1. Unit 1. Urban Planning, safe cities.
Essay
Romy Bompart
Professor Shawna-Lyn Cole
Pre – Degree
23 July 2012
Urban planners proposals to design safe cities
Safe cities are related by their design, besidesthey provide a sense of security for
those who inhabit there. According to the urban planners, there are several proposals
and different manners to design safe cities such as crime prevention through
environmental design (CPTED). Despite there are vast amounts ideas to design a safe
metropolis all them have flaws in terms of crime.Therefore the urban planners decided
to approach the solution using security methods in the neighborhoods from burglar
alarm to complex strategies; to put it brieflycombining the foregoing with CPTED design
can significantly enhance the security in a planned city such as the crime statistics
clearly show.
The CPTED was started by the visionary Jane Jacobs when her insights were
written in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Many people quote her
phrase “there must be eyes on the street” to emphasize the relationship between urban
safety and design. In this sense, her cognition about the topic led her to provide
recommendations based on close observation of public spaces. These consist of bars
and restaurants “sprinkled along the sidewalks”, street vendor, and pedestrians. Also
she recommended the installation of bright street light to “augment every pair of eyes”
exposing safety on the streets with a resulting much more movement in the streets by
the pedestrians, making a successful city.
Although In 1970s, Oscar Newman and others simplified Jacobs’s vision,
focusing on an approach to define the issues and to provide standardized solutions.
Their vision was "Hardware solution" such as fences, buzzers, gates, and traffic barriers
- despite Jacobs’s warnings to the contrary. CPTED in great measure ignored the more
subtle elements of Jacobs’s suggestion: A mix of activities and land uses that could
attract diverse populations to streets, neighborhoods, housing projects, parks, and civic
centers. Even so, Newman’s vision is latent until now for example in shopping malls in
California, which have installed motion sensors and other high-tech security equipment,
and security patrols are more visible. But Jacobs’s vision is used today too;an proof of
this is Dufferin Mall, which provides entertainment, sports, internships program, and
business. As Jacobs’s suggested, these have brought a range of activities and users
into the mall and reduced crime rates.
Other urban planners are agreeing with Newman in terms of separate places to
each zone according to its function. For example, cities like Stockholm and Vancouver
are planned with the Newman’s vision called “Garden cities”, which build a new city in
the countryside, separating the city resident over the countryside and separating the
different functions of the city into areas. Also,Le Corbusier thought in the “Radiant City”,
that build the city into a large park specifically 12% of the city’s ground would occupy by
buildings, and the rest would be remain open for parks and recreation areas. The
evidences are downtown cores of Toronto, Hong Kong, and Sao Paulo. Similarly, is

2. Unit 1. Urban Planning, safe cities.
Essay
found “The city beautiful” by Daniel Burnham, who postulated: all important buildings
and monuments would be arranged along a single boulevard, such that creates an
impression to illustrate this, are Brazilian, Paris, and Lisbon.
To sum up foregoing, the urban crime is falling as long as the urban planner
design better cities to walk, work, enjoy, and look up. However the large cities planned
have considerable crime, but it is notice difference in levels of crime between planned
and unplanned cities. The proposals to design safe cities will go improving and the
people too, with hope will be soon, although safe city could be an illusion created by
urban planners, since it depends on how the people feel their integrity, that is, if they
feel safe and freedom outside. Because there will always be who does the crime.