Addressing safety in urban neighbourhoods. What does international evidence and experience suggest for Auckland’s Victoria Quarter? 

Summary

Background 

In 2023, Auckland Council developed a long-term investment programme for Victoria Quarter (an inner-urban neighbourhood west of the City Centre, bound by Fanshawe Street, Hobson Street, Union Street and Victoria Park). In response to residents’ concerns about safety in Victoria Quarter, a safety assessment was included in the investment programme.

Council subsequently proposed a four-phase safety assessment, with the first phase including “a literature review on best practice models for safety [that] will provide rationale for further investment into Victoria Quarter”.

The Report addresses this goal by summarising insights from academic and practitioner literature on safety in urban neighbourhoods.

It asks:

• How is urban neighbourhood safety best understood and addressed? (Section 2)
• What approaches exist for improving urban neighbourhood safety? (Section 3)
• What does current international knowledge, detailed in the Report, suggest about ways to improve safety in Victoria Quarter? (Section 4).

What is urban neighbourhood safety?

Addressing urban neighbourhood safety depends on an accurate understanding of its nature. Synthesising research and practitioner literature, the Report finds that urban neighbourhood safety is:

1. multi-dimensional: incorporating environmental and social (including psychological, community, and economic) dimensions that together shape residents' perceptions and experiences of neighbourhood safety.
2. actual (objective) and perceived (subjective): data collected by police and other agencies provide a robust picture of actual safety; however, perceived safety tends to be less understood, despite its influence over how people relate to one another and their neighbourhoods.
3. contextual: attending to the specificity of neighbourhoods’ physical and social dynamics is key to understanding and, in turn, improving urban neighbourhood safety.

What approaches exist for improving urban neighbourhood safety?

Approaches for improving urban neighbourhood safety tend to fall into two categories, focusing on either environmental improvement or community development.

While no single approach is appropriate by itself and without adaptation to local context, each offers suggestions for addressing safety in urban neighbourhoods.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Health Promotion Through Environmental Design (HPTED) are two of the most prominent approaches to improving urban neighbourhood safety through changes to the built environment. Asset-based Community Development (ABCD), Community Safety Assessment (CSA), and Trauma-focused Community Development (TFCD) are three common approaches for addressing urban neighbourhood safety through community engagement and change.

The Report details key features/principles of these approaches and highlights factors believed to enable or constrain their success.

Considerations for Victoria Quarter

Based on academic and practitioner literature, the Report suggests that investment to improve safety in Victoria Quarter should consider:

1. taking opportunities to proceed with improvements to the built environment, with appropriate input from community members.
2. working with community members to identify their particular safety concerns and prioritise their suggested responses.
3. understanding a range of community members’ perspectives on safety in Victoria Quarter.
4. using low-cost measures and existing data collection efforts to assess changes in perceived safety.

Auckland Council, October 2024