We all want clean, safe cities. What’s the best way to get there?

by Kevin Reed

Look - I’m just a regular person.

I don’t run or manage cities. I’m not a person who studies cities (urbanist) or a regional planner. But I’m guessing most of you are also not those things. And any one of us can look around and see that a safe clean city of any size and diversity in a relatively free country like the USA is a challenge, whether it be Chicago or Miami, DC, or Dallas. Hell, it’s not easy in a small rural area either, despite the myths of everything being wonderful out in the sticks.

We all want safe, clean cities where we can go about our business in a free country, as free people. If we live in the city, then we want it to be safe and clean. If we’re visiting a city, we also want it to be safe and clean. Besides lunatics or messy criminals, seems like we all want the same thing!

So I wanted to ask: Who’s succeeding at large, clean, safe cities, and how are they getting there?

This week the US government took control of Washington DC in a response to “out of control” crime and the city being “dirty.” Without getting into the specifics of DC in the context of this event, which becomes an immediately political topic, I was interested in how cities become safe and clean globally. Does it take force, like we’re seeing in DC today?

Are there safe, clean cities today getting there by using military, police, and surveillance as their primary methods? Turns out that yes, absolutely there are.

Cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai (United Arab Emirates) rank high for safety and cleanliness. They accomplish this through strict rules and enforcement. Similar cities include Doha (Qatar) and Saudi Arabian cities like Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam.

Dubai - Man that place is clean! And super-safe! Photo attribution: Xiaotong Gao, Wiki Commons license

Especially in the UAE cities, there are harsh penalties that are consistently applied to deter crime and regulate daily behavior. These include high fines or jail time for littering, spitting, or vandalism.

There’s zero tolerance for drugs, so even microscopic traces in the bloodstream or on belongings can lead to minimum 4 years in prison. Certain prescription medications (like codeine) are banned without special permits.

There’s no homelessness in these cities, because mentally ill people are identified by police and removed for treatment or punishment if they’ve committed a crime. For citizens, social welfare programs, subsidized housing, and family support networks are expected to prevent homelessness. Government housing programs exist for low-income Emiratis. For others, you’re deported.

There are strong penalties for driving offenses, and jaywalking.

In addition, there are many other behavior controls. Public displays of affection like kissing or prolonged hugging (PH) can result in fines, jail time, and deportation. If you make an offensive gesture like some hand signals or swear in public (even in private conversations overheard by others) you can be punished with fines up to  ~$2,700 and possible imprisonment. You can be arrested for drunken behavior in public.

And then it just continues into things like speaking out against the government, which we can see is a pattern by governments in highly controlled societies. For criticizing the government, royal family, or Islam, you get prison terms and deportation. For posting “offensive” content on social media (including photos without consent), you get fines up to ~$136,000 and imprisonment. Using a VPN for “illegal” purposes (yes, including porn access) you get fines up to ~$545,000.

“Why do you owe half a million dollars?”

“I jerked off.”

There are plenty of other police/military-controlled cities as well, but many of them are dangerous and dirty, so they don’t count in this analysis.

So some cities are successfully using force to achieve a clean, safe city, but at the cost of freedom. And this is the USA we’re talking about, baby.

Can you do it without sacrificing freedom?

In cities like Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Tokyo, cleanliness and safety are achieved through strong civic cooperation, public trust in government, high taxes funding public services, and cultural norms favoring order and environmental responsibility. In well-functioning democracies like these, cleanliness is sustained because citizens buy into the social contract, and they voluntarily follow the rules they helped to shape. There are also diverse, immigrant-rich democratic cities that accomplish this as well, such as Vancouver BC, Sydney & Melbourne, Toronto, and Zurich.

Copenhagen. Clean, safe - and free. Photo credit: Jorge Láscar from Melbourne, Australia, Wiki Commons License

Safety in these cities comes from low levels of income inequality, high education levels, strong community cohesion, fair legal systems, and effective policing with public trust. This is in sharp contrast to authoritarian cities, where safety comes from heavy surveillance, severe penalties for crime, strong police presence, and sometimes limits on free speech and protest to maintain “public order.”

So you can have large, thriving cities that are clean, safe, and free – without a police state and top-down threats.

In authoritarian states, cleanliness is often enforced from above, sometimes with harsh penalties, meaning results can be quick but rely on continuous top-down pressure. And you’re still being controlled and suppressed as a citizen in such a city. Authoritarian safety tends to be security from crime but not necessarily security from the state. This makes perfect sense because there is no mechanism to keep the government in check, and human behavior takes advantage of that. Democratic safety tends to include both — people feel safe walking at night and expressing dissent, which is the key to being free.

And the USA is supposed to be free.

Cooperative democracies (Nordic countries, Japan, Switzerland) can match or outperform authoritarian systems on both cleanliness and safety without sacrificing personal freedom. Again, in the USA, this would seem to be a key point. The goals are achieved by fostering social trust, equitable wealth distribution, and transparency. In the USA today, we’re moving in the opposite direction.

Authoritarian systems (Singapore, Gulf states) can also deliver visibly clean, safe cities, but these are often the product of strict control and the credible threat of punishment, with less tolerance for dissent. This seems to be the way the US is headed under the current administration.

Singapore, just as an example, is sort of in the middle. A clean, safe city that’s slightly more free, and regulates itself with a combination of fear of harsh penalties but also with trust in the system.

When you rank freedom + safety + cleanliness together, almost all the top performers are free or semi-free democracies. Authoritarian systems are not free, even though their streets are spotless. As a free country, is that a price we want to pay? Especially if a clear alternative path is available?

And even in those UAE cities, there are social safety nets for citizens which we don’t have in the USA for things like healthcare, mental care, and housing.

This is how the world’s cleanest and safest cities align with their political freedom scores, making the “cooperation vs. control” contrast instantly clear.

I’m just learning about this today, but the path already seems pretty clear if you live in the USA. We have a Constitution that defines a free country. A spotless, terrified police state is not what the product of such a country would seem to be. Rather, cities can be safe and clean while remaining free. It just takes courage, corporation, time, and enough love for the country and the people in it to make it happen.

People will say “We’re not a Nordic country.” But we’re also not an UAE-type country. And we can do whatever we want. Countries are systems that humans make up. We can take what works and pitch what doesn’t.

Do we love the USA enough to keep improving it, keep evolving, and keep valuing all the people that live here?

We’re seeing it play out right now. We can choose the better option.

Thumbnail/cover photo credit: Wilsons Aviation Adventures, Wiki Commons License