Community Safety & Well-Being

 

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Full Spectrum is a powerful fusion of best practices that makes the connection between safety, design, planning and health to address complex community concerns to co-create the places that we love.

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The City of Colwood engaged Rethink Urban to conduct their Full Spectrum Community Safety & Well-Being 5-day Transdisciplinary Workshop for an interdepartmental group of City staff. As the lead facilitator, Steve Woolrich leveraged a wealth of knowledge and experiences to educate staff on ways in which they could not only help make our community safer but healthier and more prosperous as well! Using a holistic approach Steve and a series of expert guest speakers explored a wide range of subject areas including public health, Placemaking and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). This strategy was very effective in engaging the attendees whether they were a urban planner, parks labourer or bylaw enforcement officer. Everyone seemed to come to an appreciation of the complex factors that underpin community safety and how they could apply the teachings in our City. We hope to use this experience as a launch pad for new programs geared towards having a positive impact on community safety while achieving many other co-benefits. Such a future is shown to be possible through Rethink Urban’s Full Spectrum approach.

– Iain Bourhill, Director of Long Range Planning and Sustainability |
City of Colwood

 

RETHINK THE POSSIBILITIES

Full Spectrum is designed to support municipalities, First Nations, business, and community organizations – including the police – to unite multiple sectors in a shared responsibility and collaborative pursuit of Community Safety & Well-Being.

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OUR PILLARS  |  OUR APPROACH

 

	DISCOVERY We’re curious by nature. We inspire people to get out of theory land and rediscover their community through a new lens of shared responsibility and integrated practices. As guides, we use Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Health Impact Assessments (HIA) to inform our practice and to ensure a multi-disciplinary approach.
	WELL-BEING We use a holistic approach that considers the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual elements of community life. As a guide, we align our work with the Healthy Built Environment Alliance (HBEA); a relationship-building and knowledge exchange approach that intersects health and the built environment.
	CREATIVITY Deliberate action and integration based on our collective discovery and a little imagination. We also integrate Placemaking, which brings together diverse people to improve a community’s cultural, economic, social and ecological situation through the planning, design, management and programming of shared use spaces.
	TRANSFORMATION Mindful, empowered and sustainable outcomes that offer a new way for people to become active in their community planning, because people act; plans do not. We look upstream; working towards less dependence on reactionary, incident-driven responses and re-focusing efforts and investments towards the long-term benefits of prevention, social development and quality of life.

CONSULTING  ·  WORKSHOPS  ·  PRACTICE