Neil Fraser
October 20, 2003
Was invited to be Master of Ceremonies at the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM) annual awards dinner in London on Monday.
The awards were made to the Best Town Centre Residential Development; Best Town Centre Mixed-Use Development; The Town Centre Car Parking Award; Hospitality on the Street Award and Best Completed Project. The next day I had the opportunity to attend the Association's Autumn Conference the theme of which was 'Liveability and Public Space Management'. Interesting because it is a theme that has been nagging me this year and on which I have written several times.
The scene for the conference was set by Yvette Cooper, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Planning, who stressed the criticality of community pride as a base off which one can work to achieve economic success in town centres. She said that substantial funds would be made available by central government for local community involvement in improving public space. (The next day there was a major announcement regarding government's resolve to stamp out anti-social behaviour in public spaces - see later.)
She was followed by Ben Page, a Director of the MORI Social Research Institute, who provided a fascinating statistical insight into the subject of liveability and public space management. Respondents in dozens of British cities were asked to choose four or five issues which they believed were the most critical in making a good place to live from a comprehensive list of 20.
The results honed in on petty crime and vandalism, cleanliness of streets and public spaces, things for kids and teenagers to do and getting around, transport. The results were completely different to what could be anticipated at national level where the cry is education and the national health service.
Ben pointed out that a high proportion of people don't use hospitals or schools regularly but everyone uses streets. He suggested that the BID/CID mantra of 'clean, safe and green' is an excellent one because it gets to the very root of what people are concerned about.
Jan Gehl, principal of the Danish practice of Gehl Architects, has made a lifetime study of urban quality and shared some fascinating conclusions well backed up with examples from all over the world. He pointed out that pavement cafes are 20% to do with the food and 80% to do with watching other people. He contrasted this to a fast food mall where food is 95% and social only 5%.
His plea was to celebrate the pedestrian and not to celebrate the car - whilst early pedestrianisation projects were for improved retail, today they are for improving the quality of life. Every city, he said, has a traffic department churning out lots of statistics and making cars very visible by constant acknowledgement. No city has a pedestrian department or one for public life therefore people become invisible. We need to raise the level of the pedestrian - good democratic space is where different age groups, different social groups and different ethnic groups can meet - it is an antidote to fear and a good crime prevention strategy. Good public space gives hope to citizens.
Two American speakers followed. Dan Biederman very well known for the BIDs he has been associated with in New York City spoke about the management aspects of public space using the highly successful Bryant Park example - it is visited daily by more people than St Marks in Venice or Trafalgar Square in London - "making a space great is a pre-requisite to the economics of the area!"
His 'tips' included design - design your spaces for women, they are much better at broken window issues than men; cleanliness - 50 gallon oil drums used for refuse collection send out a negative message to the public, "we don't think much of you"; security cracking down on anti-social behaviour by not permitting spitting, loud music, beer drinking from an open can, bad language; lighting - make people feel comfortable; softscape gardening - people want to see flowers; use of moveable chairs - allows you to put your social distance where you want it to be; toilets - make them more like a home toilet than a public convenience; don't ignore the perimeter - use well designed street furniture on the edges even if it is directly out of your space; do well at the stuff the eye appreciates; measure everything, count the people using the space often including the sexes; add new things to do every year to keep up the interest levels. Great stuff!
Larry Houston was the last speaker - he has recently substantially updated his original definitive book on BIDs, which has just been issued as a second edition. But, as an inner city citizen of Philadelphia he provided an interesting viewpoint in regard to inner city liveability - amenities, convenience and security are the most critical issues for inner city dwellers.
He also pointed out that inner city residential makes enormous economic sense - stats that he quoted were that a tourist, on average, only contributes $300-00 per annum to the city's economy; an office worker $2 000-00 whilst a resident household contributes $25 000-00. Liveability, he said, doesn't just happen and one needs a collective responsibility for how it functions.
Interestingly, the day after the conference, the British Government announced that it is to mount an offensive on public space anti-social behaviour over the next three years with a seventy five million pound programme. Yup, almost a billion rand!!!!!
They consider this a worthwhile investment having calculated that unruly behaviour costs the taxpayer some three billion pounds a year!
On 10 September this year the British public reported 66 107 incidents of anti-social behaviour in one 24-hour period, that is one report of an incident every two seconds! This included complaints on littering (10 686); vandalism (7 855); vehicle -related nuisance (7 782); nuisance behaviour (7 660); intimidation or harassment (5 415); noise (5 374); rowdy behaviour (5 339); abandoned vehicles (4 994); street drinking and begging (3 239); animal related problems (2 546); hoax calls (1 286); and prostitution (1 011).
The Home Office has estimated that the cost of dealing with these issues was at least thirteen-and-a-half million pounds, and that is in just one day! The programme will tackle begging, the causes of vagrancy, such as drug or alcohol related problems and look at alternative 'giving schemes' to persuade people to donate to charity rather than giving money directly to beggars. Abandoned cars will be picked up and taken to the wrecker's yards. A big drive against graffiti artists will be launched with a national data base being set up to identify each vandal.
A pilot will be run initially in nine UK cities, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Westminster and Camden, Sunderland, Leeds, Sheffield, Brighton and London.
As is always the case, particularly in the UK with its soft liberal media, there is a great deal of scorn being heaped on the government for its initiative - "The term 'anti-social behaviour' is too elastic. Begging is not always anti-social and more often found in the most prosperous districts, does not fit well into the category. Drug and alcohol addiction are medical rather than social problems..."
Other newspapers scoff at the implementation of such a programme by a government "who won't lift a finger to help marriage or the family!" Pointing out that the perpetrators are overwhelmingly the product of the collapse in traditional values, family breakdown, a lack of discipline at home and in school due to government legislation that makes it impossible to enforce discipline in the classroom.
"Its soft policy on cannabis opens the door to wider experimentation with drugs. It positively encourages indulgence by the courts".
I can only take comfort in some stats that Ben Page had shared with us earlier - in a wide ranging poll to identify "drivers of trust" his organisation found that the most trusted groupings are doctors, teachers, professors, judges and the clergy whilst government ministers, journalists and all politicians were the least trustworthy!
Yet interestingly the same newspapers gave wide coverage to Mayor Martin O'Malley who was the British Government's guest of honour at the launch of their programme. O'Malley, the Mayor of Baltimore, is credited with reducing violent crime in Baltimore by 26% by focusing on low level offences such as vandalism and drunkenness.
Quality of life and public space behavioural issues are of critical importance in our drive towards a world class African city - I don't believe we have been giving these enough consideration and we must take a leaf out of the UK's book and turn our attention and money to addressing them.
