Urban Planning for Development in Guayaquil: The Challenge of Insecurity

Guayaquil may not be the capital of Ecuador, but is the biggest and most densely populated city (7,345.7 people/km2) of the country. It is located around 64 km north of the Gulf of Guayaquil and is Ecuador’s chief port and main commercial and manufacturing center, where 2.5 million people live and work. In the late 1990′s the current Mayor of the city, Jaime Nebot, started an Urban Regeneration program that has achieved a significant change in terms of infrastructure, among other things.

The next challenge

Despite the progress the city has experienced, there is still one big issue that instead of improving is getting worst every year: the insecurity. Latin America is one of the regions with the highest rates of economic growth, but is also the most insecure and unequal one. According to the “Barometer of the Americas 2010″ Ecuador is the second country of a total of 25, with the highest percentage of people (29.1%) who have been victims of crime.

Based on the filed reports from the Public Ministry, in 2012 the 26.5% correspond to felonies against people and the 23.2% are against properties.

From January to March 2013, the most frequent felonies were assaults and robberies to people and properties, and threats and intimidation.

When a person has an emergency in Guayaquil and needs assitance he can call ECU 911 (the new security system of the Government) or 112 (the security system of the Municipality). With these systems the inmediate response to an emergency has been taken care of, but the process that comes next needs to be improved. Usually when you call the police they take notes of the situation, but then you have to go to a Police Station (by yourself), often located in dangerous zones of the city, to file the report. Even after you do this, if you want them to work on the case you have to go with your papers to a designated office to demand an investigation, this will require that you do a constant follow-up to see any results. This is just one example of how complicated and long is the process of filing a report, you can see these kinds of flaws at every level of all the institutions involved in security and justice matters.

The municipal elections are coming soon, a new Mayor will be elected in February 2014 and the two main candidates, the current Mayor and the former Governor, have included the insecurity issue in their proposals. On one hand, Jaime Nebot will demand the Government to adopt a state policy on citizen security. The policy should be a sum of actions taken by the Government and the Municipality permanently, adequately funded and with periodic accountability. The Corporation for Public Safety funded by the Municipality will continue to develop preventive measures, especially in dismantling gangs, job opportunities for rehabilitated and operation of the System for Emergency Calls. On the other hand, the former Governor Viviana Bonilla wants to transform the Metropolitan Police into Community Police. She will develop a recovery plan for the neighborhoods most affected by insecurity. This project will be carried out with the neighborhood associations and community police.

The Opportunity for a Change

The proposals from both candidates are good, but they should be combined and implemented. The plan needs to focus on 4 main areas:

1. Prevention
2. Crime control
3. Social rehabilitation
4. Institutional strengthening

Following the Mayor’s proposal about a state policy on citizen security, it is necessary to think first on the tools we need to develop good and strong policies. In orden to do that the Municipality can work with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government. They have experience in working in Central America with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to increase the confidence in democratic institutions and improve the quality of life of the citizens by promoting the dialogue between civil society, political parties and government institutions at local, national and regional levels.

“Since 2010, NDI has contributed to democratic engagement on citizen security policy by organizing international exchanges of best practices, designing and conducting courses on regional challenges and tools for making effective policy, and assisting municipal actors to develop and implement local violence prevention initiatives. The Institute helps civil society communicate citizen concerns to political leaders while helping parties and governments engage with constituents to develop more responsive policies. By building on a common base of understanding and taking into account a diversity of perspectives and regional experiences, leaders are better able to address the root causes of insecurity and bolster democratic institutions.” For more information click here.

I believe that a program like this is essential regardless of the project, citizens are so afraid of everybody that in some cases they don’t even trust the police. All the information, the big data, is a key resource for policy making. The Municipality and the police need to obtain this data from the citizens, so the engagement of the civil society is very important. But to complement this program they must have a software that helps to process the data and turn it into useful information. We can take the example of Thainland and the way the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) managed to reduce manual procedures by implementing a Microsoft Data Solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Apache Hadoop software. This solution helped to reduce the time of an investigation process from 2 years to 15 days.

The World Bank has also been involved in finding ways to fight insecurity, they are aware that there is no magical solution, but the problem is multidimensional, so solutions need to be comprehensive. Last June they launched the program Red de Soluciones a la Violencia RESOL-V (Network Solutions to Violence), which is basically a network, a regional alliance to share the knowledge to help identify, design and implement solutions that work in public safety. It will give access to the people that worked in cases like Los Angeles, Chicago, Nueva York, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá and Mexico City.

The United Nations Development Program is another organization trying to address the issue that exists in Latin America. The worrying reality let them to dedicate its Regional Human Development Report 2013-14 for the region, by elaborating a report called “Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America” where they present the following recommendations:

1. Align national efforts to reduce crime and violence, based on existing experiences and lessons learned.
2. Prevent crime and violence, promoting inclusive, fair and equitable.
3. Reduce impunity by strengthening security and justice institutions while respecting human rights.
4. Generate public policies oriented to protect the people most affected by violence and crime.
5. Promote the active participation of society, especially in local communities, to build citizen security.
6. Increase real opportunities of human development for young people.
7. Comprehensively address and prevent gender violence within the home and in public environments.
8. Actively safeguard the rights of victims.
9. Regulate and reduce “triggers” of crime such as alcohol, drugs and firearms, from a comprehensive, public health perspective.
10. Strengthen mechanisms of coordination and assessment of international cooperation.

As we can see now, the tools to find solutions and create better or new policies are there. Sadly, the Mayor of Guayaquil is considered the representative of the opposition and this has created a lot of tension with the President and his government. Instead of aligning efforts, like the UNDP suggests, each authority has his own agenda and hardly collaborate with each other. We don’t know what is going to happen in the next municipal elections, but regardless the outcome the new Mayor will have to change the way of working if they really want to improve the security of the city.

Comments Off on Urban Planning for Development in Guayaquil: The Challenge of Insecurity / 13 Dec 2013 por yvonneroca
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