How “eyes on the street” has fostered a shared safety culture
Safe streets without too much “police”
I think we can all agree that when it comes to safety, we need laws and accountability. Of course, having very clear laws that are taught early is one of the mandatory elements of the Blendini City education system. We have a very community-oriented police. They work where they live, they walk the streets, have actual relationships with people and buildings in the community, and so on… I’ll talk more about the system in place for addressing safety in a future post.
What I’d like to briefly touch upon in this post, is the concept of “eyes on the street”. This concept has been spoken about for a long time. I first learned of it personally in Jane Jacobs’ book, The Death & Life of Great American Cities.
Blendini City has an “outside culture”.
Neighbors, buildings, and people alike love to interact with one another outside. Friends and neighborhoods look out for each other. If there is something suspicious happening, someone in the neighborhood knows. And this is the foundation that I think is missing in our current American society. We have become an indoors-focused, overly introverted, and neurotic society that just doesn’t look out for one another.
We don’t take of each other enough as we used to, and so the “culture of shared safety” has diminished in favor of the “police state”. This is unfortunate. In Blendini City, we’ve fundamentally corrected this problem by placing great importance on community and personal relationships. It’s not a panacea, but it certainly keeps our police budget a little more trim since police can be more focused and always know what is happening in their communities.
