No Light Rail in Vancouver!

In 2001, the American Planning Association published a book titled SafeScape that purported to show how certain urban designs can make neighborhoods safer from crime. Yet it was just junk science. In fact, to call it junk science might be too kind.

Everything in the book followed standard New Urbanist prescriptions: mixed-uses, higher densities, more common spaces, smaller private yards, gridded streets, alleys, pedestrian paths. The book offered no data to show that these features would reduce crime. Instead, it claimed that such designs would provide “eyes on the street” that would discourage criminals.

The authors borrowed this phrase from Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, challenged the urban planners of her day. Jacobs wanted to show that the neighborhoods the planners were bulldozing were not crime-ridden slums, so she claimed that the many eyes on the street kept crime down. However, she didn’t cite any data either.

One person who did look at crime data was architect Oscar Newman, who compared crime statistics with urban design on thousands of city blocks. He concluded that Jacobs was wrong: While her dense, mixed-use neighborhoods may not have been totally dysfunctional slums, they did suffer more crime than neighborhoods of single-family homes.

Newman’s 1973 book, Defensible Space, showed that the keys to crime reduction were maximizing private space and reducing permeability, that is, the number of entrances and exits into private property. By increasing permeability, gridded streets, alleys, and pedestrian paths all made neighborhoods more vulnerable to crime. Mixed uses brought strangers into residential areas and large common areas allowed those strangers to roam unchallenged.

The authors of SafeScape cited Newman, but totally misrepresented his views. “Newman took the ‘eyes on the street’ concept and applied it to public housing,” they wrote. “He argued that the reason ‘eyes on the street’ provide safety in urban, mixed commercial and residential areas is because there is a visible link between residents and the street.” Newman made no such argument; he specifically found that mixed uses are more vulnerable to crime and that eyes on the street does not work “unless the grounds around each dwelling are assigned to specific families.”

One of the more amusing parts of SafeScape deals with alleys. The authors half admit that alleys make homes more vulnerable to crime. “Alleys provide easy access and escape routes into/from a neighborhood by nonresidents, while allowing those individuals relative anonymity,” they say. But instead of banning or closing alleys (Newman’s recommendation), they say the solution is to “to provide ‘eyes on the alley’” — in other words, to build new houses facing the alley. Note how this increases density, which New Urbanists think promotes a sense of community.

SafeScape includes seventeen case studies, yet only one of these cites data indicating that the application of SafeScape principles led to a reduction in crime. That case was of a community that closed some of its gridded streets, effectively turning them into cul de sacs — exactly what Newman would propose, but exactly the opposite of SafeScape’s recommendations.

SafeScape hardly contained enough science to be called junk science. But I find it breathtaking that someone could write an entire, 285-page, coffee-table sized book based on a completely fabricated concept. Did the authors know they were lying? Were they deliberately trying to mislead people in a misguided effort to promote the sense of community that comes with New Urbanism? Or did they really believe their lies? Did they really think that repeating the mantra, “eyes on the street,” enough times would make the designs they recommended safe?

In the end, the authors’ awareness and intentions are not important. What is important is that they wrote, and the American Planning Association published, a book that was a tissue of lies all aimed at promoting New Urbanism at the expense of the truth.

I have no objection to New Urbanism. If someone wants to live that way, let them. Certainly, developers will be glad to build for that market. But to claim that New Urbanism reduces crime when the opposite is true is simply false advertising. Why do planners feel they have to engage in such deceptions to promote their ideas? As long as the continue to do so, their field will be nothing but junk science.

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Junk Science Week: #5 - New Urbanism and Crime

Feb 23

2007

For my final essay during this Junk Science Week, I decided to focus on New Urbanism and Crime. If you’ve already read the article on this subject that appeared in Reason magazine two years ago, this will be redundant. But the story is so revealing of planners’ methods that it bears repeating.

Reprinted from The Antiplanner