Is Planning to Blame for Violence?

19 March 2008 - 10:00am

After a recent shooting death in Toronto, one writer lays the blame for urban violence on city planners.

"How is it possible, in this city we cherish, where we raise our children and pay our police handsomely and restrict gun ownership and carefully shovel the walkways of public housing complexes, that a man can take human life so casually, so easily, with such nonchalance?"

"We can find the killer, maybe, and convict him. Even so, there will be another shooter, another dead boy."

"So who to blame? I blame urban planners and politicians. We concentrate our poor people in places like Lawrence Heights, far from the bureaucrats who designed it. Areas like this teach its residents that they are less valuable."

Source: The National Post, March 18, 2008
Bookmark and Share
All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.