Urban Planning Approaches to Urban Safety and Security: A Synthesis of Approaches In J. Uyanga and F. Ekong (eds.) Urban Crisis and Management: Sustainable Planning Approaches. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Uyo, Uyo.

Abstract

Urban insecurity attributable to crime and violence constitutes a major urbanization challenge to most cities of the world. Although some of the world’s
largest and fastest urbanizing cities such as Chongking or Tokyo have very low crime rates and could be treated as exceptions, African cities have some of the highest crime rates in the world (Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2015). Despite the assertion above, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2015 opine that urban crime, violence and insecurity in large cities tend to be more concentrated, more lethal, more variable than what is obtainable in rural areas. According to Frost and Nowak (2014), it is the complexities within cities that make the issue of violence more complex because of the interplay of socio-economic inequalities, disorder and volatility, all of which complicate the process of monitoring, detecting and evaluating rates and trends of urban violence. It would seem, therefore, that the larger and denser a city, the more vulnerable its population is to violence and crime. 

In most cities of the world, heterogeneity in urban violence, is evidenced
spatially and temporally. This implies that urban crime and violence is not evenly
distributed geographically, socio-economically and demographically, thus giving rise to disparities in the indicators that qualify for very safe and very unsafe areas. Also, urban crime and attendant heightened levels of insecurity undergo dynamic
transformation processes over time and space as is evidenced in the changing
methods, objectives, and perpetrators of violence. These, in turn, make the task of
designing targeted, yet flexible programmes to tackle armed violence and its impact extremely difficult (Frost and Nowak (2014).