City Hall Safety

City Hall holds special value to all the people of Edmonton. It is a democratic space, a celebration space, a work space, a place to rest, to play, to learn, cool off, warm up, or even just to use the washrooms. Yet after it reopened when the worst of the pandemic was over, many people said that they felt unsafe there. But what does it really mean to feel safe for all the different users of the space? And how do we support safety there given the special role City Hall plays in our city?

The Safe and Healthy Communities Section of the Social Development Branch at the City of Edmonton is supporting safety at City Hall in a myriad of ways - providing training on Encouraging Positive Interactions, Psychological First Aid, Compassion to Action, etc; and having a social worker work at City Hall - building relationships and learning about the day-to-day realities. The RECOVER Urban Wellbeing team supported their work to learn what safety means to the various users of the space and what it might look like in that context. Our hunch was that it is about much more than the absence of threat.

We partnered with Dr. Jennifer Long at MacEwan University on this prototype. The students in her Fall 2022 ANTH 394-Ethnographic Research Methods course learned about the wellbeing framework, about the special role that City Hall plays in our city, and then conducted their own ethnographic research related to safety in the City Hall space. The student project website and their findings are here.

We also partnered with the Director of Lived Experience at EndPovertyEdmonton, Dunsi Strohschein, on this prototype. Together, we intended to conduct our own ethnographic research - once when it is cold outside, and again when the weather is warmer. This would have given us insights into how perspectives and the use of the space changes over the seasons.

We planned to see what insights emerged and what opportunities for action become apparent. We also planned to test a solution idea and see what difference it made. However, just as we were planning the ethnographic research with EndPoverty Edmonton, priorities shifted. Safety at City Hall was no longer as much as a concern. The RECOVER team shifted its focus to emerging City priorities.