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Old and new housing in Moss Side, Manchester.
Old and new housing in Moss Side, Manchester. Photograph: Christopher Thomond Photograph: Christopher Thomond for The Guardian/Guardian
Old and new housing in Moss Side, Manchester. Photograph: Christopher Thomond Photograph: Christopher Thomond for The Guardian/Guardian

How Manchester is designing out crime in Moss Side and Wythenshawe estates

This article is more than 9 years old

While older streets – with handy recessed doorways for burglars and dark alleyways for motorbike drug runs – make life easy for criminals, modern designs encourage ‘natural surveillance’

The enormous Wythenshawe estate in south Manchester was born with the noblest of intentions: to build a post-war paradise which promised “every working mother a clean, well-planned home which will be her palace”. But by the time the new millennium rolled around, the area had become what the New York Times referred to as “an extreme pocket of social deprivation and alienation”, containing dilapidated, crime-plagued homes few would refer to in regal terms.

One particular photograph of the estate, taken during a visit by David Cameron in February 2007, became unfortunate visual shorthand for what the Conservatives called “broken Britain”, when a local teenager was photographed in a tracksuit pointing an imaginary gun at the future prime minister’s head.

These days, following all sorts of interventions, Wythenshawe is a safer and nicer place, though still far more crime ridden than neighbouring areas. Some 777 crimes were reported in the area in April, compared with just 93 in nearby Wilmslow North, where Coronation Street stars and footballers live.

Yet there is one new development on the estate which has remained almost crime-free since being built in 2010. Only one misdemeanour has been reported by residents of the 12 new flats on Littlewood Road in the Woodhouse Park area of Wythenshawe since July 2012, when some local kids attempted to uproot a washing line in a back garden. In the same period, 39 burglaries were reported in the surrounding square kilometre, suggesting something about the development’s design was deterring n’er-do-wells.

This 2007 photograph of a youth gesturing at David Cameron in Wythenshawe became shorthand for 'broken Britain'. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

It’s an outcome which pleases Mike Craig, a design consultant for Greater Manchester Police (GMP). Originally a landscape architect, Craig works for the force’s Design for Security team, an in-house consultancy which specialises in design-led crime prevention. As they put it in their mission statement: “We work with local authorities, housing associations, architects, landscape architects, planning consultants and developers to support the production of designs that address crime and security issues and minimise future opportunities for offenders.”

These days in Greater Manchester, any developer planning to build six or more residential dwellings – or student accommodation, commercial premises, a school, hospital or even anyone wanting to install a cash machine – must ask Design for Security to come up with a Crime Impact Statement to present to the council’s planning board. Unlike in other police force areas, the developer has to pay for this: a report costs between £500 and £10,000, depending on the scale of the development.

The Littlewood Road flats were one of the team’s projects: they provided paid consultancy services to the Bernard Taylor Partnership, the architects commissioned by the Willow Park Housing Trust. Craig and his colleagues assessed the original proposals and, before the foundations were dug, made recommendations for making the development safer. It’s what he refers to as “designing out crime”, rather than trying to combat it once it has already taken root.

“It’s much better for developers to incorporate our suggestions into their designs rather than ‘retro-fit’ them once things have gone wrong,” Craig says. “It removes the need for overt security interventions like barbed wire, razor wire, grilles over windows, anti-climb paint and things. We don’t want CCTV either, if we can avoid it. My view on CCTV is that it sends out the wrong message and it’s not as effective as people think, in terms of crime prevention.”

The Greenheys estate – named after the setting of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel – sits next to traditional terraced housing in Moss Side. Photograph: Helen Pidd Photograph: Helen Pidd

At the Littlewood Road flats, one of Craig’s colleagues was unhappy that the original blueprints included multiple entrances to each block, including doors at the back of the property. There were also no windows on the side of the buildings, and not all rooms that overlooked areas likely to be targeted by criminals (such as the car park) would be in regular use.

“You want the rooms most regularly inhabited to be in view of any potential criminals,” says Craig. “It’s what we call ‘natural surveillance’: we like ‘active frontages’ to overlook communal areas so that people are seen and can be seen. The more windows overlooking the street and public spaces, the better.” Enforcing clear boundaries is also important, making distinctions between public and private space with fences and hedges.

Opposite the new development, a pair of dark-brick 1930s semis provide a perfect compare-and-contrast exercise, says Leanne Monchuck, a researcher from the University of Huddersfield who is writing her PhD on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design – an academic theory focusing on tactical design which aims to reduce both crime and the fear of crime.

“Both old houses don’t have any windows down the side, so the occupiers can’t see if someone has gone round the back,” Monchuck notes. Further down the street there’s a gloomy alley, ungated, where bins are stored. Other nearby streets have alleys known locally as 'ginnels' at the back, providing perfect getaway routes for criminals on bikes.

Nearer the centre of Manchester, at the Greenheys estate in Moss Side, stopping motorbikes from riding through the new development was a key concern for GMP’s Design for Security squad: in Moss Sides darkest days, back in the “Gunchester” era of the 90s, drug and gun runs were done by bike.

Now, getting into the new estate via Elizabeth Gaskell Way – the whole Greenheys development is inspired by the 19th-century author and named after the setting for her novel Mary Barton – involves a sort of slalom via giant, jagged silver sculptures and squeezing through a barrier just wide enough for a double buggy but too narrow for all but the smallest of motorbikes.

A Moss Side alleyway of the type that has proved a perfect getaway route for criminals on bikes. Photograph: Helen Pidd Photograph: Helen Pidd

So much about the old Moss Side streets make life easier for criminals, says Craig, pointing to recessed doorways which allow burglars to tuck in out of sight when jimmying locks. The old terraces open straight out into the street with no fences or front gardens, he notes, making it easier for kids to knock on windows and for other low-level forms of anti-social behaviour to take place. “The result is that people tend to put blinds up or never open the curtains, and so they don’t see what’s going on.”

On Greenheys, all properties – brightly painted with Scandinavian inspired wood-style cladding – have small front gardens and the bins are in gated compounds, rather than in open ginnells at the back. Communal areas such as paved squares are clearly marked to pass what Monchuck calls “the picnic test”: “We could have a picnic here but not there,” she says, pointing to a fenced-off front garden.

Craig’s team advised the architects – Bernard Taylor Partnership again – that there should also be no features on the buildings, such as projecting window sills or exposed rainwater down pipes, which would make it easier for anyone to climb on to the roof. They also suggested front-garden walls be designed so it would be difficult to perch on them: gangs of youths sitting on walls had previously led to a disproportionate number of complaints about anti-social behaviour.

Design for Security’s report on the nascent estate, prepared in 2009 (two years before the first residents moved in), noted that “development of this site has the potential to make a very positive contribution to the local area and help to dispel the negative perceptions of the district.”

The crime figures for the area suggest good design has indeed deterred criminals: between 2011 and 2014, just five burglaries were reported in Greenheys, compared with 76 in the surrounding square kilometre. “The fact the estate looks nice helps a lot,” reckons Craig. “If it looks grim, people behave in an accordingly grim way. I think this development shows that compliance with our recommendations doesn’t stifle innovative design. It’s a challenge to planners and architects, sure, but if it’s done right, there’s still scope for imagination.”

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