Stewards: Safety and Governance with Pauline Larsen
The governance of public spaces has an important role to play in creating a space that is safe for everyone. However, when measuring the success of these efforts, it’s important to consider how we define “safety” in the first place. This week, we connected Pauline Larsen, Director of Economic & Community Development at the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (BIA), whose recent work in public space governance, challenges other designers and operators, as well as the public at large to re-think our understandings of “safety” to be more inclusive and accessible.
About Pauline
Pauline Larsen (she/her) is the Director, Economic & Community Development at the Downtown Yonge BIA where she is responsible for their award-winning Safe & Inclusive Streets Strategy. Pauline has extensive experience as an urban economist and holds an MA in Geography from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she practised for 15 years. In Toronto, she has focused her practice on the intersection of safety, inclusion and economic development. She aims to build effective partnerships to address those needs in the Downtown Yonge community of Toronto, with a focus on collaborating between a diverse range of different stakeholders.
Pauline’s Thoughts on Safety
While inclusive design sets the stage for feelings of safety, active and transparent governance models ensure that public spaces can respond to the shifting needs of the communities who use them. These governance models can take many different forms including municipally-led committees or working groups, pubic-private partnerships such as conservancies, business improvement associations (BIAs), or volunteer-led residents’ groups.
For Pauline and the Downtown Yonge BIA, overseeing one of Toronto’s busiest and most recognizable commercial districts includes a wide range of duties, from programming and animating spaces through public events, to beautifying the public realm and keeping neighbourhood streets, sidewalks, and squares clean on a daily basis. Through its operations, the BIA represents over 2,000 business members, and serves over 200,000 local residents, alongside a daily visitor population of more than 600,000 made up of students, workers, and visitors to the neighbourhood.
In 2017, amidst rising concerns about homelessness and street-involved activities in the neighbourhood, the BIA expanded its scope further, launching a dedicated strategy for building a safer, more inclusive environment. Foundational to the Safe and Inclusive Streets Strategy is its recognition that the notion of “safety” must go hand-in-hand with inclusivity.
While not exhaustive, the Strategy serves as a guide for positive actions that the BIA can take—alongside other cross-sector partners—to be part of the solution when it comes to complex issues like homelessness. The strategy also serves to advance and contextualize some of the BIA’s past programs and partnerships, including the Downtown Toronto Drop-In Resource, a booklet designed to provide locations and details of drop-in services available within a 2-km radius of Yonge-Dundas Square, as well as The Walkabout, a partnership between an Indigenous Elder and local police, aimed at doing outreach and providing services for Indigenous adults in the downtown.
“Without hesitation, I would argue that safety and inclusion are two sides of the same coin. Safety is as much about the perception of safety as it is about empirical data like crime statistics. Inclusion, simply put, is a sense of being welcome – whether you’re a resident, employee, tourist, student or even a visitor looking to access social services.”
