Safe Communities Are Healthy Communities

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People, before they can participate in civic life, must first feel safe. 

In high-crime municipalities, citizens often do not have the leisure of becoming more engaged in their communities. Rather, they focus on survival. 

Robert Steuteville, in an article for Public Square, writes that "people don’t linger in places where their hair stands on the back of their necks." One's environment must be conducive to civil society. For the article, he interviewed urban planner Ray Gindroz who remarked that "...if people feel lost or trapped within a public space, unable to see or find a quick way out, they will avoid it."

I recently read Evicted by Matthew Desmond, a powerful book that follows the lives of poverty-stricken tenants in Milwaukee. The families that Desmond follows are simply in no position to think about joining book clubs or political campaigns; they are bogged down by, what my old NYU professor used to call, "the burden of necessity."  That is, the majority of their time and energy is solely focused on finding food and shelter. 

Luckily, though, there are amazing people in this world like Gindroz, who have dedicated their lives to making communities safer. You can read Gindroz's seven qualities of safe spaces here. 

I was struck by quality #1: Human presence:
People in a public space must feel the presence of other people in the space and in the buildings surrounding the space. The sense that we are not alone and are being observed helps us to behave properly and feel safe. Windows are symbols of that presence, whether people are behind them or not. Mixed-use buildings help promote 24-hour presence.
What do you know... it turns out we do actually need each other. 

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