While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities":
> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”
I love it. Simple, elegant.
Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!
Jane Jacobs' work is famous, but yet still under-appreciated, and her ideas IMO under-implemented.
For the most part we're still stuck with half-assed bastardized versions of Le Corbusier's shitty ideas about the Radiant City, even though we've already seen terrible results from it across the board.
One thing that disappoints me is that American cities are experiencing a huge resurgence in urbanism, but yet most of this comes in the form of isolated towers attached to parking garages, not any structures that would encourage street life or "eyes on the street" to any substantial degree. Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
> Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
Are there cities in particular that you're thinking of? This is decidedly not the case where I live (in fact, the most common complaint I've heard is that it's getting too crowded, especially downtown). On a more theoretical level (given that I don't have _recent_ experience living anywhere else), I don't even see how the influx of residents implied by these new apts wouldn't increase street activity to at least some significant degree.
Take a look at Streeterville/Lakeshore East in Chicago (lakefront downtown) and Tobacco Row in Richmond (riverfront warehouse district). High rises and lofts, with amenities in skylobbies or at the bottom, and ample parking in garages. Despite beautiful parks adjacent, the sidewalks around these areas are always empty, and there is very little street-facing retail.
The converted lofts in Fulton River District (warehouse district in chicago, same price point) seem to be increasing foot traffic though, despite it being an area where you need a car to get anywhere. Parking in this neighborhood is on the street. Still very undeveloped commercially though, aside from "restaurant row"
A big chunk of Jacobs' work is concerned with why parks are a necessary but insufficient condition for vibrant cities, especially in the book mentioned in the GP (Death and Life of Great American Cities). IMHO it's eye-opening and pleasantly brief (particularly by the ponderous standards of city-planning literature).
Some examples off the top of my head - and apologies if you or anyone reading this actually live in these places, but I won't mince words ;)
Seattle: downtown is absolutely deserted during non working hours because of a foolish desire to separate residential and commercial areas. Businesses in these zones suffer since they can either only cater to office/daytime traffic or residential/nighttime traffic and never both. Downtown is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as dangerous during off-hours because it is completely deserted.
Even in residential areas this doesn't get much better. Belltown, a highly urban neighborhood full of highrises, has practically empty streets. You can walk down a main thoroughfare in that neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday and see maybe 4-5 people as far as the eyes can see. The design of these buildings are largely monolithic with attached parking, creating a relative dearth of retail and commercial use. There is still no grocery store in the neighborhood since literally none of the many highrises were designed with large enough retail spaces to house one - which might explain the lack of street life - you must use a car to access even basic supplies (or rely on modern workarounds like delivery grocery). There are no hardware stores, no grocery stores, a single run-down pharmacy... it's as if someone heard the word "retail" and thought "bars and restaurants" only.
As compared to another Seattle neighborhood, Fremont, which is also urban, but features high foot traffic, the presence of both housing and offices in the neighborhood, a plethora of businesses supporting everyday needs, and a highly active street life. Or Capitol Hill (arguably a neighborhood in decline) where the neighborhood is anchored by the community college, major grocery stores, and nearby hospital staff, creating high foot traffic (street "watchers") at all hours.
Vancouver (Canada) suffers from the same problems. Yaletown, an upmarket urban neighborhood full of highrises, is nearly deserted except a single street that leads to the transit station. Much of this is because said highrises have zero retail or mixed-use accomodations, creating huge dead zones where the only people traversing it are the ones heading directly toward, or directly away from, home. It's not quite as bad as Belltown in Seattle, but it's not great.
In fact other neighborhoods in Vancouver's urban downtown core suffer even more egregiously. Many of the older (read: 90s) buildings were constructed before any substantial transit coverage as added to downtown, and their residents were car-reliant to the point where the streets surrounding mid- and high-rises don't even have sidewalks (see: the West End), and some of these buildings lack even basic street-facing entrances (street frontage reserved for garage facilities, naturally), forcing pedestrian visitors to come through the side like second-class citizens. Even though transit coverage in these areas is now excellent, the lack of street traffic remains because of the fundamental architecture of the streets and buildings.
I've also lived in Toronto and some of its neighborhoods suffer from this too. Practically the entire waterfront area is a veritable wasteland of highrise condo buildings. Clean-cut glass skyscrapers loom over almost-deserted streets because of insufficient (and sometimes a complete lack of) retail and commercial spaces. Take a car from the garage to access almost everything you need for everyday survival. Their only saving grace (and source of street activity) are the commuters waiting for streetcars or buses.
Anyways, rant aside, here are some commonalities I see between these places:
- A rejection of mixed-use developments. The primary driver of emptiness here is because there is nowhere to go - no grocery stores, no coffee shops, no nothing. Where mixed-use is embraced, everyone wants to host trendy businesses like bars and restaurants (which help improve property value for the building) but not the everyday businesses (pharmacies, grocery stores, barbers) that drive the most street traffic and serve as traffic anchors.
- A large-lot monolithic style of development. These buildings feature large set-backs from the sidewalk, with hedges, fences, or low walls facing the sidewalk. The implicit message here is "keep walking, bud", instead of "come on in and visit [X]". More importantly, because these buildings tend to be whole-block developments, when a single building fails to embrace commercial use or is otherwise poorly designed, it creates a massive dead zone on the street that seems to go on forever. IMO large-lot "complexes" are the worst thing to happen to American urbanism, ever.
- A disproportionate amount of space dedicated to parking. Many of these buildings lack commercial and retail space because it's occupied by parking structures. Many of these buildings lack even proper residential street frontage because that space is for a garage gate.
> streets surrounding mid- and high-rises don't even have sidewalks (see: the West End)
> some of these buildings lack even basic street-facing entrances (street frontage reserved for garage facilities, naturally)
Uh... I live in West End now, and what I see is the opposite. Proper sidewalks everywhere, few above-ground residential parking lots. I mean, we're talking about streets, right? Not back alleys.
Portland's mixed-use zoning regulations have been a great solution to the dead spots you note around garages.
Off the top of my head, they require wider sidewalks and some kind of storefront on the first floor, both of which make the streets more welcoming. Apartment buildings are even subject to this, I believe, as well as offices and garages.
I would certainly not mind if many of Portland's zoning laws made their way to other cities, but I fear the (relatively) heavy-handed regulations would be denounced as un-American.
I'm an Architect and I've worked on projects in Britain, France, Italy, Korea and the US (NYC). America has the most prescriptive and least flexible zoning and building regulations I have seen.
That may be true, but generally speaking, if you look around US cities you'll see far fewer mixed use zones that blend commercial & residential. Besides major metros (cities with actual skyscrapers) and small towns, in my experience it is not common for cities to allow (or perhaps they do allow it, but it isn't encouraged or developers don't believe it makes sense) mixing of residential units in commercial blocks. I'm reasonably well traveled in the US and never noticed this until I went to New Orleans for spring break one year. That was the first city where I saw mixed use like this, and it actually confused me when I was looking for businesses and they ended up being interspersed between houses.
Generally speaking the US does not mix single-family residences (1-4 units) with commercial. However with multi-family residences (> 4 units) mixed use is the norm.
The driving force is the fact that most single family homes are owner occupied, while multi-family housing is not (that is to say, while condos and coops may be owned, the building itself is not)
Whoops, you're right. I should have said 'Based on my experience of working in NYC, America has the most restrictive regs...' US States have about the same power over regulations as individual European countries have in the EU.
I think Houston is a bit of evidence of what can happen when you leave the zoning to its residents... I would not take Houston to be the prototypical Unamerican city, yet, there is it with no zoning laws but it begets a suburb called a city.
My vision would be something akin to mixed use zoning as in Seoul or Tokyo, but I guess the abuse american cities experienced from defacto mixed zoning in the 19th century hasn't dissipated, but one can hope it will but adopt reasonable mixed zoning.
If it were truly no zoning in practice, I think Houston might actually be densifying faster than it currently is. But large parts of it are saddled with rules (both private- and public-sector) explicitly requiring low-density housing. A lot of the city was developed in big chunks as master-planned neighborhoods laid out by a single developer. In addition to setting up the initial lots as low-density housing, most of these developers added deed restrictions that prohibit higher-density redevelopment. In effect the deed restrictions end up creating a kind of perpetual "zoned single-family-home" status for much of the city. The city has added its own bit to that, with requirements in some areas that tend to also favor or require low-density development: minimum-setback rules, minimum parking requirements, etc.
The minimum parking requirements in Houston are absolutely insane. It's 7-10 spaces per 1000 sq ft of business. A small 2000 sq ft restaurant would need about 20 parking spaces directly next to the business. It's just unbelievably wasteful and makes developing a walk-able city next to impossible.
The simple problem in Houston is the generally white, left-wing NIMBY crowd. Case in point-- a mid-rise multi use commercial/residential building was going up near Kirby Drive and the upper-middle class residents of the area fought it tooth and nail because it would lead to more "congestion" in the area. I say "left-wing" because it's a fact. This particular neighborhood votes overwhelmingly democrat. Yet out in the more 'conservative' suburbs such as the Woodlands, mixed use higher density housing is being welcomed and encouraged by residents. It's a classic limousine liberal situation -- they want all of these 'great' things until it interferes with their view or they ability to not have to wait an extra five minutes at the Starbucks. Extreme left wing mayor Anise Parker, for example, draws much of her support from these groups, yet refuses to address the infrastructure issues that would make these developments more feasible -- she spends political capital on bike trails in parks, but refuses to maintain roads that would make these higher density developments more palatable to existing residents. For example, one of the main arteries in Houston is Westheimer Road -- I've driven in smoother roads in Beirut than this one. The problem with high density development isn't the developers, it's the NIMBYs who were their first and object to their zone of exclusivity being encroached upon by typically younger, more urbanized new arrivals. This is ironic because generally the left wing in cities promote this kind of thing, but Houston's political makeup is actually rather unique. So if you are a 'left-winger' not from Houston, I don't mean an insult. Houston's left is a special breed.
Another reason for the development of Houston's suburban 'cities' such as the Woodlands is because the climate in the city proper is comparatively more anti-business. Tasks like getting permits approved is a Kafka-esque process, not to mention the endless regulations that make running a restaurant, shop or other small business in the city limits so painful. Interestingly, in the Woodlands for instance, that 'city' center resembles something one might see in Portland -- walkable, bike friendly roads, high density residential and retail, mixed with greenspace and office buildings. More telling is that the woodlands is privately developed. Exxon is actually building their new headquarters in that area and housing prices have already started to skyrocket.. There's a demand for an 'urban' experience. Unfortunately, the political power in Houston itself misses the forest for the trees.
My own experience hasn't seen much correlation between politics and NIMBYism in Houston. I don't know much about the Woodlands, but I've spend a good number of years in Clear Lake, which is conservative and opposed to development of anything other than suburban-style, single-family homes (it was also privately developed, by a subsidiary of Exxon, who set up the anti-redevelopment deed restrictions). That's done mostly through the weird quasi-municipal-politics of the homeowners' associations though rather than "regular" politics. The homeowners' associations seem to be almost all controlled by people who really want to maintain a kind of wealthy-suburban-enclave feel, and are scared that allowing apartment complexes to be built, or relaxing anti-rental regulations, might result in "the wrong kind of people" moving in to their neighborhood.
I agree the west-side are pretty anti-development, but again that seems to go across the whole political spectrum, from liberals in Montrose to conservatives in River Oaks. Even John Culberson (R, 7th district) has gotten himself involved in west-side NIMBY causes.
Yeah, here in Singapore I've witnessed several instances of really "Wait, why would you do that?!" urban redesign by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs, but it seems otherwise. (Stripping of street life because of regulations about painting old shophouses, etc)
I think part of it comes down to the fact that a lot of these places were never urban - they may have had big buildings but the people never experienced street life in the way older American cities - and most European cities - have experienced it (see: Boston, NYC). As a result urban planning is too much an exercise in theory and too little based on pragmatic experience.
Another component is that Radiant City-esque designs look better on paper. You have tall, majestic buildings where architects can go wild without the constraint of adjacent buildings, and ample parkland appeals to our intuitive sense of what must be pleasant, but isn't in reality. In areas where urban decay has been especially problematic, these designs afford residents a sense of safety - they are safely ensconced in towers of glass and steel and may enter and exit with their cars. In many American cities avoidance of the street is sadly still a feature, not a bug.
From what I've read, that is the case for Brasilia. Looks great on paper. They got to start from scratch in the middle of the jungle, kind of like Washington DC when L'enfant had similar blank slate. In any event, while Brasilia looked good and grandiose on paper, it was nowhere near human scale.
It actually works surprisingly well in the residential "superblocks" because the apartment buildings are all raised on pillars so you can walk in a straight line between any two arbitrary points within a superblock, there are plenty of trees and parks, and the local commercial zones are easily accessibly by foot. But then when you get to the center with the bus station and government buildings it's a mass of huge roads and wide open spaces choked with exhaust fumes that's very unpleasant to walk around.
> I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs
That's honestly something of a silly assumption. You'll find that a lot of entirely qualified and legitimate experts in a given field will not have read well-known books in their field: their expertise is very often the consequence of sheer experience. It's the rest of us, who can't rely on experience for know-how, who turn first to books or are recommended books.
In the case of urban planning, it is a damn shame, because Jacobs' work constructively criticizes a lot of received wisdom that such experts are simply passing down without much modification. But generally speaking, it's not really a huge problem.
> yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
This probably has a lot to do with transit. Unless you are making a very short hop, the primary reason to be on the sidewalk is that you are walking to or from a train.
While this didn't involve a currency, it reminds me of the concept of supplementary currencies, where a token is used to exchange an abundant resource for a scarce one, with better overall allocation. I supppse in this case, the resources were parking spaces and security. Luckily there was a coincidence of wants, and so no token was needed.
Slum sanitation and bus tokens in Curitiba are the classic example of the sort of supplementary currency I mentioned, for anyone interested:
I live in Kyoto and was surprised to learn that there were even 18 convenience store robberies in the year before the program started. It's really safe here so I wonder what percentage of those armed robberies included assault on the clerk.
Anyway, this is a good idea. And the Kyoto taxi drivers are amazing too. They aren't your standard "just arrive in the country and don't know where anything is" taxi drivers that are found in many cities. These guys usually own their own taxi and take great pride in knowing where and how to get to anywhere in Kyoto quickly and safely. If you are in Kyoto and take a taxi, you'll never have to worry about being taken the long way so they can get extra money. So good on them for working with the police in this situation.
Note: HN will elide links that are excessively long, so next time you can just paste the Google Maps links directly. Plus a lot of people don't like clicking on blind links.
I really like alternative solutions like this to bad behaviour. My favourite instance of this is story of hooded teenagers outside stores intimidating passers by and general unwanted loitering in car parks etc. The solution was to loudly play music that the miscreants would really hate, like Engelbert Humperdinck, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton etc. They moved on pretty quickly because they couldnt stand listening to it.
The annoying version of that is in Roma St train station in Brisbane, Australia, they play a super high-pitched noise -- the theory is only young people can hear it, and after a while it starts to really annoy. The issue with it, is if you have good hearing and aren't a young "hoodlum" it'll drive you crazy if you're hanging around having a smoke, or meeting friends. I'm unsure if it's still there, it was a couple years ago now.
Are you sure that's not a bird repellant? Several bars (eg. Pig and Whistle on Eagle St.) around the city have these, very effective at driving away attractive young people with good hearing; birds not so much.
Definitely the case at a Harris teeter in Arlington Virginia, it was on the edge of my hearing so I could identify it... Saw a lot of bewildered parents with upset babies.
I've got no sympathy for the bikie gangs, they made their beds and they should lie in them.
But, we Queenslanders should not forgot our history of police power overreach and corruption. Governments give up powers so rarely, they only expand them. I worry about these laws a lot...
I can't find it again but I've read an article listing these things. One other (obvious) instance is the shelve full of tiny cheap products (gum, batteries, ...) put just before the checkout, also to distract people waiting in line.
Oh! I've always thought about those things as "impulse buys", but I never quite realized that they were also functional distractions! I look at magazines when I'm waiting in line at my local supermarket. Sneaky sneaky.
This has also happened at train stations in Melbourne. The music of choice is usually classical. Anecdotally I haven't noticed any specific change in behaviour around the music, but it did and still continues to sound like a good idea to me.
What exactly would you like them to do? Detain the miscreants? Speak to their parents? Arrest them? Call the police? Confront them? Hire armed guards? Put up a fence? No-loitering signs?
You know, it's not their job to fix problems. They pay taxes for that, and it should be fixed and addressed by the local municipality, and until that happens, I think it's brilliant that free individuals find peaceful methods at resolving their own problems.
If that happens to move the problem elsewhere, then that's also fine. Either that elsewhere is a concentrated spot where it can be targeted more easily, or another convenience store that can do the same (or expect the police/municipality to fix).
Generally, there is something for them to do. It's just not the same something that they want to do. And, well, there's not always a good solution within those constraints.
In Newcastle (UK) they went through a period of playing classical music in the Metro stations for the same reason. They stopped doing it after about 6 months; I assume inconclusive results (which is a shame, given that it had the added benefit of being very pleasant).
Lots of benches downtown (at least in PDX) have a bar in the middle to discourage bums from comfortably sleeping on them. The bar doesn't affect citizens other than being forced to share the bench.
I can't even imagine living in a state where a city with 1.4 million people having 4 robberies in participating stores.
That's crazy.
Of course I live in Michigan.
I've been thinking about crime a bunch after listening to the Serial podcast and thinking about The Wire. Crime is expensive. Trial, police, incarceration are all resource intensive. It would be amazing to have those resources available for city residents to do something else, like have a cleaner town, better schools, safer roads.
In the US there are, sadly, big financial interests in keeping the prison population high (the prison industry complex). Couple with what seems to be a very high reluctance towards giving someone who is mentally ill treatment instead of prison, and no real public mental health care, and you get what you get.
I don't think it's just that; I think that in America, there's this huge belief system that focuses on individuals, self-reliance, etc - and the flip side of that is a the belief that if you commit a crime, well, you've made your bed, and that bed is in a prison cell, and you'll be sleeping there for a really long time.
When I worked in fast food in high school, we had a standing policy that all police officers got the 50% off employee discount. Generally, having a couple cruisers in the parking lot deterred trouble.
I don't think this is legal or considered acceptable today, at least in most US states. A police discount for the purpose of affecting favorable treatment (even if that treatment is merely for continued presence) is kind of like a bribe. Many police departments just don't allow these kinds of discounts as a matter of policy.
Surprised you're getting downvoted. I've seen a couple statements by police departments in the US (unfortunately I can't find them right now) that stated they will accept no discounts or freebies for the exact reasons you stated.
Apparently it's either legal or at least accepted in Whataburger country (Texas). Stores there offer free meals to anyone in uniform--police, firefighter, EMS, security guard, military, nurse, etc--eating in the restaurant.
If everyone got a 50% discount, there would obviously be no problem. If the criteria was unrelated to any ulterior motives (you just have to be uniform), then that seems fine. It is only when providing a discount to a government employee with the expectation of a special benefit that would not be conveyed otherwise...
Really? In my city, places can literally hire off-duty cops to stand guard around construction sites or direct traffic. And they show up in uniform and with all the legal powers of a police officer.
I worked at two McDonalds, both in the Seattle area, 20+ years ago. The first one was in Mill Creek (a rich area south of Everett), the cops weren't allowed to take discounts. The second place was in downtown (3rd and Pine); we literally couldn't stay open without hiring an off duty officer. Hiring went through the SPD and was tightly regulated.
Offering a cop discounted food to hang out at your restaurant means, while taxpayers are flipping the bill, somewhere else isn't being covered as well. Hiring an off duty cop for part time security work, in contrast, doesn't reduce coverage.
Yeh always wondered about that. There are a few 24 hour gas stations in Dublin, Ireland that give discounts to on duty officers so it attracts them to be there through their night shift to reduce robberies. But as you said, if they're there, they're not somewhere else. Clever for the gas station, but not so much for everyone else methinks
It was better and worse, we had two floors back then, I worked at night (going to UW during the day), so most of the customers were homeless...no drugs that I could tell, but lots of booze.
Some great people to work with, though (mostly from the Philippines). Also, it was never boring.
Some departments explicitly don't allow discounts, but a lot of others will allow discounts only if they're offered at the time of service. They can't ask for the discounts, but if they're offered they can accept.
In most states in Australia McDonalds stores give a 50% discount to police. It's at the discretion of each store though it seems to be the standard, at least from every situation I've seen.
I worked fast food a couple of decades ago, and there would always be some new manager trying to give a cop a discount, and the cop having to explain why they couldn't take it. It really depends on the area, I guess.
I don't mind the discounts for actual police or sheriffs too much. They conceivably provide some service for the typical business, by discouraging property crime. What drives me up the wall are the freebies the local convenience stores etc. give the highway patrol. Even if one believes that they make the roads safer (I don't), that isn't actually a service of value to a business, so it just amounts to an exercise in badge worship.
The advantage to the store is that there are law enforcement officers with badges and guns coming into the store at random times, making them much riskier to rob.
There's two different 7-11s near me, both on a main street, maybe half a mile apart. One has cops in it all the time, for the simple reason they freely allow cops to use their restroom. The other doesn't, and there are never cops there. This being a major city, the one without cops also has panhandlers outside on a nearly constant basis. The one with cops doesn't have any, ever.
Interestingly, the one without cops has taxis and limos in the lot late into the night. They never go in the store, they just hang out in the parking lot.
Hehehe, yeah I've lived in cities so I know what you're talking about. This is a very rural area so panhandling isn't really a thing. Also I've only seen the highway patrolmen taking advantage of this perk around mid-morning, after they've spent a couple of hours preying on people trying to get to work. It's not as if they patrol at night.
I'm not sure why highway patrol would be any different from local police and sheriffs. In CA, where I live, some people mistakenly think the highway patrol only has jurisdiction over the highways, but in fact they're state troopers with jurisdiction everywhere in the state. If police an sheriffs are good for business, then CHP will be good for business too.
Haha, in my state the highway patrol is mostly a revenue stream, and if we're lucky they generate enough revenue to support themselves. They only patrol straight roads with broad shoulders, which safely support speeds in excess of the posted limits, and those mostly when people are in a hurry to reach work or church. They get annoyed when there's a wreck on "minor" roads (i.e. narrow, crooked, average speed 68mph) that they have to investigate.
Oh, they're also dropping handcuffed drunk guys into the lake to drown, and doing a great job in Ferguson. If one actually pays attention, their activities are vastly different from those of police and sheriffs.
EDIT: How is the mob parallel applicable in this scenario? The stores voluntarily give them a discount hoping for more frequent police presence there (on breaks, etc). Nobody's threatening the stores to give them a discount, "or else". Did you think this was a bribe to ensure speedier "service" by the Police if the need arose? I don't get it.
> Did you think this was a bribe to ensure speedier "service" by the Police if the need arose?
Not to enter the argument about whether it's a protection racket (i.e. whether it shares many characteristics with the racket of the 1920s), but I think the problem is apparent. Absent incentives, the police would be present evenly according to their estimate of which places they should be at. If incentives did not increase a policeman's desire to be at a store, then providing the incentive would be pointless (and indeed the GGGP comment implies that the purpose of the incentive is to get a couple of cruisers in the parking lot in order to deter crime).
The only reasonable conclusion is that these incentives are provided in order to skew the locations at which police would be present. So the issue isn't speedier service. It looks like he's implying that they'd get more frequent visits as a consequence of providing preferential treatment.
Notably, using a similar tactic, the 'Gävle goat' survived this Christmas from arsonists because the town set up a taxi rank around the wooden structure:
That's the tactic employed, yes, but that doesn't mean that's why it survived. I'm certain a dedicated goat burner would gladly lob a Molotov cocktail and leg it away from the scene.
We'll have to wait and see what happens next year; a sample size of 1 is not useful. :)
The increase in robberies at non-participating stores is a bit concerning. This might deter in a similar manner to The Club, which did a good job of preventing your car from being stolen but didn't drop the overall crime rate.
And possibly worse, I wonder if robberies of other places than convenience stores increased. The interesting number is whether overall crime decreased or not.
The data set is far too small to draw serious conclusions from yet.... especially the 'increase' in stores that weren't participating (although a 50% drop 'feels' like it should be significant...).
Still, hopefully the effect is real and less people suffer as result. :)
When the sample size is that small, it's possible that there were just one or two dudes doing most of the robberies. If they decided to move, call it quits, or went to jail, that could be an alternative explanation to the drop. I think you'd have to implement the experiment over a region to make it accurate if N is so low.
Another common crime-prevention device in Japan is orange dye balls. Convenience store clerks have some handy to throw at robbers. This marks them for later pickup by cops.
Hmm, in Germany a lot of products in most stores is tagged with a special capsule, if the product is stolen, as soon as it leaves the store, the capsule explodes and releases a 100ml of extremely bright red ink, which stains and can’t be gotten off anymore (literally, it will stay on your skin for a month or so). Also this marks the article as stolen, so no one will buy the red-stained product from anyone.
The ink capsules are common globally (they're called "security ink tags"), but they don't explode. Think about how technologically difficult that would be to implement. The plastic tags are just made to be difficult to remove unless you have the in-store equipment, such that attempted removal would most likely break the ink capsule inside which stains (and thereby ruins) the piece of clothing.
What happens if the cashier forgets to disable the capsule?
With alarm tags, sometimes the cashier forgets to disable the tag. It's no big deal - the alarm beeps at the door, you go back to the cashier and the tag is disabled. With an exploding ink capsule, you'd have ink everywhere instead of just a harmless beep. On your clothes, on other products you bought, on the store floor...
Well, exactly what you would think happens. A perfectly good product gets ruined. Cashiers are trained to pay attention, and I imagine if they forget then they have to pay for the destroyed item.
But no one cares about stolen soda. The store can just write it off, it doesn’t matter.
In general, everything that isn’t expensive clothing or technology isn’t even tagged at all, you can just walk out the store with it.
Or if you go into the store, buy something, go out, remember you forgot something, go in again, and buy something else (while still carrying the already bought around), most of the time no one will bat an eye.
stealing would be easy, but at least in upper-middle-class districts it’s kinda rare.
Given Japan's murder rate - roughly 400 to 500 per year in a nation of 127 million - I have to wonder what would happen if you just refused to comply with a robber. What are the odds they'd proceed to attack, much less try to kill you. I suppose the clerk might risk a beating.
It should be "Kyoto taxi drivers reduce robberies of grocery stores, not themselves by 50 percent by sitting and doing nothing in their cars on a vacant parking lots in front of grocery stores.
18 + 7 incidents (participating and nonparticipating, respectively) before the program - for an entire small region of the country. I wonder if the price of implementing the program compares to what should be a minuscule insurance policy.
Viewing the size of the dataset this really does not mean anything. It's like training a statistical model on 10 data points and proudly saying that you have 95% accuracy at predicting something when actually you don't.
I think that moottothemax is implying more that the crime is going elsewhere, perhaps there has been an increase in homes being burgled for example. The article doesn't cover that, the desperate/criminal are still desperate/criminals. Maybe there was an increase in cars getting broken into?
I didn't think Japan was an anti-crime mecca but it is surprising to read about high robbery rates there.
Well I guess a dozen robberies among a million people is a fraction of anywhere in the USA.
I am more curious WHY people are robbing convenience stores in Japan than the ways it is being combated because it means there are turning elsewhere to solve whatever money problem they seem to have.
I have always wondered why nearly every time I enter a convenience store in Japan sure enough there are 2-5 people standing there reading magazines for seemingly a really long time. I always wondered why don't they just buy it and at read it at home?
From what I recall, most cars in Japan have door side mirrors, but taxis typically have fender mirrors for better blind spot coverage. I think I have seen a few cars with both door and fender side mirrors.
I read this and thought - Oh, so the cabbie is supposed to go limp when a robbery occurs; what a uniquely Japanese style solution. But it's not that at all. Gypped again.
"The noun "gyp" was described at the time as "current in polite circles," and "derived from the popular experience with thieving Gypsies."
"I encounter a lot of people who tell me that they never knew the word 'gypped' had anything to do with gypsies, or that it's offensive — especially when the word is heard not read," says University of Texas at Austin professor Ian Hancock, who was born in Britain to Romani parents. "My response to them is, That's okay. You didn't know but now you do. So stop using it. It may mean nothing to you, but when we hear it, it still hurts.""
"Gypsy" may also refer to (Irish) Travellers, thanks to their similar lifestyles. A significant population of Travellers emigrated to the US during times of economic hardship in Ireland and the UK, and local police departments in the US will still issue general crime alerts when a migrating band of Travellers is expected to be in the area.
These often take the form of "Please don't make our municipality look like an easy score. Lock up everything not bolted down. And also please put locking nuts on your bolts." (paraphrased)
They are a distinct, non-integrating cultural enclave in the US, and seem to subsist largely on exploiting legal loopholes in life insurance policies, and by working trades with inconsistent demand, like asphalt paving.
Either way, both Romany and Travellers seem to have a universally bad reputation for trustworthiness and respect for unattended personal property, which seems to be not entirely unearned.
But despite this, it is inappropriate to refer to an individual by a group identity that person has not specifically invoked, so the non-racist alternative of "gyp" would be "con", "cheat", "reneg", "deceive", or "defraud", depending on the context. Take care to not use "welch", because that could be similarly offensive to Welshmen.
"Polite society" or "polite circles" just means the upper class.
It was 1914, polite society was all about colonialism and "scientific racism." I actually read a excerpt of a textbook from that time period. The excerpt was "the races of man," crazy stuff.
> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”
I love it. Simple, elegant.
Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!