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This paper aims to explore police perspectives on community engagement strategies within the context of crime prevention in South Africa, focusing on Johannesburg metropolitan police stations. The study’s objective is to scrutinise the effectiveness and challenges of community policing strategies.

Through a qualitative research approach, this study conducted unstructured interviews with station commanders and visible policing officers across 10 Johannesburg metropolitan police stations.

The findings reveal that community policing strategies, such as community–policing forums, sector policing, street patrollers and social media utilisation, can effectively engage communities as partners in crime prevention. However, certain challenges such as resource limitations and difficulties in policing-specific regions, were also identified.

This study contributes to the broader understanding of community–policing partnerships and the practical implications of community–policing strategies in South Africa, suggesting areas for improvement and adaptation to the unique South African context. This knowledge can help optimise efforts to foster stronger relationships between police and communities, bolster public trust and ultimately improve crime prevention outcomes.

Police legitimacy presents a social value of the institution based on citizens' normative, moral and ethical feelings that they should voluntarily comply with and support the authority of the police. The present study focuses on residents' perceptions of police legitimacy in different settings in Slovenia.

Drawing on data from a survey of 1,022 citizens in Slovenia, this study examined the correlates of police legitimacy and differences in citizen perceptions of police legitimacy in urban, suburban and rural settings.

Multivariate statistical analyses showed that feelings of obligation to obey, trust in police, procedural justice, police effectiveness, relations with police officers and gender influence perceptions of police legitimacy. Significant differences between residents' perceptions of police legitimacy, obligation to obey, trust in police, procedural justice, police effectiveness and legal cynicism in urban, suburban and rural settings were also observed. In general, residents of rural areas were found to have more positive attitudes towards the police than those in urban and suburban settings.

The article is useful for police leaders and practitioners planning policies and training of police officers for democratic policing.

Police legitimacy reflects the legitimacy of governance, as the police are the most visible representatives of the state authority. Therefore, police legitimacy is crucial for policing in urban, suburban and rural settings.

The study presents the first test of police legitimacy in a non-Western cultural environment based on a national sample of citizens, which enables the generalisation of concepts of legitimacy, and its correlates in a different cultural setting. The study also presents the first attempt to test and compare the effect of the settings (i.e. rural, suburban and urban) on variables influencing residents' perceptions of police legitimacy.

Purpose: Urban centres have been argued to be crucial in the battle for sustainability. With more than half of the global population presently living in cities, the sustainability challenges of global warming, environmental degradation, social inequality, and economic recessions have continued to thrive. To this end, there have been efforts to revive and improve the existing physical and social structure of cities in a process known as urban regeneration. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of sustainability assessment frameworks in urban regeneration.

Approach: Aligning with the positivism philosophical position, and using document analysis as a data collection method, the study discusses the state of the art of urban regeneration and its application in recent times. The study also reviewed selected neighbourhood sustainability assessment frameworks as a tool for decision-making towards sustainability to know the extent in which they capture the goals of urban regeneration.

Findings: Findings showed that the uptake of the sustainability assessment frameworks could play a role in enhancing integration of local context, social wellbeing and economic prosperity, environmental quality, and stakeholder engagement at the neighbourhood level which are the main aspects of urban regeneration.

Theoretical and practical implications: In theory, this paper establishes the assumption that with some revisions, sustainability assessment frameworks could serve as a tool for decision-making in urban regeneration process. Practise-wise, urban regeneration at the neighbourhood level can now be measured against sustainability benchmarks and indicators.

The world over is becoming urbanized, and people are migrating to cities in large numbers in search of opportunities. The increased urbanization has posed challenges such as congestion, rising crime, and growing urban poverty. The governments respond by providing amenities such as schools, hospitals, and housing to meet to increase in demand for these facilities. However, there is a need for the provision of facilities that meets the expectations of the people, particularly on the proximity of amenities and bundles of utility-bearing housing characteristics. In an attempt to address the challenge mentioned, the study estimated the hedonic characteristics influencing the willingness to accept and willingness to pay for housing facilities in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Using a multiple linear regression model and artificial neural network, the study found out that properties with a bathroom, garage and large floor size have a higher value compared to properties without these facilities.When making decisions to acquire a property, buyers consider the availability of discounts and the prevailing property price. Overall, willingness to pay and accept decisions are mainly determined by location and the price at which homogeneous neighborhood properties were sold. Therefore, the study recommends that urban town planners and other housing authorities prioritize the construction of properties with larger floor areas, parking bays, and bathrooms using a cost-effective mechanism that makes the properties affordable to residents.

This paper aims to explore how environmental employment can promote desistance among criminalised children. Research demonstrates that being immersed in and interacting with the natural environment has a positive impact upon well-being and behaviour, including reduced aggressive and violent behaviours. However, how exposure to the natural environment might promote desistance amongst children with persistent criminal involvement is unclear.

This paper examines, through semi-structured interviews and participant observations, the experiences of n = 23 criminalised children aged 16–18 employed in outdoor work at a UK social enterprise.

The findings demonstrate how working in the natural environment can provide a safe space for children, where they can build positive relationships, learn valuable skills and reconnect with the world outside of the high-pressure, conflict-driven spaces in which they typically occupy.

This research highlights the relevance of the setting in which child rehabilitation takes place and the potential role of natural environments in providing places and opportunities which support pro-social identity development and desistance for children.

Climate change is occurring around us and impacting on our daily lives, meaning that we have to deal with our cities in a different way. There is also increasing awareness of the need for daily contact with green spaces and the natural environment in order to live a happy, productive and meaningful life.

This reflective essay tells the narrative of how urbanisation has been disconnecting humans from nature. Non-sustainable, non-resilient patterns of urbanisation, along with the neglect of inner-city areas, have resulted in fragmentation and urban decline, led to a loss of biodiversity, and caused the deterioration of ecosystems and their services. Urban regeneration projects allow us to “repair” and restore some of this damage whilst enhancing urban resilience. Connecting existing and enhanced ecosystems, and re-establishing ecosystems both within cities and at the peri-urban fringe is vital for strengthening ecosystem resilience and building adaptive capacity for coping with the effects of climate change.

Cities worldwide need to look for suitable solutions to increase the resilience of their urban spaces in the face of climate change. This essay explores how this can be achieved through the integration of nature-based solutions, the re-greening of neighbourhoods and by correctly attributing value to natural capital. Transforming existing cities and neighbourhoods in this way will enable ecosystems to contribute their services towards healthier and more liveable cities.

Place-based community events fulfil important functions, internally and externally. They provide opportunities for people from diverse communities and cultures to encounter each other, to participate in pleasurable activities in convivial settings and to develop mutual understanding. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of such events as a means of resisting or challenging the deleterious effects of territorial stigmatisation.

The authors explore two place-based community events in areas that have been subject to territorial stigmatisation: Govanhill in Glasgow, Scotland, and South Dunedin, New Zealand. They draw on in-depth case study methods including observation and interviews with key local actors and employ inductive analysis to identify themes across the datasets.

The demonstrate how neighbourhood events in both Glasgow and Dunedin actively seek to address some of the deleterious outcomes of territorial stigmatisation by emphasising strength and asset-based discourses about the areas they reflect and represent. In their planning and organisation, both events play an important mediating role in building and empowering community, fostering intercultural encounters with difference and strengthening mutuality within their defined places. They make use of public and semi-public spaces to attract diverse groups while also increasing the visibility of marginalised populations through larger showcase events.

The empirical element focuses only on two events, one in Glasgow, Scotland (UK), and the other in South Dunedin (New Zealand). Data generated were wholly qualitative and do not provide quantitative evidence of “change” to material circumstances in either case study community.

Helps organisers think about how they need to better understand their communities if they are to attract diverse participation, including how they programme public and semi-public spaces.

Place-based community events have significant value to neighbourhoods, and they need to be resourced effectively if they are to sustain the benefits they produce. These events provide an opportunity for diverse communities to encounter each other and celebrate what they share rather than what divides them.

This paper is the first to examine how place-based community events help resist narratives of territorial stigmatisation, which produce negative representations about people and their environments. The paper draws on ethnographic insights generated over time rather than a one-off snapshot which undermines some events research.

This study aims to identify the contextual and relational factors that enhance and limit the empowerment of young people from the perspective of social education professionals.

Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model made it possible to locate the narratives of the educators in the territory. These narratives include field diaries, i.e. hybrid narratives that include visual, written and spoken materials, and focus groups with 11 educators from different fields of action and related to youth empowerment projects.

According to these educators, the most important factors for empowering young people are their immediate environment, and the issues that affect them most. For these factors to be empowering, young people need to be accompanied, with support based on connectedness, horizontality and the creation of safe spaces and learning experiences. Both the microsystem and the mesosystem form the immediate reality for their action. Aware of this, educators do the work of connecting with the exosystem.

It is evident why communities are spaces with opportunities for youth empowerment, and the authors observe the need for more transversal and less welfare-based social and youth policies that generate empowerment instead of dependency.

This methodology evidenced the environmental structures of educators and the dissimilar levels to explore and understand the work of educators and the complex interrelationships, which play an important role in empowerment processes.

This research presents a new perspective that allows traditional qualitative reflection to be embedded in the bioecological model. All of this sheds light on relational ecosystems with young people and proposes youth policies, in this case, oriented towards empowerment.

The current study evaluated (1) characteristics of the community leadership development program associated with successful participant recruitment, (2) active ingredients that promoted fellow engagement and program completion and (3) how the program addressed blackness and racism.

Individual interviews were conducted with a representative subset of former program fellows.

Results indicated that offering training in small cohorts and matching fellows with individual mentors promoted program interest. Program strengths and unique ingredients included that the program was primarily led by people from the Black community, program malleability, and that the program was a partnership between fellows and leadership. Additionally, the program was responsive to fellows’ needs such as by adding a self-care component. Fellows also noted dedicated space and time to discuss race and racism. Results offer a unique theoretical perspective to guide leadership development away from the uniform or standardized approach and toward one that fosters diversity and equity in leadership.

Altogether, this work demonstrates how leadership development programs can be participant-informed and adapted to participants’ social and cultural needs.

In the Global North, affordable housing has evolved and thrived, and it is now gaining traction in the Global South, where governments have been vocal supporters of the concept. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the important criteria for selecting affordable housing units in Ghana.

A quantitative research approach was used, and a survey was administered to the residents. The data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The relative importance index technique was used to rank the important criteria, and the EFA technique was used to create a taxonomy system for the criteria.

The hierarchical ranking of the most significant criteria for selecting affordable housing includes community safety, waste management and access to good-quality education. Furthermore, the important criteria for selecting affordable housing are classified into two groups, namely, “sustainability criteria” and “housing demand and supply and social service provision”.

This study has implications for the real estate industry and construction stakeholders, as this will inform decision-making in terms of the design of affordable housing and the suitability of the location for the development.

These findings provide a baseline to support potential homeowners and tenants in their quest to select affordable housing. Furthermore, these findings will aid future longitudinal research into the indicators or criteria for selecting suitable locations for the development of low- and middle-income housing.