Neftaly: The Role of Community-Led Urban Design in Improving Safety in Informal Settlements
Introduction
Informal settlements are vibrant, resourceful communities that often grow outside the bounds of formal urban planning. However, the absence of structured design contributes to safety risks—poor lighting, narrow pathways, crime hotspots, and weak emergency access. Traditional top-down planning has failed to meet the needs of these communities, often excluding the people who know the area best: the residents.
At Neftaly, we believe that community-led urban design is a transformative approach that empowers residents to shape safer, more livable environments. When people design their own spaces, they don’t just improve them—they protect and sustain them.
1. What Is Community-Led Urban Design?
Community-led urban design is a participatory process where residents of informal settlements work alongside urban planners, architects, NGOs, and local governments to design and improve their living environments. This includes:
- Mapping local assets and safety concerns
- Co-creating layout plans for streets, homes, and public spaces
- Prioritizing safety, access, and dignity in infrastructure design
- Using local knowledge to guide practical and affordable solutions
This approach not only results in better design but also builds trust, ownership, and collective action.
2. How Community Design Improves Safety
When residents are included in shaping their neighborhoods, safety outcomes improve in multiple ways:
a) Better Lighting and Visibility
Community input helps identify poorly lit and high-risk areas. Simple interventions—solar lighting, trimming overgrown vegetation, and widening paths—can deter crime and improve night-time safety.
b) Improved Access and Mobility
Community-led design reimagines narrow or unsafe paths into wider, more navigable routes. This ensures faster access for emergency services and improves day-to-day mobility for residents, especially children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
c) Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)
Residents often know where crime occurs and why. Together, they can reconfigure spaces to eliminate hiding spots, improve natural surveillance (eyes on the street), and design shared spaces that promote community presence.
d) Fire Safety and Risk Reduction
Communities can identify fire hazards and participate in re-blocking plans that create firebreaks, escape routes, and safe gathering points.
3. Empowering Local Stakeholders
Community-led urban design strengthens the role of:
- Women, who often face the highest risks in public and domestic spaces and bring unique safety insights
- Youth, who can be mobilized as planners, artists, and safety ambassadors
- Elderly and disabled persons, ensuring inclusive access and safe design for all
By valuing the lived experience of all residents, design becomes more equitable and responsive.
4. Strengthening Social Cohesion
Safety is not just physical—it’s also social. Collaborative design fosters a sense of belonging, cooperation, and mutual accountability. When people build something together, they are more likely to protect and maintain it. Safer neighborhoods emerge when there is community trust, pride, and visibility.
5. Supporting Sustainable Upgrading
Community-led design aligns with broader informal settlement upgrading efforts. It supports:
- Incremental, in-situ development (no forced relocations)
- Low-cost, high-impact improvements
- Integration of informal areas into city-wide development plans
Neftaly ensures that communities receive technical support and tools—such as mapping, 3D modeling, or participatory workshops—so their vision can be translated into implementable plans.
6. Policy and Institutional Support
For community-led urban design to thrive, it must be supported by:
- Policy frameworks that recognize community-driven planning
- Municipal collaboration with local design groups and NGOs
- Budget allocations for participatory design and infrastructure
- Legal protections for informal residents to remain on their land during and after upgrading
Neftaly advocates for policies that put communities at the center of urban development processes, not at the margins.
Conclusion
Safety in informal settlements doesn’t come from control—it comes from collaboration. Community-led urban design empowers residents to reshape their environments in ways that are practical, inclusive, and deeply rooted in everyday realities.
At Neftaly, we support communities to become architects of their own safety—because no one understands a place better than the people who live there.
Together, we can build safer, stronger, and more dignified informal settlements—one design at a time.