How not to make our streets safer

10:50am Friday 5th September 2008

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By Caramel Quin »

This morning I’m pondering how we make our public spaces safer. Why? Because I wandered out to the farmer’s market, with my baby daughter, to discover the whole of Walthamstow town square and gardens cordoned off by police lines. Not sure what happened yet, but a large area is taped off and there are officers in those pale blue suits forensics people wear – it’s clear that A Very Bad Thing has happened.

The issue of making the town square safer is topical, even without this sight puncturing a mellow Sunday morning, for two reasons. Firstly, proponents of the Olympics-funded Giant Telly insisted that its presence would bring life to the town square, making the area naturally safer for everyone. And secondly, the council and police are proposing an alcohol exclusion zone covering the town square, gardens, bus station and a few nearby streets.

Now I’m anti the Giant Telly in the form in which it has been forced on us. I think like all tellies, it should only be switched on when there’s something worth watching. It should have either been a temporary feature for the Olympics, or at least not be left on 16 hours every day for years, presumably to be filled with BBC news headlines and council propaganda much of the time. But despite being against it, I took no satisfaction from seeing that it was slap bang in the middle of a crime scene this morning. Today’s the Beijing to London Olympic handover ceremony, which is exactly the sort of thing that the screen should be good for. And while I think the screen should be switched off much of the time, I think the council should put more effort into supporting the broadcast of big cultural events like this. This morning I should have been greeted by rows of seats, catering vans selling Chinese and English nosh, street decorations, performers on the stage alongside the screen. An event was planned apparently – but did you know about it? I heard about it online from a friend but I didn’t see any posters or adverts.

The council’s clearly delighted by the “legacy” of blagging a free giant telly, but unsurprisingly it already isn’t spending enough money supporting and publicising events. This “build it and they will come” approach isn’t working – every day or night so far there have been just a handful of people watching the screen, and I suspect that they were sitting on the steps waiting for a mate anyway. Which means that the screen does not bring life to the town square… and doesn’t make it any safer.

Meanwhile the alcohol exclusion zone will just move the drunks a couple of blocks away, to some shady corner or unsuspecting park bench. And it means that, technically, anyone who wants to picnic on the town square and watch a movie won’t be allowed to crack open a bottle of wine. Unless the police don’t intend to enforce the ban on nice middle-class drinkers, just undesirable characters.

Anyway, enough of these already doomed plans to make the town square safer. What should we be doing instead? Please leave your comments on how we can make this and our other public spaces safer… I certainly plan to give the question a lot of thought over the next few days.