As practitioners of any kind, we can always tap into our creativity and explore other modalities that support our work. To pigeonhole ourselves limits the untapped potential for the work we do in our communities.
There is no better way to reduce our limitations than to seek out new ways of doing business by improving our skills and learning all we can about our built environment. While CPTED continues to evolve I’ve always informed my clients that it’s not a silver bullet! Nowadays, practitioners are dealing with a tsunami of issues ranging from mental health and addiction to homeless encampments, and more. It’s no longer a case of applying CPTED principles and thinking we will solve every dilemma we will face.
Living on the west coast of British Columbia has provided me with much more than beautiful surroundings. It’s introduced me to other people that share the same passion for our built and natural environments that I do. Strangely enough they have been working in public health. Yes, we can all have blinders on and not even realize it.
In the world of CPTED most of us are used to working with planners, architects, and engineers. Opening our minds to working with health professionals should be high on our list. If you’re still sitting on the fence let me convince you otherwise.
When I first relocated from Central Alberta to Victoria, BC I had the pleasure of meeting two women, Jade Yehia who was working for Island Health as their Built Environment consultant, and Amanda Ng who was a Health Planner for the Capital Regional District. These professionals shared their knowledge and their passion with me and opened my eyes to the undeniable connection between our built environment and our health and well-being.
Meeting Jade and Amanda helped me create new pathways within the public health sector, and I would begin collaborating with professionals such as Dr. Trevor Hancock and Pam Moore. Both Pam and Trevor eventually became part of the Rethink Urban Collaborative (soon to be Safer Communities Collaborative) and remain valued advisors. While Trevor continues to write for the Times Colonist about various public health issues, Pam is now teaching a Healthy Communities course that I plan to take at BCIT this year.
On September 19th, 2019, the Regional Outcomes Monitoring Group – Community Health Network (ROM-CHN) hosted a Creating Healthy and Safe Communities workshop at the University of Victoria. I had the great privilege of helping plan the event with Amanda, Jade, and Trevor. This was a full day of knowledge sharing, networking, and identifying shared priorities around four themes, including Housing, Transportation, Climate Change and Community Safety.
Fast forward to meeting other people that have continued to inspire my work, including Dr. Robin Mazumder and the incredible team at the Public Health Association of BC. It’s people like this that continue to push me above and beyond the limitations of CPTED and yet contribute to the methodology by helping us understand the connection between health and our built environment.