Overview
AlterNation LLC is a leading innovative firm specializing in SafeGrowth®, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), and community development and planning. Based in Arvada, Colorado, AlterNation is led by founder and director Gregory Saville. The firm has a global reach both domestically and internationally, with strategic partners in Europe, Australasia, Latin America, and Canada.
AlterNation has a proven track record providing planning, consulting, and training services in 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED. This includes tactical urbanism with neighborhood popup art galleries, street markets, and intersection repair projects to activate streets. We help neighborhoods deploy digital GPS safety and fear mapping to diagnose crime threats. We apply our expertise in critical infrastructure protection and spatial forensics to provide expert witness testimony on offender search patterns during serious crime cases.
In 2007, AlterNation created our neighborhood planning system – SafeGrowth® – a community-based planning method for instituting annual safety plans and multi-disciplinary, problem-solving teams at the local level. This includes CPTED, community development, team-building, arts & culture, and environmental design.
AlterNation has operated since 2004 and our consultants have worked extensively with federal and municipal governments, private corporations, non-profits, police agencies, security companies, neighborhood groups and community associations.
Our clients include: the U.S. Department of Justice; the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, the City of New York; police departments in California, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Connecticut, Vermont, and Washington; corporations such as Deloitte Limited, Tect Aerospace, WXY Architects; and non-profits such as AARP and the Local Initiative Support Corporation.
Company Principal
Gregory Saville MCIP, ICCP
GREGORY SAVILLE is co-founder, CEO and managing director of AlterNation LLC. He is an urban planner, criminologist and former police officer, specializing in CPTED and SafeGrowth®, a program he created in 2007. He has published numerous articles and academic studies on CPTED and community safety, including SafeGrowth: Building Neighborhoods of Safety and Livability (Amazon.com).
Gregory has been conducting CPTED work since 1985 as a Canadian police officer specialized in crime prevention and urban planning. In 1996 he co-founded the International CPTED Association (ICA) where he coordinates the ICA course accreditation program and is an evaluator on the ICA certification program.
He founded the SafeGrowth® Network, a network of specialized experts from around the world who work on projects for the firm and conduct research and development on the SafeGrowth® philosophy. He Co-chairs the Police Society for Problem Based Learning, an association dedicated to advancing and modernizing the education of police officers. He is also a member of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing, an organization focused on police/community collaborations and the problem-oriented policing movement.
He has held a number of academic and research positions: Research Professor and Director of the Center for Advanced Public Safety Research at the University of New Haven; Research Associate at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, and; Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design.
Associate
JASON TUDOR AICP
JASON TUDOR is Community Engagement Advisor to the AARP Mega Region, leading the AARP unified community strategy. He was formerly Associate State Director of Community Outreach for the Louisiana office of AARP. AARP is the largest non-profit organization in the United States that works on behalf of adults 50+. Jason’s expertise is in advocating for policies at the local and state level that help communities become more age friendly.Jason has expertise in event security and security planning, local and partnership development.
Jason is Chair Elect of AARP’s Disaster Management Employee Resource Group and leads coordination of AARP’s disaster response efforts. This includes efforts to prevent fraud and support caregivers after disasters impact their community.Jason is a certified urban planner and is also certified in SafeGrowth®. He holds a Master’s Degree in Urban and Regional Planning and is a Certified Aging in Place Specialist from the National Association of Home Builders.
In his capacity at AARP, he has successfully advocated for local and statewide complete street laws and spearheaded grass roots organizations that support affordable and accessible housing policies. In 2010 his work included helping facilitate SafeGrowth® into a livability initiative within the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, a program that reduced violent crime by 87% and improved livability throughout the neighborhood.
Jason co-developed, with Gregory Saville, the SafeGrowth Community Livability Academy program, and has led implementation of Livability Academies in a number of cities across the U.S.
Associate
MATEJA MIHINJAC ICCP
MATEJA MIHINJAC is a criminologist and researcher from Slovenia currently completing doctoral research at Griffith University, Australia. Her thesis looks into the implementation of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). Mateja is a certified SafeGrowth® practitioner and has co-taught SafeGrowth® workshops in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and across the United States.
Mateja has conducted research and published widely on CPTED and SafeGrowth®, including co-authoring chapters of the book, SafeGrowth: Building Neighborhoods of Safety and Livability (2018). She has consulted and conducted research on protecting critical infrastructures using CPTED, as well as conducted CPTED assessments on new developments in hospital children’s centers, government facilities, and in high crime neighborhoods.
She is developer of Digitized Observation GPS fear mapping software and field tested the model during project work in Detroit and also while working in the Municipality of Saskatoon planning department. She has studied criminal justice issues in Europe and Australia since 2009. She worked in the Constitutional Court in Slovenia and has extensive computer and analytical skills including database management and geographic information systems.
She was elected as Director of the International CPTED Association (ICA) in 2017 and appointed Executive Director of ICA in 2019. She is also Coordinator of the ICA CPTED Certification Program and an evaluator on the ICA Course Accreditation Program.
Associate
CARL BRAY RPP, MCIP
CARL BRAY is an award-winning heritage planner, urban designer and landscape architect and Principal at Carl Bray and Associates Limited (Bray Heritage) based in Kingston, Ontario. He has over four decades of experience in heritage and land use planning for projects in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain.
Carl has a Ph.D. in Cultural Geography from University College London as well as a Masters of Urban Design (Oxford Brookes University) and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (University of Guelph). In addition to his consulting practice, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the graduate School of Urban and Regional Planning in Queens University.
Carl’s work includes advising the Ontario Government on heritage and land use planning policy as well as planning and urban design for downtown revitalization projects throughout the Canada and in the London, UK. Docklands. He has provided heritage conservation planning for a wide variety of building renovation projects in downtown Toronto .
Relevant projects include the conservation strategy for the recent renovation of the City of Kingston public library, Heritage Conservation District Studies and Plans involving regeneration of small communities and urban cores. He has undertaken many cultural tourism and interpretation projects across Northwestern and Northeastern Ontario.
Carl is a full member of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, and the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals.
Associate
IAN DAVIDSON
IAN DAVIDSON has experience in all aspects of policing including operations and complex criminal investigations in Canada. As a police supervisor he was a leader in basing police services on crime analysis and crime prevention.
He was the Chief of the Greater Sudbury Police Service, a 350-person police department in Sudbury, Ontario for 8 years. He served as the President of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. Ian left the policing profession in 2010 to become Ontario’s Commissioner of Community Safety. Eighteen months later her was appointed the Deputy Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services for the Province of Ontario. In this capacity he served as Ontario’s Deputy Solicitor General. He possesses considerable knowledge about all aspects of public safety service delivery in Canada.
After retiring from Ontario public service, he was a member of the Parole Board of Canada and also served as a labor arbitrator. He also provides security and investigative consulting services. In Sudbury he has provided security expertise on a large commercial property utilizing CPTED principles.
Ian has a Bachelor of Arts in Law and Political Science from Carleton University and studied at the University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management. He is a certified municipal manager. He is also a graduate of the FBI National Academy, University of Virginia. He has numerous awards for outstanding achievement including the Multicultural Folks Arts Association of Sudbury Outstanding Community Service Award, Member of the Order of Merit Governor General ofCanada 2007, Past Chair of the Sudbury Police-Aboriginal Community Committee and founding chair of the Sudbury Narcotics Task Force.
Associate
TARAH HODGKINSON
TARAH HODGKINSON is a certified SafeGrowth® practitioner and a faculty member and lecturer at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. She holds a PhD in Criminology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia as well as undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Sociology from Queen’s University, Kingston. Her areas of expertise include crime prevention, policing, community safety partnerships, collective violence, methodology and statistics, crime-mapping, and victimology.
Tarah has conducted research and published widely on CPTED and SafeGrowth, including co-authoring chapters of the book, SafeGrowth: Building Neighborhoods of Safety and Livability (2018).She conducted community Safety Audits while working with the Municipality of Saskatoon planning department.
Over the past five years Tarah has consulted and taught SafeGrowth® in New York City, Newark, Chicago, New York, Sacramento, and New Orleans in the United States and Saskatoon, Ottawa and Calgary in Canada. She is a Director on the Board of the International CPTED Association. Most recently she has worked on SafeGrowth and rural crime prevention in communities such as the Municipality of North Battleford, Saskatchewan and others in Queensland, Australia.
SELECTED PROJECTS
New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice/John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Research and Evaluation Center. New York City – 2017/2018
AlterNation provided crime prevention subject matter expertise and training for the New York Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to improve safety at public housing throughout the city. This work includes training police, housing authorities, resident groups, and local non-profits to create their own plans using prevention and planning methods.
To deliver these services we are a contracted firm with the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. AlterNation delivered dozens of local training sessions for 15 high crime public housing projects and this included residents, community workers, police officers, and tenant associations throughout 2017 – 2018.
REFERENCES
Jeff Butts, Executive Director, Center for Research Evaluation, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. jbutts@jjay.cuny.edu
SELECTED PROJECTS
Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Toronto – 2017/2018
AlterNation assembled a CPTED and critical infrastructure protection advisory team for the Government of Ontario, Legislative Assembly of Ontario (LAO) at Queen’s Park, Toronto. The project involved a multi-year site work feasibility study to restore the grounds, update the conservation strategies, preserve heritage features and ensure security and safety in and around the LAO.
During this project, AlterNation conducted extensive crime and safety research in both the interior and exterior portions of the site. The work included CPTED assessments and recommendations, site security, security technologies, and operational safety procedures. AlterNation collaborated with heritage planners, security engineers, urban designers, and landscape architects, as well as numerous representatives from the LAO, to ensure preservation of aesthetic and heritage elements of the property and as well as retain comfortable and safe public access.
REFERENCES
Gary Martin, Senior Project Management Consultant, Precinct Properties Branch. Legislative Assembly of Ontario. (416 325-0077) Gary_Martin@ontla.ola.org
Selected Projects
Local Initiative Support Corporation: Nation-wide – 2008 to present
AlterNation has been a regular crime prevention and safety training service for the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC), a national non-profit social development organization based in New York.
Since 2007 LISC and AlterNation LLC have run CPTED projects in troubled neighborhoods across the country including Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Haven, Newark, Houston, Miami and Seattle. We trained local project teams, including police, community groups and business owners, to use our SafeGrowth® methodology to resolve a variety of crime and disorder problems including gang violence, shootings, robberies, assaults and burglaries.
This work was conducted in Houston, Toledo, St. Paul, Seattle, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, New Haven, Dayton, and Milwaukee.
REFERENCES
Julia Ryan, Vice President, Community Safety and Health, Local Initiatives Support Corporation. JRyan@lisc.org
Selected Projects
Philadelphia HACE – Hispanic Association of Contractors and Entrepreneurs
2015 to present
AlterNation has been contracted with HACE in Philadelphia’s Latino community in Eastern North Philadelphia, known as El Centro de Oro. It was, at one time, among the highest crime and drug-dealing neighborhoods in the country and, while drug dealing remains a problem, overall the neighborhood has seen a dramatic crime decline and a cultural renaissance due, in part, to the SafeGrowth® training provided by AlterNation to HACE, residents, local police, shop owners, and families throughout the neighborhood.
This work is ongoing and currently involves establishing Philadelphia’s first SafeGrowth® Livability Academy, a program to recruit residents and teach basic skills in community development and crime prevention.
REFERENCES
Harry Tapia, Director of Operations, HACE Philadelphia. (PH) 215-426-8025 (ext 3004)
SELECTED PROJECTS
AARP – Hollygrove Livable Cities Project, New Orleans, LA – 2009 to 2013
AlterNation LLC was hired by the Louisiana Chapter of AARP, the largest national non-profit in the US, to deploy our SafeGrowth® planning system in New Orleans. The project area was the Hollygrove neighborhood, at the time one of the highest crime areas in the country. The community was fractured, suffered gang violence and fear, and the urban infrastructure and housing was in disarray. A third of 2000 homes were still abandoned after the 2005 Katrina Hurricane. AlterNation helped residents cut crime and rebuild their neighborhood.
The community addressed a range of street problems and worked with police to tackle gang issues, shootings and drugs. Within 3 years homicides declined from 28 to 3, resident engagement dramatically increased in neighborhood events (Night Out Against Crime attendance increased to over 200 residents), and cultural events, community gardens, and children’s play areas helped revitalize a once gang-run neighborhood.
REFERENCES
Jason Tudor, AARP Community Engagement Advisor, Miami. JTudor@aarp.org
