design Statement and offering cod-wisdom. Nuggets include the observation that 'at the heart of sustainable development is the simple idea of ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, (this) requires robust rebuttal of known crime-generating features'. Also, 'a just society is one where victims are not created by bad design or the repetition of crime prone features which have been proved to facilitate offending in the past', and 'crime prone layouts are inappropriate in any context'. Then the highly assertive bunkum that 'Preventing criminal access is just as important as facilitating law abiding movement.' So certain is the writer of the rightness of his perspective, and of the utility of his Community Safety Supplementary Planning Guide that we are supposed to have heard of and studied at length (being stupid people if left to our own professional education and training) that the Force pompously declares that 'Any application which is submitted without adequate pre-application discussion must be deemed not to be ensuring mutual understanding of objectives (such as 'safer place') and constraints (such as high levels of existing crime).' Why should intense irritation at this depressing ballony move up from being a Pooter-like amusement, to be something to worry about? First, because everyone is frightened to tell the Force it is talking nonsense (note that I have been afraid to name the Force that I have quoted). Second, because Committees are afraid to ignore such silly rants in case something horrible does happen on their streets, and might be tracked back to their decision in the face of 'expert' advice. Third, and most important of all, because the kind of places that would be built, if the fear of crime is embedded as a primary consideration, would be horrific, intolerable and unsustainable. It starts with the chopping down of trees to allow the sweep of the CCTV system (Telford Town Centre 1980s, Dartmouth Town Centre today), moves on to the elimination of all soft landscaping, the closing of alleys jitties and ginnels, the installation of bright lights, the erection of barriers, the enclosure of public streets in private malls, and the celebration of the cul-de-sac. For me, compared with the fear of crime, the greater fear is of the disconnected and isolated pockets of dysfunctional rich people inhabiting a no-go Mad Max landscape of smouldering lawlessness, rushing in Hummers from one armed compound to another. That world exists in parts of Africa now. Some of our gated communities, exclusive resorts, 'retirement villages' and the like are within a smidgeon of being like that right here and now. We must resist attempts to use the fear word to force us down the same path. As the 'expert' in the Force says in his letter: 'Access has a different meaning to a planner than to an Architectural Liaison Officer'. Quite so. The planner’s meaning – open, busy, well maintained and well connected streets for communication and convivial human intercourse - must prevail if our society is not to disintegrate further. Police experts that try to spook Committees with repressive advice to the contrary are dangerous. David Lock is a planning consultant and Visiting Professor at the University of Reading. He is Chair of the TCPA. The views expressed are personal | |
