Design and safety, new allies in urban planning?

In 1889, the architect Camillo Sitte declared "All the principles of the art of building cities can be summed up in the fact that a city must offer its inhabitants both security and happiness". (1). Today, in 2018, the quality of urban development is still helping to create a reassuring image of cities. The objects that make them up also contribute to creating the conditions for a serene social life within welcoming public spaces. 

 

Chile beautifying our cities is not enough, urban planning can play a proactive role in promoting safety for all. The prevention of malevolence in architecture and urban planning is today almost a taboo subject because prejudices make design and safety seem irreconcilable. Attention to everyone's well-being is present in street furniture objects with various functions, but their security role is often relegated to the background.

 

 

Safety devices, for their part, are therefore most often limited to their primary function, whereas they could integrate others that would enable them to participate positively in the sustainable construction of the city; and to become less anxious for citizens who perceive them as a reminder of danger.

Design is present in many areas of the urban environment. In fact, objects with different functions are designed by integrating social and technological needs for a better perception of urban space. Some of them even attract the admiration of tourists. In the same way, integrating a social use function into security objects would best inscribe them in the city landscape and contribute to the tranquillity of all by avoiding the production of a safe urbanism. All-in-one devices that provide prevention, protection and quality of life are the key to a reassuring city.

The concept of "Security By Design" is a way to redefine Oscar Newman's idea of defensible space that allows neighbourhoods to be controlled by their own residents. Security by design" takes into account human perceptions of spaces and public places and integrates them into the design of protection solutions. It makes it possible to combine new uses, new technologies and ecological and sustainable features to design products adapted to the city of tomorrow.

 

 

As the threat of attacks increases in our cities, the more urgent it becomes to modify security objects by intelligent design to make them forget their function as a barricade.

They could, in fact, participate in the mixed use of public spaces and, thanks to this, generate natural surveillance on the part of everyone, which would create participatory urban security.

 

And why, in the future, could security objects not also be admired and reinterpret the notion of defence by creating comfort for citizens?

 

Hélène Lorenzi Hardouin, Architect and Urban Planner, Co-manager Sanae Architecture