10,000 Eyes: A design-led community campaign in Rotterdam to tackle crime. Photo / supplied
10,000 Eyes: A design-led community campaign in Rotterdam to tackle crime. Photo / supplied
In 2011, the Delfshaven district in Rotterdam was plagued with street crime and shop burglaries. So they called in ... the designers.
Over one night, volunteers and police installed 10,000 pairs of eyes. They were spray painted on the footpaths, stuck to buildings and trams: they went everywhere. There wasno announcement: step one was simply to get people wondering what was going on. Even a pair of tower blocks had eyes attached.
10,000 Eyes: Rotterdam volunteer out at night to help with the anti-crime campaign. Image / supplied
Then came social media and a newspaper to explain things: 10,000 Eyes was a campaign to deter crime by stressing that everyone was watching. Street dinners and other events ramped up the community engagement. Police advised shopkeepers on security. Graffiti artists and schoolkids painted a giant street mural. Local rappers made a CD.
And there was a flash mob: a big crowd dancing to Elvis Presley's A Little Less Conversation.
Behavioural psychologists call it "a nudge": a small push in the right direction. One study in the English city of Newcastle found that people were three times more likely to put money in an honesty box if there was a pair of eyes watching them.
In Delfshaven, according to reports, the crime they were targetting dropped to ... zero.
Design for Living is a new series on urban life running weekly in Canvas.
