Crime and fear in Hollygrove – building neighbourhood resilience

ABSTRACT

This chapter describes a case study in social capacity building from the New Orleans neighbourhood of Hollygrove following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Using an action research case study approach, we describe the journey of Hollygrove residents in rebuilding their neighbourhood, focusing on a ten-year period beginning with initial community initiatives in 2008 that led to SafeGrowth training workshop in 2009 and subsequent programming in the following years. The SafeGrowth programmes equipped the resident teams with problem-solving and leadership skills, after which they enacted a series of projects to cut crime and fear. Their newfound skills helped build their capacity to resolve crime problems and facilitate community development. They also discovered how to collaborate with municipal partners to sustain their success and overcome long-standing quality of life issues. We demonstrate how the action research praxis inherent within SafeGrowth offers power for problem-solving and community empowerment, thereby creating a more resilient neighbourhood.

KEYWORDS:

• SafeGrowth
• CPTED
• action research
• case study
• collective practice
• neighbourhood capacity building
• hurricane Katrina

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mateja Mihinjac

Mateja MIHINJAC is a criminologist specializing in CPTED and SafeGrowth. She currently works as a researcher and crime prevention consultant and serves as Executive Director at International CPTED Association. Mateja is also completing a Doctoral Degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University in which she focuses on implementation of CPTED. Her most recent publication is Third-Generation Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, which she co-authored with Gregory Saville.

Gregory Saville

Gregory SAVILLE is a criminologist and urban planner specializing in neighbourhood planning and CPTED. He is former Canadian police officer and taught on the criminology faculty at Florida State University. He was director of a criminological research center at the University of New Haven, where he co-founded, with Gerry Cleveland, the theory of Second Generation CPTED. He is co-founder of the International CPTED Association and currently runs an international consultancy – AlterNation LLC in Denver. He is widely published in crime prevention, policing, and urban planning and recently authored SafeGrowth: Building Neighborhoods of Safety and Livability.