Community Safety and Well-being in Mill Woods
There have been a number of high-profile incidents lately in Mill Woods. They are unsettling and worrisome. I know safety and security are top of mind for you, and they are for me as well. It has amplified our team’s need to approach community safety conversations with both compassion and urgency. With situations happening close to home, it can be scary - I hear you, and share your concerns. This is and will remain a priority for me, as our team continues to work with various partners on crime prevention, community support, and building relationships with neighbourhoods.
Feedback about safety happens every day with communities across the ward. Last Fall, our team was hearing from residents and business owners about particular concerns around the Mill Woods Town Centre and Mill Woods Transit Centre. We wanted to learn more about people’s experiences visiting and using these spaces, and their ideas on how we can make the Town Centre and Transit Centre feel more vibrant as a vital gathering place in the ward. Working in collaboration with REACH Edmonton Council for Safe Communities, the Neighbourhood Empowerment Team and community policing, and Edmonton Transit Service, we sent out a survey in late 2022 to hear from you. Since then, we have received the results from the survey that highlighted 3 areas of safety concerns:
Social disorder and crime
Traffic and pedestrian safety
Low vibrancy at night
This coming year, we will be focusing on working with residents, businesses including Mill Woods Town Centre, ETS and community groups such as the Library, the senior centre, and nearby recreation and youth centres on the recommendations from the research.
A few things to keep in mind about this report:
The sample size is quite limited with only 52 responses.
Respondents skew towards an older demographic, with the majority over the age of 60.
These limitations mean that the feedback is not necessarily representative of everyone who lives in the area and visits the Town Centre, that the research could have benefited from businesses’ insights, nor that the findings are conclusive of safety and security. However, I still think this report is an important first step and a launching pad from which we can begin discussions with community stakeholders. Ideas like the ones shared by respondents below to improve community safety are very valuable and I hope to make some headways with them with the right people and partners:
Having more shopping options, including a new grocery tenant in the Town Centre to increase the number of visitors.
Having community-building events or services right in the Town Centre. This could include building a community hub for youth and after-school programming as young people frequently visit once school is out.
Improvements to promote pedestrian safety like better sidewalks, crosswalks and lighting, along with road features to reduce speeding and congestion.
Transit service-related improvements like reducing wait times, ongoing security presence at the transit centre, and having the option to load ARC cards in the mall rather than just at the bus stop. Some people also mentioned they only felt unsafe at the transit centre at night - an effective intervention could be adding more lighting, or animating the space after dark.
Area beautification to promote vibrancy like improved pathways and green spaces, or even just a litter clean-up. (One example of area beautification is the Pride Walkway project at the transit centre. We welcome more ideas like this in our 2023 Community-based budgeting project, to be launched this month.)
This survey gave us a great starting point to begin to understand WHY and WHERE community members might be experiencing safety concerns around the Mill Woods Town Centre and Transit Centre, which is such a vital and central gathering and commercial space for the ward. While 50% of respondents mentioned they did not have safety concerns, I would like to see this number be much higher. I also recognize that the Mill Woods Town Centre and Transit Centre are not standalone sites - there are connections here to other areas such as the Mill Woods Recreation Centre, which our team has heard safety concerns about, and other surrounding neighbourhoods.
As this research demonstrates, community safety requires a multi-pronged approach. Different people, depending on their age, gender, or race, identify different issues as impacting their perception of safety in the area. There is not one silver bullet solution, unfortunately, but we need to explore various tools and levers.
Some additional conversations on community safety:
In addition to the near-term work on the findings from the report, together with communities, businesses, and partners, we will also continue connecting with REACH to determine if a Neighbourhood Organizing Initiative, which is a community-led initiative that facilitates dialogue around safety issues in neighbourhoods, might be beneficial in the Mill Woods Town Centre/Transit Centre area. Through this process, community members would develop a collective vision of a safe and vibrant community, and co-design the responses they want to see.
In the long-term I would like to continue to explore how we can address the recommendations from this report to improve community safety and well-being. Structural interventions like CPTED, improvements to the transit centre, or improved crossings will take more time and resources. Moreover, as a City Council we will continue to advocate to the other orders of government for long-term solutions to the drivers of the social disorder we see across the City like mental health, addiction and houselessness, all of which lie outside of the jurisdiction of municipalities.
In the aftermath of the violent stabbing incident, our team is working with the Neighbourhood Empowerment Team and community partners to organize a Community After Incident Response event (CAIR), which is an opportunity for a community conversation about safety in the Milbourne area. I hope we can provide residents with an open forum to ask questions, share their thoughts, connect with community resources, and build relationships with partner organizations. The NET is a valuable community resource here at the City. They work in conjunction with EPS to respond to community safety needs. I will share more information on CAIR when available.
As always, I welcome your thoughts, ideas, and feedback, including your experience in this part of the ward, and whether you are interested in seeing a Safety Council in the area. Please reach out at: keren.tang@edmonton.ca.
