Manasi Chopdekar (935401)
The year 2018 saw Vienna in Austria having successfully lowered its crime rate, thereby displacing Melbourne by obtaining first rank in the list of top ten livable cities in the world, a rank which Melbourne city had held for eight consecutive years till 2017 (ABC news, 2018). For a city to be sustainable and livable, issues of crime and fear for public safety, especially at night, need to be addressed (Cozens, 2007, pg. 189) and the top ten livable cities list signifies the importance of public safety in terms of livability as a global issue. This stresses on the need to analyze the different types of crime that take place, when they take place and their location, and the factors that influence crime level in cities in further detail in order to understand the root causes influencing the issue. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, location and population size play an important role in influencing crime level in cities (Carcach, 2000, pg. 1). Melbourne’s growing population over the next 30 years (Henriques-Gomes, 2018) calls for more in-depth research into understanding the different ways in which its urban planning and design for the city’s changing population can impact criminal activity rates and peoples’ perception of safety. This report focuses on this issue in the context of Melbourne city municipality.
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Melbourne
Fig. 1. Criminal incident rate across Victoria. From Crime by Location - Data Visualization. Retrieved from https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/explore-crime-by-location. Copyright 2019 by Crime Statistics Agency.
Governed by Melbourne City Council, the city of Melbourne comprises its CBD and 14 innermost suburbs, including Melbourne, Carlton, Parkville and Docklands (City of Melbourne, 2018, pg. 2). Its current population, expected to double by 2050 (Henriques-Gomes, 2018), consists of a high number of student and working age group residents and employees (City of Melbourne, 2018, pg. 3). Its current community goal envisions Melbourne city municipality as a “city for people” with one of its health and wellbeing priorities being “preventing crime, violence and injury” (City of Melbourne, 2018, pg. 4). Researching from a constructivist approach, inner and outer suburban areas in Victoria were expected to have a higher criminal activity rate considering their population demographic in terms of count and density, proximity to public transport and dependence on city center for work. Suburban areas are also more isolated from the city center, and tend to have less active public spaces and little public surveillance. However, as it can be seen from figure 1, it was found that Melbourne city has a relatively higher criminal incident rate when compared to not just Greater Melbourne’s innermost and outer suburbs but also when compared to almost all other cities in the state of Victoria.
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Fig. 2. Crowded Flinders street station provide opportunity for elusive criminal activity. From ABC news. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-13/melbourne-most-overcrowdedtrain-stations-ranked-ptua/8895778. Copyright 2019 by ABC news: Danielle Bonica.
A high portion of its crimes occur in the CBD on streets, lanes and footpaths (Crime Statistics Agency, 2019), and there have been reports of many women feeling unsafe at night on busy station platforms and streets, like Flinders station as shown in figure 2, and La Trobe street (Tran, 2017). This brings into consideration that just having activity in a place at night, apart from lighting and CCTV cameras, may not be enough. More understanding and research into this issue is required to understand what aspects of the built environment can be improved to make people feel significantly safer when in the city in order to ease the sense of unease and fear, and level of criminal activity in such public spaces.
This research takes a normative approach to investigating ways to improve safety measures at night in terms of urban planning and design in order to work towards the council vision and make Melbourne city municipality and its CBD a safer, livable place.
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References
ABC news. (2018, Aug 14). Melbourne loses most liveable city title to Vienna in Economist Intelligence Unit rankings. ABC news. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-0814/melbourne-loses-most-liveable-city-title-to-vienna/10117338 Carcach, Carlos. (2000). Size, Accessibility and Crime in Regional Australia. Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, 175, Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Retrieved from http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi175 City of Melbourne. (2018-2019). City of Melbourne Annual Report 2018-2019. Retrieved from https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/about-council/ourperformance/Pages/annual-report.aspx Cozens, P. (2007). Planning, crime and urban sustainability. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 102, 187-196. doi:10.2495/SDP070181 Crime Statistics Agency. (2019). Criminal Incidents – Melbourne: Top 5 location types [Tabular data]. Retrieved from https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/explore-crime-by-location Henriques-Gomes, L. (2018, Nov 22). Australia's population forecast to hit 30 million by 2029. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/22/australiaspopulation-forecast-to-hit-30-million-by-2029
Tran, D. (2017, Aug 10). Melbourne's train stations rated for safety as women reveal public transport fears. ABC news. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-10/flinders-street-station-topslist-of-stations-women-feel-unsafe/8792626
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