Chapter 3
Behind the Blueprint
Methodology
The Safe City Blueprint is based on our work in the alliance the past year, data collection from our member cities, and on conversations with leaders in member cities from January to April 2020. Data was collected in the spring of 2020 through a survey on the characteristics of the cities, their challenges, strategies, focus areas, and initiatives to create a safer city. Each member city has chosen one or more of their emerging local challenges or areas to explore within Nordic Safe Cities to improve their practice. We refer to the chosen challenges as the cities’ safe city action 2020. In total these constitute a larger blueprint that presents the most pressing concerns and new areas of prevention that cities must address if they are to adapt to the changing threat patterns, ideologies and approaches of extremist groups and individuals. They do not represent the entire strategies or full approach to the prevention of extremism in the cities.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic occurred shortly after we gathered most of the data from our member cities. This accelerated our dialogue with the cities to explore if and how the Covid-19 crisis will alter Nordic practices to creating safer cities. As this is ongoing, we have added a section on the effects of the virus outbreak and we will continue to explore if and how social life and patterns of crime, extremist hate and violence will change as the pandemic evolves and restrictions are lessened. In this sense, the blueprint is a ‘real time snapshot’ of the work towards safer cities and an opening for new insights into areas where the prevention of extremist hate and violence needs to be reinforced or developed from scratch.
The Safe City Blueprint provides an overview of the main threats facing the Nordics and will hopefully serve as inspiration to other cities in the Nordics and beyond.
Based on this overview, we plan the following next steps: To support each city in its efforts to reinforce existing strategies and projects or shape and launch new pilot project. And to compare metrics and success criteria, experiences and results across the member cities dealing with similar challenges.