2008-11-05 P & R Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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'" BEHA VIOURAL BASED DESIGN By: Tom McKay I recently had an opportunity to sit down with a PhD candidate working on his thesis on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) in Ontario. CPTED (pronounced sep-ted) believes that the proper design can lead to a reduction in the fear and incidence of a crime and an improvement in the quality of life. CPTED concepts and principles have served me well for over a decade as a CPTED specialist with Peel Regional Police. Yet by the conclusion of the interview, I was left somewhat unsettled by the fact that my answer to the oft repeated question "what do you see as the challenges facing CPTED?" had not substantially changed over the past twelve years. For the record, my answer to this question was "CPTED needed to develop". It was time, I had said, to put some "flesh on its bones". My concern however was based on the realization that after waiting twelve years, the development of what was now a forty-two year old concept was in my mind long overdue and for the first time I began to wonder if change would ever come. I subsequently began thinking about how I would develop and expand CPTED beyond its three main concepts - natural surveillance, access control and territorial reinforcement. I also took some tentative steps towards fine tuning that long and cumbersome name. After all, I have seen first hand how that name can sometimes get in the way such as the time when I spent two weeks dealing with a traffic related problem at an elementary school only to have the Manager of Traffic dismiss the effort as he could not relate it to an approach with "crime prevention" in its name. This proved to be a cathartic process when I crystallized my twelve years of crime prevention experience and emerging trains of thought into a new and evolutionary concept that I call Behavioural Based Design. Behavioural based design is a strategic design approach that looks to understand the predictable ways that people interact with a given environment when developing the most appropriate physical settings for inducing desired behaviour. Inherent to this approach is a "socio-design" hierarchy that clearly establishes the primacy of behaviour as a determinant of design. While not limited to crime prevention applications, the design methodology is inherently proactive as the process is predisposed to engineering environments that are in harmony with behaviour while culling negative influences. Put another way, it attempts to unravel behavioural "DNA" then replicate the required elements needed to clone desired behaviours. This effectively results in an adaptable approach that can respond to behavioural change. Such is not the case using a CPTED approach. Exposing CPTED's Limitations CPTED's inability to adapt to behavioural change Potentially, one of CPTED's greatest limitations is its inability to adapt to behavioural change. Graffiti can be used to illustrate this point. Prior to the development of the graffiti subculture, it was uncommon for visible walls to attract a graffiti vandal. This all changed with the development of the hip-hop culture in the 1960's. The desire for fame resulted in kids first