Being safe and secure is both a feeling and a reality and it is impossible to defend every place against everything. Security measures such as CCTV may have some level of effectiveness in the apprehension of an offender particularly after the event but ultimately, we can only do so much when we are dealing with a motivated criminal. Planning and design measures in the public domain do not necessarily influence the mental state of someone with the wrong intentions. When people are frightened in public areas it makes sense for Governments to want to do something about it as long as the solution in mind makes sense. Yet we as taxpayers still know very little about how many and what types of crime in specific locations CCTV has solved. Moreover, we might well ask how many people are aware that most CCTV systems are not monitored and how does that affect fear of crime? Further inquiry might have us asking does CCTV displace crime from one area to another? What percentage of the incidents caught on camera in a calendar year led to an immediate police response and an arrest? Does the presence of CCTV cameras discourage people from reporting crime? How much has CCTV improved the lives of women and girls? And lastly to what extent do CCTV cameras merely create the illusion of safety and security?
A 2019 study by the British firm Comparitech found that Australia has more than one million cameras, more than a dozen cameras for every thousand people.15 So how do we know if they are working to reduce or prevent crime? There arguably remains a distinct lack of transparency on the cost benefits of CCTV systems in many cities and how these expenses might look when compared to community policing, crime prevention (including initiatives with a gender focus) and better resources for victim support. Police and municipal authorities may argue that CCTV is a valuable tool for investigating crime but the continued expansion of these surveillance systems have invariably been undertaken without public consultation or consent and in the continued absence of public evaluation reports which demonstrate the system’s effectiveness. Moreover, expanding the so-called surveillance ecosystem still further may be a seductive policy solution to street safety concerns, but there’s limited evidence of their effectiveness at reducing and deterring crime.16
We should rightly question policies aimed at improving safety for women and girls where there is no apparent evidence as to how they were actually informed by women and girls in the first place. Before we announce expensive fear-based solutions we must always begin by interrogating the users of the space, gather crime data, analyse land use patterns in the location and general vicinity and make every effort to thoroughly understand the unique characteristics of the site all of which can and should inform any subsequent intervention. We can only wonder about the possibilities of a specific service headed up by women and girls working with NGOs, community organisations and local businesses to make spaces safer for women and girls and what they might do with the $30 million dollars the Government has announced toward CCTV and lighting, a policy which mirrors their U.K. conservative counterpart’s “Safer Streets” announcement in March 2021.
So what are women and girls and others doing to make their environments safer in towns and cities elsewhere?
Projects and initiatives in the public domain led by women and girls to “reinforce their territory” which have been used in other cities include gender specific signage warnings and banning advertising where gender stereotyping is harmful such as billboards and posters of scantily-clad women. Women’s self-defence classes and activities in prominent squares and plazas, encouraging businesses to support the specific needs of different groups of women such as breastfeeding mothers and artworks and monuments which acknowledge the role of women and girls in our history of conflict are other projects which can encourage women and girls to make their mark on public spaces in towns and cities. The work of activists and artists such as Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (pictured) has gained prominence through the use of street art to speak out against the street harassment of women across some American cities. Installing statues in prominent places such as Kristen Olsen’s defiant Fearless Girl in New York and Oslo are powerful examples of steps to slowly dismantle the influence of the patriarchy in our urban environments. Establishing grants programs for female performers and artists in public areas and supporting women and girls’ right to protest through marches and rallies which call for change lie at the core of women and girls achieving gender equality.
Crowd mapping apps which allow women to plan walking routes in and around cities and to provide feedback on places where they may feel unsafe or intimidated may also be useful. The XYX Lab at Monash University in Melbourne for example has been asking women and girls to share their experiences of public spaces through a “geolocative tool” on their smartphone or devices that allows them to share what’s happened to them in particular urban environments. The research has been conducted across five continents – in Sydney, Lima, Kampala, Madrid and Delhi and began with a pilot in Melbourne in 2016. The geolocation tool allows participants to monitor what is happening in their own time in their own way while the findings are made available to women and their communities so that they are empowered to effect change.17
Safetipin is another tool being used which works to enable cities to become safer through collection of data through crowdsourcing and other methods. The Safety Audit, that forms the core of Safetipin, assesses different parameters linked to safer and more inclusive public spaces. The Safetipin mobile safety app for example shows a safety audit score as a “pin” on a map. The app provides information about factors that promote safety for women and other groups, to citizens at large and important urban stakeholders. Safetipin provides data for safety, inclusivity and mobility based on physical and social infrastructure and provides information to public service providers with access to information from the data collected such as non-functioning streetlights, broken or unpaved footpaths, poor accessibility to public transport and unsafe areas, to help them improve the safety of the area.18
In London the Shameless! Festival subtitled a “festival of activism against sexual violence” run by the Women of the World Foundation took place last year to encourage conversations about sexual abuse, to develop solutions and change attitudes around sexual violence and abuse.19
In Barcelona the city has funded “a research project-cum-participative feminist initiative to analyse how urban planning in the metropolitan area impacts on the everyday lives of women who work at night.”20 One measure which has been implemented in the city has been an attempt to take a firm stance against violence and harassment by setting up “Anti-Masclista” (Anti-Sexist) stands outside of large music festivals and areas of nightlife. Two specialist staff attend each stand, offering information on sexual violence, explaining municipal and public services offered in the city, and providing support should sexual harassment have occurred. Other initiatives in the city have included steadily replacing the patriarchal theme of street signs named after men replacing them with prominent women leaders.21
Studies have further contended that local government authorities could take a stronger stance in regulating alcohol advertising in public places because of their reliance on community-based processes of consultation and decision-making for planning as well as their broader responsibilities in relation to promoting public health, community and traffic safety.22 The dominance of alcohol in the night time city looms large in relation to perceptions of crime and fear amongst women and girls contributing to fears about walking alone after dark, creating a barrier to participating in the city at night, reducing numbers of people on the street and contributing to city centre decline. This does not mean we should demonise alcohol nor undermine its importance in terms of enjoying a night out in the company of family, friends or colleagues but rather that we need to be mindful of the strong evidence which shows that restricting the advertising, marketing and promotion of alcohol makes for sound public health policy.23
Safety and security on public transport are also significant issues which disproportionately affect women particularly at night. The scale and transitory nature of public transport and ride-sharing services give offenders a guaranteed close and anonymous proximity to their targets. Research has shown that women’s travel patterns are different from men’s and these differences are characterised by deep and persistent inequalities. In many towns and cities women have inferior access to both private and public means of transport while having to make more trips in line with their care-taking responsibilities.24 Studies have shown that time, cost and safety are all factors many women consider in informing their decisions around how they travel. Women will generally adapt their travel patterns by travelling more during daylight hours and unlike men are less inclined to travel at night due to safety and security concerns.25
Poor employment conditions such as working time, shift-working and the location of employment have all made the transport sector especially unappealing to women. Research has suggested that the lack of attraction is reinforced by gender stereotypes and prejudices about what women can do and what men can do that are perhaps most deeply embedded in male-dominated sectors such as transport. As a result, in almost all countries around the world, very few girls make the transition from school to employment in the transport sector because they are not actively encouraged to consider the available options, despite the fact that such options include a wide range of often well-paid manual jobs and professional occupations.26 (Although following last week’s article I did find a Women’s Safety employment opportunity advertisement placed by TransportNSW in my feed). The evidence suggests that there is clearly a need to advocate for a better inclusion of women’s needs in planning for safety and mobility.27
Ensuring there are services which meet demand, that there are transit environments where there is a human presence as well as initiatives designed to animate spaces to improve the waiting experience such as street entertainment are all worthy of trialling by public transit agencies. On-demand bus stops have also been used overseas to enable users on a bus to stop at a location of their own choosing close to their destination at night.
Addressing the provision of vital amenities for women and girls in public places is another critical issue. In the U.K. for example studies have found that under building codes men are required under statutory law to be provided with almost twice the number of public toilets than women. As far as urban governance is concerned officers responsible for toilet provision, who are invariably men, have a considerable degree of autonomy and discretion about where and whether to provide facilities, with little or no requirement for public participation in the process.28 As a result we continue to often find long lines of women and girls in our public spaces waiting to use scarce amenities.
Even simple environmental features like potholed and crumbling footpaths have a greater detrimental impact on women. The vast majority of people pushing either prams or wheelchairs are women.
If we are truly able to effectively respond to serious incidents in public places it will ultimately be the other people in that space in that moment of time who are best placed to respond. It is cold comfort to a women or girl who has been assaulted to know that the incident was caught on CCTV but did not prevent the crime. Women navigate the city differently to men in order to avoid dark streets, groups of men and commonly hold tightly to their keys in the event of having to defend themselves. Ultimately making streets safer for women and girls will extend far beyond the reach of CCTV cameras or any further advances in technology because, as women’s groups have pointed out, the focus on street surveillance neglects the wider societal change required in order to make women and girls feel safer in public places.29
We need to shift the focus away from what women do and do not do or exercising “the right amount of panic” in public spaces toward challenging a culture which has allowed misogyny, sexism, bullying and a lack of respect for women and girls to go unchecked.30 When men ask “What can I do?” they might consider giving women more space, politely make a subtle noise to alert a woman or girl that they are approaching from behind where there are few if any other people around, crossing the street to reduce potential unease, calling out or reporting sexual harassment when it is safe to do so and asking a woman or girl if she is OK if she has been subjected to unnecessary attention.
Perhaps more importantly once men have this knowledge they should in turn educate other men and boys since the burden of educating men inevitably falls on women many of whom feel driven to do so because of personal experiences of rape, assault or harassment.
For too long City making has been the domain of male politicians, architects, engineers and planners. When new policies are announced campaigners for safer cities for women and girls want to see evidence of where this money is being used and why and how they can be involved in any solutions. We must be careful to avoid the mistakes of the past and listen to the voices of women and girls to better understand the social, cultural, legal, spatial and temporal dimensions of the local environment and how night time spaces are experienced and understood by people using those spaces. This understanding allows us to create a range of entertainment and leisure attractions and to draw out the potential of these sites to improve the lived inclusivity of place. We need to provide women and girls with the resources for action some of which may require a level of experimentation or trial and error.
Perhaps the most important thing is to put women in positions of responsibility working with CPTED practitioners, urban designers, police, security personnel, architects, planners, sociologists and psychologists, local businesses and community organisations leading by example and reflecting the needs of their communities. Such coordinated efforts can make a difference in focusing on the ways to better understand everyone’s right to safety in the city from a feminist perspective.
At the same time, we need to consider to what extent previous efforts to create a safe and secure night time city have instead had the reverse effect of sacrificing enjoyment, diversity, unpredictability and “an edge” in favour of a sanitised, rigid and lack lustre perception of our city at night. As one CPTED proponent has said “You cannot have a completely safe city and a completely exciting city at the same time, they are completely contradictory. You need to have the exciting part of the city which is perhaps somewhat dangerous. So, it has to be balanced and in proportion.”31
Finding the right balance between vibrancy and stimulation and managing risk is an ongoing challenge for cities at night. The key is to ensure where possible that people do not opt out of participating in the night time offering or avoid certain areas while ensuring that a diversity of nightlife options continue to grow and flourish. Moreover, it is vital that cities continue to explore new and unconventional types of nightlife and leisure opportunities including different styles of venues and explore the creative use of public spaces which draw upon the diversity of the population including women and girls. As a philosopher once said “There is no chance of the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on one wing.”32
When the night is over we must always bear in mind that it is not up to women and girls to adapt to a society that was traditionally built for men who dominated public space. It’s up to a progressive, advanced society to recognise that the landscape changed some time ago and adjust itself accordingly. Creating safe public spaces whether by day or night requires a combination of planning, design, regulation, culture and creativity. There is a wealth of evidence that tells us that the safe cities agenda must move beyond the rhetoric for change and make a greater effort to genuinely engage with women and girls as co-designers in planning and designing our towns and cities. Empowering women and girls to play a greater role in shaping their environment while promoting inclusion and participation is a promising place to start.
REFERENCES
15. https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ – Retrieved July 2022
18. https://safetipin.com/about-our-company/ – Retrieved July 2022.
19. https://thewowfoundation.com/events/shameless-festival – Retrieved July 2022
20. Valdivia B. and Ortiz Escalante S. (2018) Reassembling the city through intersectional feminism: Subversive responses to the economic crisis in Barcelona, Routledge.
21. https://streets.mn/2020/05/22/how-can-cities-be-designed-for-women/ – Retrieved May 2021.
22.Swensen G. (2016). Public space and alcohol advertising: Exploratory study of the role of local government. The International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. 5. 117.
24. Peters D. (2013) Gender and Sustainable Urban Mobility, Thematic study prepared for Global Report on Human Settlements, UNHABITAT.
25. Barrett S. Gariban S. and Belcher E. (2019) Fair Access:Toward a Transport System for Everyone, Centre for London, December.
26. Turnbull P. (2013) Promoting the employment women in the transport sector – obstacles and policy options, Working Paper Number 298, International Labour Office, Geneva, December.
27. Ding H. Loukaitou-Sideris A. and Agrawal A. (2020). Sexual Harassment and Assault in Transit Environments: A Review of the English-language Literature. Journal of Planning Literature.
28. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/world/europe/sarah-everard-police-uk.html – Retrieved July 2022.
29. Greed C.H. (1995) Public toilet provision for women in Britain: An investigation of discrimination against urination, Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 18, Issues 5-6, September
30. Vera-Gray F. (2016) Men’s stranger intrusions: Rethinking Street Harassment, Pergamon.
31. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/24/designing-out-crime-scandinavia-copenhagen-cities-safe-exciting- Retrieved February 2021.
32. https://safetipin.com/about-our-company/ – Retrieved July 2022.
