Urban Safety & Security

for Sustainability:
Machizukuri
as Community-based Approach
for Crime-free Society in Japan
Susy Aisyah Nataliwati & Rohmiati
Researchers
Center for Japanese Studies
UNIVERSITAS INDONESIA

LEARNING FROM JAPAN SYMPOSIUM

September 30th, 2010
Umbrella concept:
Urban Sustainability
Sustainable development: "Improving the
quality of human life while living within the
carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems"

(Caring for the Earth, IUCN/WWF/UNEP, 1991)

http://www.interenvironment.org/wd1intro/glossary.htm

The goal of sustainable development:

to enable all people throughout the world
to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life,
without compromising the quality of life of future generations.
Urban safety & security in
sustainability context
 Crime and fear of crime can seriously undermine
the broader aim of urban sustainability

 Crimes’ long term effects:

 socialexclusion
 Inequity in the securities of communities

Reference: P. Cozens (2007), Planning, Crime and Urban Sustainability,

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 102, © 2007 WIT Press
Crime & fear of crime
as indicator of sustainability
 Decision maker & analyst tend to focus on levels
of recorded crime
 Ignorance of crucial and important dimension:
 Citizens’ fear of crime
 Citizens’ perceptions of their local environment

 Du Plessis (1998): ‘no city can call itself

sustainable if the citizens of that city fear for their
personal safety and the safety of their livelihood’
Crime-free society
 Crime free society is a utopia, a goal only
viewed as a sky’s horizon.
 By the statement of ‘a crime free society’,
hopefully, we can define and reach an
understanding about how to build ‘urban life
infrastructure’ for crime-free society,
 We defined it as a system that can gives urban
environment as safety and secure as people can
live without fear of crime and can have richness
ways of maintaining their sustainability of life.
Synergies between
crime prevention & sustainability
Approach Scope Crime Prevention Sustainability
Responsibilities Shared responsibilities for crime Shared responsibilities for sustainability
Offenders to acknowledge responsibility Polluters to acknowledge responsibility
Soft approach Awareness Promoting quality of life issues Understanding quality of life issues
Enhancing understanding of the ecology Enhancing understanding of the ecology of
of crime and environmental the environment
criminology
Reducing effect of crime through Reducing effect of crime through
investment in evidence & investment in evidence & effectiveness
effectiveness
Reducing the impact of crime through Promoting sustainability by developing
Governance
developing products & systems product & systems which are more
and
which are more resistant to criminal environmentally and socially responsible
Hard approach Management
activity
The need for government strategies, The need for government strategies,
partnership, evidence-based action partnership, best practice &
& accountability environmental and social responsibility
Planning Use of the built environment Use of the built environment
and to reduce opportunities for crime to reduce waste and
Design and promote liveability promote liveability and
sustainability
Dewberry Table, Source: Cozens, P. (2007) “Planning, Crime and Urban Sustainability”, WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 102, WIT Press.
Broad approaches for
policy responses to urban crime
 Objective : enhancing urban safety & security
 6 approaches
 Effectiveurban planning, design & governance
 Community-based approaches
 Strengthening formal criminal justice systems &
policing
 Reduction of risk factors
 Non-violent resolution of conflicts
 Strengthening of social capital

Reference:
Urban Crime and Violence: Policy Responce
Example of strategies for the
development of urban sustainability
 Designing out crime – designing in people
 Crime Prevention Through Environmental
Design (CPTED)
LEARNING FROM JAPAN
 How Japan build:
 verticalstructure (top-down and bottom-up
governance)
 horizontal structure (networking governance
in formal and informal institution, including
with common people or city’s resident).
 Machizukuri as Collaborative
Participation
 Machi: City
 Zukuri: To build, to develop
Machizukuri:
 community building, town making, community
development
 community based activities for better environment
 bottom-up community planning activities on community
design toward the betterment of the environment
 Public Participation

 Participation must be collaborative and it should

incorporate not only citizens, but also organized
interests, profit-making and non-profit organizations,
planners and public administrators in a common
framework where all are interacting and influencing one
another and all are acting independently in the world as
well.
 a multi-dimensional model where communication,
learning and action are joined together and where the
polity, interests and citizenry co-evolve
Reference:
Judith E. Innes & David E. Booher: Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21 st Century
Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 5, No. 4, 419–436, December 2004
Machizukuri as collaborative participation

 Machizukuri promotes public participation in urban planning

where various participant in municipal government, civil
groups and other local organization are defining their role in
making a better environment
 It is widely believed that the recent spread of resident
participation in local environmental improvement efforts and
in planning process represents the most hopeful
development in Japanese planning.

Reference
Murayama, A. (2005) “Governance for Sustainable Urban Regeneration: Cases of Participatory Urban Planning and
Machizukuri in Fukaya City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan” IFHP, Spring Conference 2005
 Crime Reduction Project in
Asaminami, Hiroshima
as Machizukuri

 Background
- Crime rate in Japan reached its highest in 2002
since Second World War.
- Hiroshima set a new initiative for crime reduction by
creating a partnership between the police, Hiroshima
prefecture government and the resident of the city
through gated community that enables residents to
monitor their children going to school from home PCs through
a number of cameras across town and local government have
provided mobile emergency buzzers to primary school
children
 Crime Reduction Project in
Asaminami, Hiroshima
as Machizukuri

 The government also established Community

Safety Association in Asaminami in 2002 as one
of the most worst wards in Hiroshima in term of
crime rate.

 Community Safety Association members

consists of parents, retired person, principal of
senior and junior high schools, local residents,
university students, official of government and
specialist in crime prevention
 Crime Reduction Project in
Asaminami, Hiroshima
as Machizukuri
COMMUNITY SAFETY ASSOCIATION
Community Safety Association were divided into three groups that held meeting in every two weeks
 Enhance the awareness of crime prevention
This group held events campaigns and workshops for awareness and instruction in crime
prevention skills, conducted patrol with other members and built bulletin boards in banks, shop
and gas stations for information sharing
 Community Safety
This group examined dark spots in the neighborhood and the necessity of street lamp, wrote
manual and hosted sessions for examination of capability of houses to prevent crime, encourage
vacant taxies to stay in front of shops like watchers
 Youth guidance
This group covered various issues including the delivery of whistles to children, encouragement
of resident to use GIS maps, campaigns aimed at the prevention of shoplifting and forming child
volunteer groups for campaigns and clean up in the area

Reference:
1. Yoshinaka Nopbuhito: Crime Prevention in Japan: The Significant, Scope, and Limits of
Environmental Criminology: Hiroshima Hogaku Vol.30 No.2 (2006)
2. Kanayama, Taisuke & Eguchi Arichika: Japan’s Challenge on the Increase in Crime in the New
Century
 OUTCOME
 Crime was reduced by 37.7% (from 59,330 to
36,938) between 2003 and 2005
 Resident displayed an improved awareness of
ways to prevent crime
 the number of volunteers for neighborhood
patrols increased from 100 to 2.400 people
between March 2004 and March 2006
 It showed that collaborative participation through
gated community and Community Safety
Association is effective in reducing crime
THANK YOU