Can better urban design reduce crime in even the most deprived communities? This is the question that a new initiative by the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government will try to answer in the affirmative. Consisting of infrastructure upgrading, improved security, community participation and increased investment, the local government's multibillion-rand regeneration plan is intended to transform Manenberg from a ghettoised dormitory town into a vibrant neighbourhood.Officials say this is an example of bold city planning, and using innovative design principles and grassroots consultation to tackle problems such as crime and urban decay. But researchers have cautioned that bringing change to one of Cape Town's most marginalised and violent communities will be more complex than these technical solutions suggest.Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), a design-based crime-reduction approach, forms the basis of the strategy.The VPUU methodology, developed by Michael Krause, a German urbanist living in Cape Town, was first implemented in parts of Khayelitsha.The model has four key concepts:Preventing young people from becoming perpetrators or victims of crime;Promoting community cohesion;Improving protection through spatial planning and infrastructure development; andGathering evidence through capacity building and research.The 2005 pilot project in Harare, Khayelitsha (funded by the KfW German Development Bank to the tune of R261-million) saw the introduction of safe walkways, outdoor lighting, area patrols and a network of so-called "active boxes", or small, regularly spaced buildings functioning as hubs of constant activity along popular routes.The project also focused on creating partnerships with local community organisations, developing a community action plan and public investment framework to guide decision-making processes and strengthen governance."The likelihood of becoming a victim of violence in public spaces where VPUU operates is now 40% less than in other parts of Khayelitsha," said Krause, referring to work by researchers at the University of Cape Town."According to police statistics, the murder rate in Harare dropped by 31% between 2005 and 2014."Encouraged by these results, local government has adopted Krause's methodology to roll out in selected areas across the Cape Flats. Manenberg, one of the communities worst affected by gang violence, is next.Plans so far include school upgrades, improving the high street and business district, creating safe bicycle and pedestrian lanes, the development of a youth lifestyle campus, and, controversially, establishing a metro police training college on the land on which the abandoned GF Jooste Hospital - which is being replaced by a six-storey, R3-billion regional healthcare facility in the next few years - currently stands.Despite these proposed interventions, researchers and local community activists doubt that the project will succeed."People have lost hope," said Rugshana Pascoe, chairman of the Manenberg Safety Forum. "We're tired of politicians promising to fix things."Installing street lights or building a hospital would not be enough to fix the problem, she said."There's no work. All the houses are overcrowded. The streets are full of angry people. Where's the space to keep your sanity?"Comparative policing specialist Eldred de Klerk said he was wary of "special projects" that treated vulnerable communities in isolation."This initiative is coming into a community that has suffered decades of neglect. The essential institutions that should exist in a well-established community like Manenberg are nonexistent."We need to go beyond these special Band-Aid fixes. Our goal and conviction should be to make Manenberg a fully legitimate part of the City of Cape Town," he said.VPUU can be criticised for being too technical or architectural in focus, said Gordon Pirie, deputy director of the African Centre for Cities at UCT, which has played an advisory role on the program."Infrastructure upgrading cannot work in isolation. It needs to be accompanied by other interventions. The built environment can't do remedial social work. For example, road engineering can't resolve drunk driving - but lane barriers can help reduce its impacts."Holistic solutions are good in principle," Pirie said, "but they can slow decision making, dilute budgets, and make accountability opaque."One has to start somewhere. The alternative - doing nothing until we can do everything at once - is worse."..