Wednesday, January 21, 2015

How to Protect Fast-Growing Cities From Failing

Take the case of São Paulo, where I've been working. It's gone from being Brazil's most dangerous city to one of its safest, and it did this by doubling down on information collection, hot spot mapping, and police reform, and in the process, it dropped homicide by 70 percent in just over 10 years. We also got to focus on those hot people. It's tragic, but being young, unemployed, uneducated, male, increases the risks of being killed and killing.

We have to break this cycle of violence and get in there early with our children, our youngest children, and valorize them, not stigmatize them. There's wonderful work that's happening that I've been involved with in Kingston, Jamaica and right here in Rio, which is putting education, employment, recreation up front for these high-risk groups, and as a result, we're seeing violence going down in their communities.We've also got to make our cities safer, more inclusive, and livable for all. The fact is, social cohesion matters. Mobility matters in our cities.





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