CHAPTER 3: PLANNING OF PUBLIC AND LIVELY PLACES
3.4 Planning of lively places to address social challenges
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also include activities like locating bus stops on a main street near shops and human activity rather than on a deserted road which avoids leaving people vulnerable while they are waiting for public transport. The presence of small businesses and street vendors in neighbourhoods (as mentioned in the example of Toronto‘s municipal urban safety policy), act as powerful deterrents to crime (Cowan et al., 2006:20).
Improving citizens‘ visual literacy will make it easier for policymakers to design these spaces. This will then contribute to the architecture, and by improving or addressing architectural techniques or layouts, certain aspects of safety and security can also be improved. This creates the positive effect of ―natural surveillance‖ i.e. creating sight lines down corridors and making sure that the windows of neighbours‘
homes overlook open areas (Philips, 2010:20). This visible presence on hand contributes and promotes the safety and security of a place (PPS, 2008:30).
In doing so it is also important to note (as mentioned in Chapter 2) that these spaces are planned for people and people have different needs and/or preferences. It is therefore important that these policies regarding lively place planning and place-making of policymakers need to adapt to these individual conditions, with architects and planners developing sets of qualities that shape the direction of designs and that tap into citizens‘ feelings about the spaces in which they feel most comfortable, otherwise a mere mass production with people feeling the loss of identity (Cowan et al., 2006:21).
Overall reduction of rural poverty and inequality will, as a matter of course, result in a quality of life that will reduce numerous safety challenges which rural dwellers face at the moment. For example, if girls and women in rural areas had running water in their homes, they would not be vulnerable to the victimisation which they experience while travelling to and from rivers and communal water sources (Department of Community Safety and Liaison, 2010:8).
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The creation of these places based on the place-making and lively place planning theories frequently includes (or aims at including) the public and inhabitants‘ inputs and creative contributions. This creates (as answer to rural social challenges as listed in Table 4) user-friendly and safe public places for the people (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:1) and a sense of comfort, contributing to the feeling of greater security (Lanham, 2007:19). Based on the relationship between public places and insecurities, the policy debate by the IAURIF started. This debate addressed the concern of a public space‘s (regardless of how good it is planned) ability to withstand deficient management (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:1) as poor management is a potential factor that fosters acts of delinquency or incivility, leading to a renowned feeling of insecurity (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:3).
Therefore the simultaneous inclusion and presence of on-site managers within the planning and sustaining of lively places is needed for the successful addressing of social challenges.
Even though planning does not directly generate crime, poorly designed town planning schemes can further foster the presence of insecurity among the people (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:4). In order to minimize the conditions that foster crime, effective lively place planning can be implemented as means of addressing this social challenge. By including lively place planning and place-making principles within these types of insecure areas, the environmental context (i.e. the improving of the environmental design and layout) will minimize the conditions that foster crime and contribute to the status, function, usage and management of the area to be more coherent (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:16).
The presence or creation of human activity within public spaces, the strengthening of human control, appropriation and the necessary respect and responsibility for the places (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:5) created by place-making initiatives all contribute to the addressing of social challenges (i.e. social exclusion, safety and security and ownership).
Social challenges can therefore be addressed in various ways in terms of place making. Previously, the role and importance of town planning within the planning of lively places was mentioned as well as the addressing of public safety issues in terms of town planning (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:7).
Selected town planning principles can be expressed in several types of initiatives on a range of levels i.e. planning, policy, regulations or operations (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:8), all of which are lively place planning components necessary for or contributing to addressing social challenges through awareness, participation of all residents and supervision (Loudier &Dubois, 2001:9).
To coax and wrestle the best out of a lively place in a community (i.e. wealth creation, innovation, artistic exuberance and architectural splendour) and contain its worst tendencies (i.e. social challenges including overcrowding, crime-riddled, polluted and unsanitary), policymakers and/or town planners
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must themselves possess large measures of creativity and a wide innovative streak (Philips, 2010:6), combined with the creative participation and inputs of the community in order to successfully address social challenges by means of lively place planning. The contribution or effect of policies and town planning principles applied in public places solving social challenges like air quality, pollution, transport, access, etc. is that it simultaneously solves liveability issues (Philips, 2010:12).
The place-making or lively place planning approach regarding the devolution of power to local authority level would not only be beneficial, but will also become a practical necessity (Cowan et al., 2006:26) in addressing social challenges like social assistance, social exclusion, social provision, etc. in places continuing to grow and becoming more complex. These local authorities often find themselves in opposition to national politics as it rather focuses on the public realm of planning and place creating. As places, communities, cities and townships grow, national and state governments will need to recognize the need for local solutions to everything from healthcare and air quality to urban transport, and to allow a greater degree of autonomy at a municipal level (Philips, 2010:17) in order to appropriately address social challenges through lively place planning.
When planning lively places and trying to convince and include citizens in order to play a greater role, policymakers need to learn how to relinquish their own control (Philips, 2010:19). Because crime and other issues of insecurity are also closely related to issues such as inequality, marginalization and poverty, the concept of creating alliances recognizes the importance of implementing far broader measures (Philips, 2010:20). The forming of alliances was previously identified as a place-making element with a positive effect on especially rural safety and security. Within lively place planning, the most important type of alliance policymakers can make in order to implement broader measures to successfully address social challenges, is with their citizens (Philips, 2010:19).
The success of implementing these citizen-centered initiatives (as mentioned with participation as place making element) often comes from the fact that they are driven from the ground up. ‗If the people lead, the leaders follow‘, Fred Kent (founder and president of the Project for Public Spaces). This supports the success of power devolution to local authority and the creation of alliances in order to combat social challenges within lively place planning.
Because safety and security and any other social challenges are only partly achieved by putting more police officers out on the streets (Philips, 2010:20), the implementation or execution of planning frameworks (like that of the Rural Safety Strategy and others) successfully implements lively place planning elements aimed at successfully improving social challenges in rural areas (SAPS, 2011:7-8).
These approaches are primarily based on three pillars including:
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1) Enhanced service delivery (including lively place planning aspects such as access, communication, shared information, integrated resource utilization, safety and security)
2) Integrated approach (focuses on the participation and inclusion of all role players and stakeholders)
3) Community safety awareness (addressing social issues like the establishment of safety nets, creating awareness in communities and educating communities in terms of safety and security issues).
Types of crime vary according to the public space in which they occur (Loudier & Dubois, 2001:30) therefore when the public space is designed as a lively place with the simultaneous inclusion of lively place planning and public place approaches (as discussed in this chapter), crime (safety and security) within spaces and communities can be reduced and social challenges can be addressed.
Rural Development and its corresponding frameworks and policies (i.e. Guidelines on Rural Safety, Rural Safety Reports, etc) promote crime prevention through environmental design (i.e. designing and developing lively places; as well as implementing the CRDP) and (as discussed in chapter 2 and linked in this chapter), these frameworks sufficiently account for addressing rural social challenges through lively place planning, but the main concern or challenge, is for these frameworks to be practically implemented for any successful addressing of social challenges to become a reality.