1. Safety is a multidimensional phenomenon

Residents clearly described safety as both a state of mind and a condition of their environment, pointing to the psychological and physical ways that safety is experienced. When asked to define safety, it was common for residents to describe external factors, such as hot water, food access, and a good job, alongside internal factors such as freedom from fear and a sense of calm.

There are multiple ways to experience safety and to create safety. Safety involves both physical and psychological experiences, and is therefore dependent on an individual’s relationship to their context and the people and resources in it.

External notions of communities and community safety are racist and simplistic.

Residents contrasted their multifaceted understanding of community safety with how government institutions and media portray safety in their communities. Specifically, these external actors depict Black and Brown communities negatively, as places where poverty and violent crime are the only things happening. These external perceptions play into pervasive racist historical narratives about urban Black and Brown ghettos that cast communities in broad dehumanizing strokes.

For residents, these negative perceptions of their communities are reinforced by high levels of crime which attract negative news media and attention from government actors.

Crime statistics are viewed as major drivers of external perceptions of communities and are often used to define a community with a single story, as the sole indicator of how safe a place and its people are.

Crime statistics and racial stereotypes of Black and Brown communities perpetuate the myth that members of these communities are inherently unsafe. This is often in contrast to the lived experience of safety, which can be very different from what is indicated by crime rates and media reporting on the subject.

Without centering the lived experience of a community and its specific context (e.g. the people, assets, and resources), external parties aren’t able to understand the dynamic and evolving nature of neighborhood safety or how to improve it. A focus on crime stats flattens or ignores the strength, brilliance, and generosity that residents highlighted in their communities in nearly every conversation.

2. Safety is freedom from fear

The racialized stigma that reinforces the idea that Black and Brown neighborhoods as unsafe exists within resident communities as well. Many residents reported feeling actively unsafe and talked about safety as the freedom from fear of harm or “not having to look over your shoulder.” Fearing physical harm or harassment from people they don’t know, whether it be civilians or police, is a common reality for residents.

Negative press reporting on crime statistics and apps like Citizen, which broadcast active incidents, contribute to an active and present sense of fear. This can translate into socially avoidant behavior, such as avoiding certain blocks where people congregate, not going out at a certain time of night, or avoiding eye contact and communication with neighbors on the street. This way of engaging with a neighborhood can make residents feel isolated and anxious, for themselves and their families, as it assumes that the people they live around are not worth trusting. Safety is being able to live without this fear and anxiety, and having the freedom to walk down the street with peace of mind.

Police fear communities and create fear within them.

The same dynamic was reported in police and resident relationships, where police are understood to carry a racialized stigma about residents as unsafe and frequently approach interactions with residents with fear and anxiety. Residents regularly experience encounters with a police force that is accusatory, invasive, and prejudiced against them. This was relayed in countless instances of police harassment, unwarranted search and questioning, and citations for small infractions. The fear experienced by residents reflects the reality of living in areas with high rates of violent crime and police violence.

The stigma that tells residents to fear one another is the same stigma that tells the police to fear residents. The difference is that police have the power of a carceral system behind them, which is often used to weaponize that bias and do harm. While some residents' vision for safety included the police who invested in relationship-building with residents and patrolled on foot, for many safety was the presence of a community-led physical security force that excluded police.

3. Safety is community connection

Safety means connectivity, familiarity, and trust. People talked about connectivity as a way they create safety for themselves, and a thing that communities need more of to achieve community-wide safety. Residents experience safety when they know that someone is there to support them, watch their child play on the playground, or just greet them on the street. Familiarity and trust with other residents breeds a sense of community that is grounded in interdependence and mutual aid. The safety people create for themselves becomes something they want to create and share with others, and in that way, it becomes community safety.

The safety that is created through community connection can diffuse the fear and stigma that surrounds a neighborhood. A number of residents shared stories about the fear they felt when they moved into the neighborhood for the first time, not knowing the people or environment, but knowing the reputation of the community as unsafe. Through developing relationships to people, that fear was diminished and their sense of safety increased.

Public events that bring people together for fun or pro-social purposes have a major impact on residents’ feelings of safety. Residents discussed how instrumental community gatherings are in creating new relationships and destigmatizing neighbors who they might normally avoid. This is a core tenet of the MAP program, which regularly convenes community events for this purpose.

4. Safety is economic

Simply put, residents stated that community safety depends on the community having the material resources necessary to meet their needs. In their eyes, community safety is an issue that stems from economic insecurity and a lack of opportunity to move beyond survival.

Safety is access to well-paying work that provides economic security so that communities can enjoy the quality of life that is afforded to their privileged neighbors. There isn’t a possibility of true safety when people still struggle to feed their families, afford housing, and pay for the essential goods and services in their lives. Though community connections can reduce the stigma and build support networks, achieving actual safety cannot happen without a shift in the economic reality of Black and Brown communities. Residents think about safety in distinctly economic terms, in the sense that access to money and financial stability is the problem and the solution to community safety.

Insecurity is a result of systemic disinvestment.

Widespread economic insecurity and the symptomatic violence that stems from it didn’t just happen. Residents acknowledge that systems have historically chosen to not invest in or serve Black and Brown communities in the same ways they have served white communities. Frequently, residents would compare white neighborhoods to their own, as a way to talk about how historical investments in white communities created the conditions for prosperous and safe neighborhoods. 

The impact of historical disinvestment is most visible in the environmental conditions of a neighborhood. Residents describe living in a crumbling infrastructure, where housing is in disrepair, streets are dirty, and parks are inaccessible. A core component of safety is a maintained physical environment with access to sufficient green spaces, well-lit streets, and functional housing.

5. Safety is community power and ownership

Residents feel that a safer community is possible to create if the community can direct institutions on how to do it. Black and Brown communities have been on the receiving end of varied strategies to create safer neighborhoods, predominantly punitive responses to crime. Despite organizing efforts, attempts to direct government resources or hold institutions accountable to the services they are meant to provide are still major challenges.  

Residents understand that government can play an important role in creating safer and more resilient communities through the investments they make in services, programs, and infrastructure. To date, residents have not been sufficiently empowered to direct those investments towards the things that they know they need in their communities. Community power, or the ability for residents to come together to shape governmental investments and hold government accountable to their commitments, is a core part of residents’ vision for community safety.

For many residents, community power is only possible if there is an increase in community building and organizing. Specifically, they see value in creating opportunities for community stewardship that build relationships around the improvement of neighborhood conditions. Safety looks like a community that has the economic security and organized capacity to hold government accountable to making the right community investments and to invest directly in the well-being of its community members.

As a concept, thriving contains many of the same meanings that safety does. Thriving is both a psychological feeling and a condition of the external environment. Like safety, thriving was primarily talked about as an economic phenomenon that encompasses everything from job security to neighborhood conditions and accessible services. When asked to describe the resources that would create a thriving community, residents frequently expressed that they were the same things that enable safety. 

Safety was often talked about as a core component of thriving. For residents, thriving is not possible without first feeling safe. Safety is a foundation that allows for the ability to thrive and should be considered an indicator of thriving.

2. Thriving is moving beyond economic survival

Where safety requires economic security and meeting the basic needs of a community, thriving is economic growth. Thriving is the realization of economic mobility and wealth generation. For residents, thriving looked like having disposable income and savings and being able to own assets like a home or car. Thriving is also intergenerational, with families having enough money to support their children and their parents.

3. Thriving is sustained positive progress

Residents often frame thriving as good things persisting over time. Thriving is a prolonged period of peace, prosperity, and growth. Frequently, thriving was expressed as a feeling of sustained happiness. Residents shared stories about the cycles of mass violence that they lived through in their communities, to contrast with the idea of thriving. For them, thriving means a community that is resilient enough to weather economic and social challenges and remain a peaceful and prosperous place.

For many, thriving can feel like a distant future state that is hard to envision, because the present realities of Black and Brown communities in NYC are far from the socio-economic conditions that produce long-term thriving.

4. Thriving is having agency in your life

Thriving is having the capabilities and platform to choose how you want to live your life. This freedom of choice is possible because thriving is beyond the stressful state of survival. A person who is thriving is able to set long-term goals and has the stability to dream about what they want in their lives.

This constraint impacts the ability to choose where to live, where to work, where to study, and where to access quality goods and services. Thriving would look like having choice across all aspects of one's life.

5. Thriving is the realization of community power

Like safety, thriving was described as something tied to community power. With safety, residents expressed a need to build and organize community members to direct government investments towards the right ends. Whereas thriving communities were described as having power, adequate representation in government, and a positive relationship with government bodies. Thriving communities don’t have issues getting their needs met or holding government actors accountable because they possess the requisite power to do so. We propose community power as a domain worth measuring in the MAP evaluation framework in the next section.