Sant Ravidasa Ji envisioned Begumpura as a utopian, casteless, and classless “city without sorrow” of absolute human equality and freedom. It also described a society free from coercive state taxation and obsessive private property. This Begumpura was seen as a space where citizens could move about freely and safely without facing social barriers or gatekeepers.
Recently a 17-year-old girl was gang-raped on her birthday at Astha Kunj Park in South Delhi by three men posing as police personnel. Aastha Kunj Park area is said to suffer from severe lighting failures, unaddressed civic complaints, and poor security infrastructure. Delhi Police had previously flagged this specific stretch as a vulnerable dark spot.
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) presents us with interesting examples that go beyond conventional CPTED into placemaking, urban regeneration and “social urbanism.” CPTED emerged from the idea that the physical environment can influence opportunities for crime and people’s willingness to occupy a space. Lighting, pedestrian movement and the design of public spaces are seen as crime-prevention variables. It also relies on using aesthetics as a way for people to claim ownership over public spaces.
Bogota in Columbia has implemented park-renovation programs with focus on improved lighting and renovation of deteriorated parks. The idea was that a more visible and beautiful space implies there is less chance of crime. Similarly Chicago’s Large Lot programme where residents could purchase vacant lot and improve them reduced crime rates. Medellin in Columbia presents an example of social urbanism where aesthetics are used for healing. This also included developing cultural centres and recreational spaces. The social CPTED model relies on bringing forth the message that ‘People belong here’, ‘This place is taken care of’, ‘People use this space’. Boston created ‘Block Quotes’ placing inspirational quotes from local authors to promote harmony within society. Something similar found expression in Edmonton’s Poetry Garden and many other cities as well.
The broken windows theory introduced in 1982 by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling states that visible signs of disorder and neglect in an environment encourage further disorder and serious crime. The name comes from the idea that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the other windows will soon be broken. All these examples leave us with a question as to how much are cities able to hold people?
A survey conducted by the India Today Group in 2023 revealed that 40% of women feel unsafe while traveling alone at night in their own cities. If every racing car causes a woman’s heartbeat to race and she starts getting hypervigilant about her surroundings, nervous systems are wrecked apart and before any crime even happens, the body already starts to suffer the consequences of heightened stress levels. Hypervigilance in women is frequently triggered by poorly planned urban environments such as poor lighting and darkness, isolated and dead zones, dead ends, etc. “The right to the city” remains a dream for most women. When India was a colony, Britishers built cities in a manner that segregated them into gated White areas and Black areas. Today when men and women are no longer physically segregated in public spaces, the mental gaps continue to exist.
This is not just about women’s safety. Many suicide incidents also take place in the heat of the moment. A random quote in regional language or English is not a utopian idea to prevent suicides and give people one more day to go on and then many more such days. We talk about rivers as living entities and cities as organisms. A living entity or an organism breathes and the very people that live there also must be able to breathe easily.
While a sorrow-free city might seem a distant possibility, a space where half the citizens can move about freely and safely is a near possibility and a necessity.
Let cities be no longer the breeding grounds of crime but breathing spaces to spend some quality time.
Love and light
Yasmin Gill
