When I was at university I briefly – very briefly – went out with a girl from Cumbernauld; she was a brutally honest person (I hope she still is, and happy), who quickly realized we had little in common, weren’t compatible etc., and after a month or two announced that we had no future and probably shouldn’t even be friends etc. Really, the only connection we’d had was both being Scottish at an English University; as a realist, from Cumbernauld (this is important) she definitely realized this wasn’t enough, whilst as a romantic optimist I, at the time, convinced myself that it was. Not to define people by where they come from, but that she came from/grew up in Cumbernauld is important/significant. I initially met her at some student house party, probably made some bad jokes, told a few crap stories – which I thought were extremely entertaining – and as we all piled out to go our separate ways, in a chivalrous but transparently obvious gesture, offered to walk her back to her house, citing safety and security as my number one concern; whilst there was certainly teenage self-interest at play, it was a fairly rough city and was the right thing to do. As I was explaining/mansplaining the dangers of living in a big city – I was from Glasgow, she was from Cumbernauld etc. – she opened her handbag/purse and showed me a pre-broken bottle and explained that I shouldn’t worry about her. She then turned her back and walked/headed/stumbled off in whatever direction she believed would take her home; we were both very drunk. The foresight she’d had to break the bottle ahead of the time she might need to do so impressed me. This was a woman who weighed less than a hundred pounds and knew what it might take for her to survive a violent altercation. Cumbernauld had just grabbed my attention and had become a significant locale on my radar.
I’d always been “aware” of Cumbernauld as it was about ten miles to the East of Glasgow and had been the setting for Bill Forsyth’s film “Gregory’s Girl”; Forsyth went on to write and direct “Local Hero” with Burt Lancaster. However, Gregory’s Girl showed a “charming” and very different side to the Cumbernauld that saw girls and young women walking around with ready broken bottles in their handbags/purses for self-defense. I might have been working off a sample size of one, but I didn’t think hers was a unique attitude, and when I visited Cumbernauld my experiences and what I saw made me believe/confirmed I was correct in this assumption. The West of Scotland in the1960’s and 1970’s had become something of an experiment in architecture and housing. Glasgow had become a gang-owned city with out-of-date housing – I had relatives who had a concrete table in their living room, which was actually the raised roof/ceiling of a communal lavatory located on the lower floor; they’d put a tablecloth over it and a vase of flowers, and used it as a table etc.
The solution the authorities came up with – which on paper was a good one – was to break up the districts and move people to purpose-built “new” towns and communities, with modern housing and shopping centers etc. Council Estates, such as Easterhouse lacked such resources as cinemas, supermarkets, and other leisure facilities etc., however Cumbernauld got a megastructure known as “the center”, a huge multi-story building which would house all of its shops. I have little knowledge of architecture but when a building is said to be designed in the “brutalist architectural style” (a school of design/architecture which was created/developed in 1950’s), you know that ideas involving charm and nostalgia etc., are not being reflected. As soon as we entered the building to go and get a coffee, I felt trapped and claustrophobic. There was little natural light, and access and movement through the building was through a series of walkways and tunnels etc. I wished I’d had the foresight to have a ready broken bottle for my defense, as disengagement would never be an available/viable option in a confrontation – even looking at the crime stats for 2014, which have seen a dramatic drop in the years since I visited Cumbernauld is in a reporting district/region which sees it as the fourth most crime-ridden area in Scotland; quite an achievement.
Research has shown that humans associate ideas and senses of entrapment with increased levels of fear i.e., we naturally like to feel that we have an option to get away. At heart, whilst we have the ability to be predatory creatures, we are prey animals who look primarily to escape rather than engage when confronted with a threat. When we are looking at solutions to violence, this default behavior should be acknowledged rather than challenged and attempted to be altered. The recording of the 911 conversation between the dispatcher and the librarian during the Columbine School Shootings demonstrates people’s natural instincts to disengage and remove themselves from a threat rather than waiting to engage with it – whenever we are looking at solutions to violence we should look at who we are and how we instinctively want to react rather than force ourselves to conform and act in an unnatural manner. There is also research that shows, that when an intervention is introduced such as increasing lighting or visibility etc., people’s confidence in its effectiveness is reduced e.g., even when measures are put in place to address the security issues caused by a bad architectural design, if these don’t dramatically deal with them, then people become less confident and more afraid i.e., a poor/bad solution draws more attention to the issue than none at all; from a policy perspective it is “better” to ignore a problem that try to solve it and only draw attention to it etc. Attempts to make the shopping center safer have in fact only convinced people of the threats and dangers they potentially face when in it.
Personally, I have nothing against Cumbernauld or its residents. I am sure there will be those who take exception at what I say. In surveys and reports there are those that say the shopping center should be torn down and others who say it represents a style of architecture that should be recognized and acknowledged. However, I would argue that an environment that lacks sight-lines and visibility, along with a lack of escape routes creates a certain type of mindset and attitude i.e., one where you feel the need to have a broken bottle readily available to protect yourself, and ultimately this isn’t healthy. I have grown up in, and lived in, low-income and violent communities, and I can say that when it comes to your safety, the physical environment counts.