Latest News

Parks for the Planet Forum's latest session explores how to design and use spaces that enable people to feel secure

Feelings of safety, risk, and fear in public spaces have been recurring themes throughout the latest Parks for the Planet Forum program.

The role of public parks in cultivating safe environments, in providing health, education, and socio-economic benefits for communities, and in challenging the underlying causes of crime and its effects while developing equitable and secure space for all were all considered in a session of The Way We Live: Parks, People, and Public Spaces.

Key Takeaways:

• The intentionality behind the design of space and who it is planned for impacts how safe people feel there.
• The community’s involvement in creating, maintaining, and defining safe public spaces leads to feelings of equity and pride.
• Working toward common goals across society and proactively identifying opportunities for the inclusion of community members in public spaces helps create environments that feel safer for all.
• The way groups interact with one another, unconscious biases that play out in all aspects of society and daily life, and the awareness of these biases and how they impact everyone have real implications on how safe spaces feel.

The Use of Public Spaces To Create Opportunities Within Communities

In many large urban cities, public parks are frequently beyond the reach of many, not only in a geographical sense but also for social and economic reasons.

The Heartland Alliance’s READI Chicago program helps men who have experienced gun violence to overcome exclusion from the very limited opportunities on offer to them.

Its participants undergo training in park maintenance skills that can then be used in the city’s green spaces. The program is helping those involved to establish their own identities while feeling they are helping to solve issues faced by the city in which they live.

In 2020, 678 program participants gained employment that they would otherwise have struggled to be considered for through the program.

This equitable, sustainable approach to involving at-risk individuals in creating safer spaces for their communities was highlighted as a proven approach to using parks as an intervention to prevent crime and help make communities feel more secure.

Public Spaces in Cities Need To Be Culture Sensitive and Culture Responsive

The need for spaces to be culturally responsive to provide feelings of safety for residents of urban areas is of great importance.

Colombo, Sri Lanka, was highlighted as an example where a lack of attention to the real needs of citizens had led to the exacerbation of the issue of unsafe space.

A government project to eliminate slums from the city involved the creation of 70,000 low-cost housing units over seven years in high-rise blocks. However, the relocation by force of residents to these new dwellings failed to achieve the desired outcome and instead disrupted established communities and led to a rise in social issues, a lack of public spaces, and a manifestation of an unsafe environment.

One solution to the issues faced by the residents of blocks in Colombo and their lack of safe public spaces was the proposal to children to find spaces they wanted to convert into their own areas. In addition, they were given resources to clean and grow plants and then maintain those spaces they had created.

Dealing With the Threat of Dominance and Working To Make Spaces More Inclusive

The exertion of control over public spaces by specific groups leads to others feeling unsafe in them.

Highlighting this point and how it was being dealt with practically and responsively, the example of Olympic Park in London was presented.

While a survey recently concluded that 91% of people who visited the park said they felt safe or very safe there, it was acknowledged that no consideration had been shown to women and girls in its design.

A consultation with local residents, which included inputs from youth and female demographics, helped identify the park’s issues and areas that made the space feel less safe. A park safety guide is being drawn up as a response.

In improving the park experience for women and girls, features of the park which had previously been used to manage assets, such as street light identification numbers, were now being repurposed as safety features and used as location identifiers for park users to help them feel more secure.

This webinar on Safer Cities was part of Salzburg Global Seminar’s Parks for the Planet Forum’s 2021 program, The Way We Live: Parks, People and Public Spaces. The program is in partnership with AIPH, Diplomatic Courier, The Future City podcast, ICLEI, ICUN, #NatureForAll and World Urban Parks. For more information, please visit: https://www.salzburgglobal.org/multi-year-series/parks