Chapter Seminar

Design and Crime Prevention in Learning Environments

March 21, 2023
4:30 – 6:00 PM

Bora Architects
1705 SE 3rd Ave., Portland, OR 97214

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a design framework that gained prominence in the 1990’s based on the works of Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman and attempts to reduce the incidence and fear of crime through interventions in the built environment. This framework is ubiquitous throughout western public institutions as a means of managing community behavior through access and surveillance strategies. Because it is rooted in whiteness- the psychic and material infrastructure that normalizes the conditions of being wealthy, straight, cis-gender, able bodied, European-descended, and a man- it functionally perpetuates social, political, economic inequities based on race, class, and gender.

In this seminar, we will examine CPTED through a critical lens to better understand in prominence in institutional safety & security operations, and explore values and strategies to approach designing for safety in more equitable ways.

Learning Objectives:

• Establish an essential understanding of the origins and development of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)
• Understand how CPTED came to be adopted, how it evolved, and how it has been used in school design.
• Explore the CPTED movement through a lens that centers race, class, and gender.
• Explore alternative design methods that center the lived-experience of historically overlooked and undervalued members of our communities when considering safety and security in the built environment.

Speaker: Derrick McDonald, Associate| Equitable Design Strategist
Derrick is a designer, researcher, and community organizer whose work is rooted in the understanding that the spaces that we make, in turn make us. Derrick’s responsibility at Hacker as an Equitable Design Strategist is to identify and incorporate methods into our process that expand our collective imagination. By centering the lived experience and positionality of Black and Indigenous communities, we can decenter social-control, accumulation, and violence as hallmarks of design and situate responsibility, care, and justice at the center of our work.

Derrick was initiated into the industry of design through their work with the Space Matters Cohort and Dr. Amara Pérez, and continues to examine, interrupt, and dismantle the status quo in the built environment through a process of inquiry, reflection, and action. They are also an active member of the collective Black Star Farmers and work to radically reclaim land and food sovereignty on unceded Duwamish and Coast Salish ancestral land.

Members: Free | Non-members: $20
Event Sponsor: $250