Sharing Nicely

Mark Surman is speaking to the City of Toronto about how openness can help create a better city — much in the same way that it helped create a better Internet. In his truly open ways, he has been blogging about it, and has posted his speaker notes and draft slides online for comment.

Most of the commentators so far have added examples — great examples, the kind of examples that make me want to move to their cities — how open grassroots movements are making cities more livable, more efficient, and more fair. I wracked my brains, and spoke to friends, about examples from Cape Town, and we drew a blank. That is, until we stopped thinking about public transport and accountability of politicians (travelgate anyone?), and started thinking of the single most pressing problem for most people in our city (Education is up there as well, but makes for less exciting dinner party conversation).

Crime is a problem in Cape Town. The statistics don’t differentiate between the poor neighbourhoods (where most crime takes place) and the rich ones, but it’s fair to say that living in Cape Town makes you aware of crime — all the time. Every house has an alarm system, that is connected to armed private security companies, which is supposed to come and help if the alarm goes off. But neither private security, nor the South African Policy Service have been able to really get crime under control.

Fed up with the rising problem, citizens in the suburb of Hout Bay pioneered a neighbourhood watch approach to crime prevention that has since been copied by other communities in the larger Cape Town region. To combat the rise in crime, residents volunteered to drive around in their private vehicles at night, and used CB radios to alert each other of suspicious activity. They were generally unarmed, and would call the police in for support. Over time as the first arrests were made, the perception of crime changed. The message was clear: the community would not tolerate crime. Within two months there was a significant decrease in crime. As trust between the police and the neighbourhood watch volunteers grew, the two started sharing resources — for example, using the same radio frequency between policy, private security companies, and neighbourhood watch members to monitor what was going on in their city.

While it has been a success story, it is a small step from taking things into one’s own hands to vigilantism. What exactly constitutes “suspicious” activity in a country still so deeply influenced by its apartheid past? And what if something that seemed suspicious, turned out to be harmless; are there ways for the victims of an overly zealous neighbourhood watch patrol to lay a formal complaint? For example, a few months ago police helicopters circled overhead the area I live, as part of a large drug sweep operation targeting a single house a few roads away. Curious about what was going on, I walked over and was surprised to find a civilian who was seemingly in charge. He informed me that his organisation had been staking out the house, and had called in the police to arrest the drug dealers. He had brought his son to watch. I walked away with a sense of unease. Who was this person? How reliable was his information? Who was making sure that he was not wasting tax money for police helicopters and staff (in the best case) or causing harm to innocent people?

The neighbourhood watch movement is an interesting example for how the power of open can change the way our cities work. By most measures it has been a great success, but also gives us a sense that in some areas — and security is a good example — open means working together and combining the best elements from grassroots engagement with the balance and regulation that a city administration can provide.