Living Architecture, Living Cities by Christopher Day;Julie Gwilliam;

Author:Christopher Day;Julie Gwilliam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2020-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Security by community

For crime reduction, the prime agent is community; and the mechanism, proprietorial surveillance.37 Both are principally perceived. If potential wrongdoers feel their presence, identities and actions are observed, few risk being caught.38 Some public spaces are for everybody (e.g. shopping streets); some, community-domain (e.g. residential closes, village greens); some open to everybody but used, so ‘owned’, by nobody. Nobody’s land means nobody’s behavioural norms, nobody’s supervisory eyes.

For ‘place-ownership’, it must be obvious observers care. Just as weed-choked gutters imply no-one cares, well-kept places are obviously under someone’s eye. This makes maintenance, rubbish-collection and street-cleaning priority public-safety issues, and standard police recommendation.

Private front gardens, even window boxes, can demonstrate care.39 In one New Orleans project, these (with porches, fence-delineated private areas and community policing), reduced shootings 30-fold in six months. To the police chief: ‘Flowers in the front yard tell the gangs that this is not a good place to do business, it means that they are being watched and that the residents are in control.’40 This is less about private possession (innately competitive) than about care (communal responsibility). Fundamentally therefore, crime deterrence is more about ‘field’, evidence of community life, than ‘boundary’, exclusion. This makes psychological deterrence, through signals and supervisory-view, the first line of defence; locks and alarms, the last.

Surveillance is mostly through windows. Few (cafés, offices and kitchens excepted), however, get looked out of often. In living rooms, we watch TV; in bedrooms and bathrooms, don’t want anyone seeing in; in shops, never look out. At night, lit windows show occupancy, but are mostly blind. Their principal contribution, therefore, is that we might look out. We also hear through windows. Like security lights, bell-tinkling gates, clinking latches, creaking balcony boards, footstep-crunching gravel paths and barking dogs signal visitors, invited or uninvited.41 This prompts us to look.

The more residential windows’ fields-of-view overlap, the better. Windows opposite covered walkways and terraces’ gable-ends can eliminate blind spots; bay and oriel windows, look along streets, besides supervising front doors. Commanding views don’t require completely straight streets. Indeed, straight, long under-populated streets feel deserted.

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