WGFMA - walls, gates, fences, moats, and asphalt.

Just 200 feet from the new City Hall is this
gate security build for a diplomat.

The mantra that you often hear in the Silicon Valley after the one about innovation is that San Jose is the safest large city in America. Although the city recently lost its first place title, San Jose still uses the rankings as a key marketing slogan. This may be so but what is so puzzling is that by walking the streets of downtown San Jose you get the feeling that it has one of the worst crime rates in America.

In fact in a recent San Jose Mercury News Article, one resident of the quaint neighborhood of Willow Glen talked of "putting video cameras on their house to help catch crooks". Oh yes and add that to the list, signs that shout "Warning you are under video surveillance."

Maybe walls, fences, and gates will prevent crime, but not from the way that it was intended. With all of the subtle and not so subtle ways that you prevent crime you end up driving people away from your downtown.

In many new urbanist neighborhoods, the goal (similar to the fundamental tenants of the Internet) is make the designs more open and transparent. Create spaces where people want to watch street activity and pedestrians want see activity on the street, in restaurants, and in retail shops. James Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and TED presenter, calls this the permeable membrane of the street. In the street photo below notice how the developers of the two buildings pictured below choose to incorporate an open walkway, with commercial spaces located nearby. Missing are the typical signs that a city has given up in controlling crime; the use of fences, walls, and gates. In the photo the front doors of these homes open up directly to the street, no fences, gates, or walls are visible.

View Larger Map
The photos included in this post are just some those I took on a lunchtime walk around the downtown commercial core of San Jose, CA. Although many of these designs (such as the moat located at City View Plaza), and the AT&T switching building were conceived and then built over 30 years ago, many recent building design have the look of a ghetto fortress with a patina of middle income high rise.

If cities only understood that the real deterrent to crime are vibrant, busy streets that have successful business districts that draw customers and out of town visitors. In downtown San Jose this means to doing away with the fortress like mentality of the Adobe building (as well as most high tech offices). With corporate cafeterias, gyms, and retail located on site the only time workers leave the building is to get in their cars and hop on the freeway home.