For my final essay during this Junk Science Week, I decided to focus on New Urbanism and Crime. If you’ve already read the article on this subject that appeared in Reason magazine two years ago, this will be redundant. But the story is so revealing of planners’ methods that it bears repeating.
In 2001, the American Planning Association published a book titled SafeScape that purported to show how certain urban designs can make neighborhoods safer from crime. Yet it was just junk science. In fact, to call it junk science might be too kind.
Everything in the book followed standard New Urbanist prescriptions: mixed-uses, higher densities, more common spaces, smaller private yards, gridded streets, alleys, pedestrian paths. The book offered no data to show that these features would reduce crime. Instead, it claimed that such designs would provide “eyes on the street” that would discourage criminals.
The authors borrowed this phrase from Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, challenged the urban planners of her day. Jacobs wanted to show that the neighborhoods the planners were bulldozing were not crime-ridden slums, so she claimed that the many eyes on the street kept crime down. However, she didn’t cite any data either.
One person who did look at crime data was architect Oscar Newman, who compared crime statistics with urban design on thousands of city blocks. He concluded that Jacobs was wrong: While her dense, mixed-use neighborhoods may not have been totally dysfunctional slums, they did suffer more crime than neighborhoods of single-family homes.
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Newman’s 1973 book, Defensible Space, showed that the keys to crime reduction were maximizing private space and reducing permeability, that is, the number of entrances and exits into private property. By increasing permeability, gridded streets, alleys, and pedestrian paths all made neighborhoods more vulnerable to crime. Mixed uses brought strangers into residential areas and large common areas allowed those strangers to roam unchallenged.
The authors of SafeScape cited Newman, but totally misrepresented his views. “Newman took the ‘eyes on the street’ concept and applied it to public housing,” they wrote. “He argued that the reason ‘eyes on the street’ provide safety in urban, mixed commercial and residential areas is because there is a visible link between residents and the street.” Newman made no such argument; he specifically found that mixed uses are more vulnerable to crime and that eyes on the street does not work “unless the grounds around each dwelling are assigned to specific families.”
One of the more amusing parts of SafeScape deals with alleys. The authors half admit that alleys make homes more vulnerable to crime. “Alleys provide easy access and escape routes into/from a neighborhood by nonresidents, while allowing those individuals relative anonymity,” they say. But instead of banning or closing alleys (Newman’s recommendation), they say the solution is to “to provide ‘eyes on the alley'” — in other words, to build new houses facing the alley. Note how this increases density, which New Urbanists think promotes a sense of community.
SafeScape includes seventeen case studies, yet only one of these cites data indicating that the application of SafeScape principles led to a reduction in crime. That case was of a community that closed some of its gridded streets, effectively turning them into cul de sacs — exactly what Newman would propose, but exactly the opposite of SafeScape‘s recommendations.
SafeScape hardly contained enough science to be called junk science. But I find it breathtaking that someone could write an entire, 285-page, coffee-table sized book based on a completely fabricated concept. Did the authors know they were lying? Were they deliberately trying to mislead people in a misguided effort to promote the sense of community that comes with New Urbanism? Or did they really believe their lies? Did they really think that repeating the mantra, “eyes on the street,” enough times would make the designs they recommended safe?
In the end, the authors’ awareness and intentions are not important. What is important is that they wrote, and the American Planning Association published, a book that was a tissue of lies all aimed at promoting New Urbanism at the expense of the truth.
I have no objection to New Urbanism. If someone wants to live that way, let them. Certainly, developers will be glad to build for that market. But to claim that New Urbanism reduces crime when the opposite is true is simply false advertising. Why do planners feel they have to engage in such deceptions to promote their ideas? As long as the continue to do so, their field will be nothing but junk science.
That should be obvious: people don’t want what they’re selling, and planners believe they’re much smarter than their “customers”. If you really believe that what you’re doing is for the good of the public and they’re too stupid to do what’s good for them, then deceiving the public in order to impose your will is merely another necessary step to protect the public. This totalitarian ideology is very common among leftists. Just look at the recent rush to ban foie gras, smoking in public, and trans-fats. DS exhibits that ideology frequently on this board, since his arguments are generally of the form that those of us who aren’t employed as planners just aren’t smart or informed enough to have valid objections to their goals and methods. He is too smart to say so explicitly, but the general tone of his writings is that planners know what’s best and if you don’t agree, so what? Marx would be proud.
Incorrect premise alert!
That should be obvious: people don’t want what they’re selling, and planners believe they’re much smarter than their “customersâ€Â. If you really believe that what you’re doing is for the good of the public and they’re too stupid to do what’s good for them, then deceiving the public
Yada, etc.
+++++
-Sam Staley
(notoriously anti-freedom)
. That is also why I can favor deregulation in my community, knowing full well that the result is higher density, more mixed use, etc., even though my personal/family choice has been for “typical†sprawl. It my not be consistent from a uniform urban design ideology, but it is very consistent with our principles of local governance.
I presume this means you will show up in Salem to oppose changes to M37. Hope to see you there when the hearings start.
Thanks
JK
It is sad to me that sin (crime) keeps raising our cost of living. In November of 2006 a man with a sawed-off shotgun asked for my wallet and cellphone in a mixed use neighborhood of San Francisco. I wasn’t carrying them.
Every time we unlock a lock our time spent is part of the cost of crime. When we have to drive our kids to school because we live on a cul-de-sac and the traffic makes walking and bicycling unsafe we are paying another cost of crime. When our house burns down because the fire truck had to take a round about path and get someone to open the gate to our community we pay more of the cost of crime.
When our family is obese and diabetic because we don’t walk, bike or play in the park because of fear of accidents or criminals we pay more.
In many suburban and rural places the risk and cost of traffic accidents is higher than the risk and cost of crime in the urban areas, so the total cost of crime and accidents is higher in the rural areas. (Sorry I don’t remember the reference to the newspaper article I read.)
I believe we should try really smart to reduce crime with technology and improved morals so we don’t have to reduce our mobility and health with gated communities and cul-de-sacs. We could start by reading the Bible and trying to strengthen families.
Dan, I could almost believe that was sincere. The problem is that you, like nearly all New Urbanists, decry zoning rules when they impede Urbanist goals, but favor zoning rules when they impede “sprawl” or impose Urbanism. The tone of your comments on this blog is that “sprawl” isn’t what people really want, that zoning rules impede the true urbanist predilictions of the population. How arrogant.
Sam likes free markets? Good for him, but the majority of the commenters from that link think libertarians are crazy. In other words, his fellow Urbanists don’t want real free markets in land development because that might cause the “wrong” result.
Houston is the closest thing to a free market in land anywhere in the US, and guess what? Urbanist it isn’t. That doesn’t stop the urbanists, though. They’re pushing through boondoggles like a new light rail system. When that fails, and it will, do you think they’ll stop there? My bet is that they’ll try to prop up the line by pushing for zoning rules that mandate urbanist development along the line. As I said, Urbanists are totalitarians, and if the market doesn’t do what they want, screw the market.
The problem is that you, like nearly all New Urbanists…[New] Urbanists don’t want real free markets in land development because…[New] Urbanists are totalitarians…
Yada, etc.
I noticed, arg, a number of issues with your trying to paint me with a certain brush: conflation (all x are y, all people really want what arg wants), incorrect premises (Sam is an New Urbanist, free markets exist, Dan thinks everyone wants NU development, Dan favors Euclidean zoning), and extremist marginalization rhetoric (totalitarian).
I was disappointed to find these, rather than finding cogent argumentation and things like examples, facts, evidence, or case studies.
I’m quite sure I’ve written on this blog [1] that I don’t think everyone wants to live in density, and I don’t think I know what everyone wants, nor do I think planners plan for only one development mode.
It would be helpful for your argument if you could point out where I’ve said these things (rather than finding me arguing against a premise) so it doesn’t look like you’re guessing or incorrect.
Thank you in advance,
DS
[1] http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=62#comment-1067
Not sure why tag not working…
On February 23rd, 2007, Dan said:
The same things he always does. First, he takes exception to the lack of precision in a previous comment, and then suggests/orders more examples, facts, evidence, or case studies, as if he would actually consider them. Why ask for things you only reject, Dan? We would be casting pearls before swine.
Why ask for things you only reject, Dan?
I believe, if you cast your thoughts back, I’ve rejected: blatantly erroneous interpretation of findings, cherry-picking, mendacity, calling non-science Junk ScienceTM, conflation, strawmen, language of certitude, binary rhetoric.
The fire suppression post is the classic example of what I mean above, which contains almost everything I listed in the pvs paragraph. Try instead pointing out where the argument is not based on certitude, binary rhetoric, ideological interpretation or cherry-picking and see what happens.
DS
“Sam is an Urbanist” is an incorrect premise? Then why does he talk about the “strengths of the New Urbanist community” and “commitment to Urbanism”? In my experience, only X’s use phrases like “strengths of X” and “commitment to X” in the obviously admiring tone used in that quote.
How can “free markets exist” be an incorrect premise, when I said nothing of the kind? I said Urbanists don’t like free markets because they might not have the “correct” result. Which happens to be true: I dare you to find more than a few self-proclaimed Urbanists that would allow the people to decide how they want land used. What word better describes the general Urbanist (and planner’s) attitude of “we know best, so we’re going to tell you how things should be” than “totalitarian”? I said Houston is the closest thing to a free market we have; I never said it was a free market.
On February 24th, 2007, Dan said:
“I believe, if you cast your thoughts back, I’ve rejected: blatantly erroneous interpretation of findings, cherry-picking, mendacity, calling non-science Junk ScienceTM, conflation, strawmen, language of certitude, binary rhetoric.”
You have not rejected those things. You haved rejected other things by calling them those things. That does not move anti-planners. We have come up through the same education system the pro-planners have, and had the intelligence to see past what is being offered up as fact. When you make an accusation of cherry-picking or whatnot, we know better than to take your word for it. We are not dazzled or misled by vocabulary. We are neither impressed nor intimidated by sarcasm and other rudeness. This is why you have failed to make an impression here amongst people who have already demonstrated the open-mindedness to hear an alternate viewpoint. You have failed so badly, in fact, that no one other than arg and I even pay attention to you anymore (and you are losing me fast). If you hope to have an impact in this forum, you’re going to have to do much, much better, and you don’t have much time left.
I have been lurking around this site for some time now and have noticed Dan spends an awful lot of time arguing the opposite view point. He is usually one of the first users to post an anti-response. If has become very clear that Dan disagrees with most of the articles found on this site but I can only wonder why he keeps coming back? I think most reasonable people understand that such lively debate suggest the antiplanner is on to something and may have valid points. Am I missing something here? Is Dan associated with the site or just an end user like me? By the way Dan there is nothing personal meant by this post just a curious observation.
Thanks for your time.
Cliff out
Thank you davek.
I have no intention, when commenting here, of hoping to persuade ideologues whose minds are already made up, and whose minds can’t identify cherry-picking, conflation, conclusions based on incorrect premises, etc.
Nothing will ever be much, much better to these people unless the words appeal to their particular emotional triggers.
DS
Cliff,
The notion that Dan might be associated with the site is interesting, and I suppose other web blogs have such artificial personalities to generate discussion. Fortunately, no such contrivance is needed here as there are plenty of people like Dan who fervently believe in planning.
I for one much appreciate Dan’s posts as he keeps me honest and sometimes points to research or information that I didn’t know about. I hope he keeps commenting even if I don’t always have time to respond to his statements.
Thank you Randal.
There is a typical arc here that the commenters are following, I’ve seen it many times before when I comment. I’m used to it by now and it doesn’t bother me.
But I must say I appreciate the fact that most right-of-center blogs don’t allow comments but you do, and you allow dissent to remain in comments. Sure, we utterly disagree but at least you allow the disagreement.
Regards,
DS
Dan, that same fact applies to left-of-center blogs and forums where outright hostility is often the response to any kind of Libertarian or Conservative posts and moderators tend to want to silence the dissent.
johng, I agree.
My point was where, in my experience, I see comments are allowed, not that one worldview is immune from x.
I’m too lazy to search and link to them, but there have been several articles in the past few weeks pointing out people with noms d’e-, being anonymos, tend to let it hang looser than if they were face-to-face with someone. Perhaps one day I’ll buy you a beer and you’ll see for yourself, but people don’t talk to me in person the way you see here. It’s a fact of life when you communicate over these here Intertubes, and 5 minutes after someone uses The Google for the first time, they’re an expert.
DS
On February 26th, 2007, Dan said:
“…people don’t talk to me in person the way you see here. ”
Dear Kettle,
You are black.
signed, Pot