When Protective Strategies Collide

by Bill Formby

The world today is seeing a collision of two strategies designed to protect people but as is often the case they do not realize it or they ignore the guidelines altogether. These two strategies are currently the social avoidance or distancing practice brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic and the other is the Crime Control Through Environmental Design (CPTED) which has been in use for about 60 years. Social Distancing is intended to encourage people to avoid contact with others while the CPTED focuses on creating encounters between people.

CPTED came about largely in 1971 with the publication of the book of the same name by Criminologist C, Ray Jefferies at Florida State University, and the parallel work of Architect Oscar Newman. While their work was built on the work of others they were the ones who were pushing it out into the field of crime prevention and throughout the period from the late sixties until the present time, it had a major impact on building design insofar as creating encounters among people. Newman was largely working in governmental housing while Jefferies was working within academics. Both had a great deal of success in their chosen area to the point that there are now university programs at the graduate level in CPTED, and governmental housing units have been built along with with the principles of a philosophy of Newman’s that architecture could design structures that would cause people to either avoid each other or encounter each other.

The principle philosophies of CPTED were, and are, based on the belief that criminals would prefer to commit their crimes in private and out of sight of possible witnesses. Thus the idea that structures that were more open and created more encounters among more people were preferable to those with hidden or closed off accesses. For example, they discouraged residential buildings with long hallways because it was unlikely that people would know their neighbors even 4 or 5 doors down the hall. Instead, they encouraged more close encounters at entryways such as grouping apartments in pods of 4 apartments so the residents would be more likely to know one another. Thus if a stranger were trying to get into one of the apartments of a neighbor they would be recognizable.

Similarly, Newman believed in the concept of territoriality meaning that people would be more concerned about keeping up the appearances of property if they could define it as theirs. He did not like the concept of high rise residential buildings instead favoring those closer to ground level with a well-defined yard area. Residents could feel some sense of ownership of their area plus likely know their neighbors very well.

So now, after all of this time of constructing facilities designed to create encounters among people cities are now having to undo those deigns. In New York City, for example. areas that were once bustling, crowded areas of shops and restaurants are now having to be rearranged to keep people apart. In a way, they are having to reverse engineer those areas that had been known for their crowds. As if it were not bad enough that people were told to stay away from others they are also being told to wear masks in the process.

One has to wonder at this point, is this going to be the new normal from now pn and, if so, do architects now need new design concepts. Or, perhaps this is short term and this time next year we are back to where we were in December 2019. I would argue that a lot does depend on the upcoming elections. If we continue to handle this pandemic the way we have under the Republican leadership we will probably be in the same place next year at this time as we are now. Only the voters will be in charge of our destiny and that, my friends, is a scary proposition. Which bunch of criminals do we fear most?

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