by Michelle LeGrandeur
With the season of spring just around the corner, it’s the time of year where many of us start to consider our outside spaces such as our yards and gardens. After envisioning your “yard-to-be this year” the questions to ask are:
1. Has there been much consideration given to the type of trees, scrubs, and plants based on how these will influence the safety of my home?
2. Does my properly allow for surveillance and have good sight lines?
3. Am I willing and able to maintain the property once the natural landscape is mature and established?
The CPTED approach, when used correctly, can help reduce our exposure to crime by providing ways to better manage our human and physical resources. CPTED principles and strategies can reduce the potential for fear and opportunity for crime, and contribute to the development of vibrant, attractive, and pleasant public spaces.
CPTED enhances safety by influencing the physical design of our environment and encouraging positive social interaction. CPTED recognizes that our environment directly affects our behaviour, whether or not we are aware of it, because we constantly respond to what is around us. These responses help us to interact safely in our communities. By doing so, it improves our quality of life.
CPTED uses many different strategies that work together to create safer communities. It complements crime prevention strategies such as locks and bars, police and security personnel and, ultimately, increases our freedom to use our communities.
Second Generation CPTED
CPTED takes these strategies further to encourage the interaction of everyone within their community, their environment, and each other.
Three Basic Principles Guide
1. Natural Access Control
Natural access control restricts access. It guides how people enter and leave a space through the placement of entrances, exits, fences, landscaping, and lighting. It can decrease opportunities for criminal activity by denying criminals access to potential targets and creating a perception of risk for would-be offenders.
The primary goal of an access control strategy is to deny access to a crime target and to create a perception of risk to the offender.
2. Natural Surveillance
Natural surveillance increases visibility. Natural surveillance guides the placement of physical features such as windows, lighting, and landscaping. These features affect how much can be seen by occupants and passersby. Potential criminals are unlikely to attempt a crime if they are at risk of being observed. Similarly, we are likely to feel safer when we can see and be seen.
The primary goal of a surveillance strategy is to facilitate observation; it may also help to create an increased perception of risk to the offender.
3. Territorial Reinforcement
Territorial reinforcement promotes a sense of ownership. Physical design can create an area of territorial influence that can be perceived by and may deter potential offenders. Examples include defined property lines and clear distinctions between private and public spaces. Territorial reinforcement can be created using landscaping, pavement designs, gateway treatments, signs, and fences.
Take a look at your property’s territoriality. If you answer yes to any of these questions, your property’s territoriality needs to be improved.
• Do strangers regularly trespass on my property?
• Does my property ever have an unlived-in or unkempt appearance?
• Are there seldom-used sections of my property where people loiter or hang out?
To address any of the above concerns, incorporate design elements that help distinguish between public and private property.
CPTED Tips to Enhance Security
Houses:
• Use walkways and landscaping to direct visitors to the main entrance and away from private areas.
• Keep shrubs and trees trimmed from windows and doors to improve visibility.
• Use lighting over entrances.
• Use thorny plants along fence lines and around vulnerable windows.
Apartments:
• Ensure hallways and parking areas are well lit.
• Install good quality deadbolts and peepholes on unit doors.
• Provide common spaces in central locations to encourage tenant interaction.
• Join or start Apartment Watch in your building.
Neighbourhoods:
• Locate open spaces and recreational areas so they are visible from nearby homes and streets.
• Avoid landscaping that might create blind spots or hiding places.
• Make sure there is appropriate lighting.
• Design streets to discourage cut-through or highspeed traffic using traffic calming measures.
Businesses:
• Place checkout counters near the front of the store, clearly visible from outside.
• Window signs should cover no more than 15 percent of windows to provide clear visibility into and out of the store.
• Use shelving and displays no higher than five feet to help see who is in the store.
• Avoid creating outdoor spaces that encourage loitering and provide increased security.
• Install lighting in parking lots.
CPTED Strategies
• Provide clear border definition of controlled space.
• Provide clearly marked transitional zones which indicate movement from public to semi-private to private space.
• Create gathering areas at locations with natural surveillance and access control.
• Redesignate the use of space to provide natural barriers to conflicting activities.
• Improve scheduling of space to allow for effective use (parking for nightshift workers closest to the building).
• Redesign or revamp space to increase the perception or reality of natural surveillance.
• Overcome distance and isolation through improved communications.
• Place safe activities in vulnerable areas, e.g. community garden in vacant land.
• Place vulnerable activities in a safe place, e.g. kindergarten play area in school courtyard.
• Increase the perception of natural surveillance (especially around access control points).
Since community safety is everyone’s business, the purpose of the safety information shared is to provide the HH/BH residents with resources and information to allow our residents to participate in maintaining the quality lifestyle we’ve come to enjoy in our community.
Sources:
City of Calgary Police Service: https://www.calgary.ca/cps/community-programs-and-resources/crime-prevention/crime-prevention-through-environmental-design.html
Toronto Police Service: https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/crimeprevention/environmental.pdf
