Using environmental design to fight crime invites discrimination

Baltimore’s Committee for Public Safety and Government Operations held an informational meeting for city agencies recently on Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED), to explore ways that the city might better utilize the strategy in everything from neighborhood planning to urban greening. CPTED is an approach to urban design that has its origins in the “urban crisis” of the 1970s, a time of national panic over rising crime rates, increasing racial tensions, and deteriorating material conditions in the American inner city.