ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Ancestral Intelligence for a CPTED Sustainable Intervention in Villa Andes del Sur, Chile
Macarena Rau Vargas, Ph.D.
ICA President; CPTED Region Corporation President; PBK Consulting Director, Chile
First published: 12 March 2025
Cite the article: Rau Vargas, M. (2025). Ancestral intelligence for a CPTED sustainable intervention in Villa Andes del Sur, Chile. The CPTED Journal of The International CPTED Association. Available at: https://www.thecptedjournal.net/2025-rau-vargas.html
Author correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract
The following article describes the application of the CPTED methodology, from a Third Generation CPTED approach, in a neighbourhood called Villa Andes del Sur, located in the communal limit between the Municipality of Puente Alto and La Florida, in the metropolitan region of Santiago de Chile, during 2021-2022. This villa has struggled the past two years with theft, extreme COVID consequences and social stigmatization.
Third Generation CPTED (Mihinjac and Saville, 2019) incorporates principles such as Sustainability and Public Health Sustainability into the principles of natural surveillance, natural access control, territorial reinforcement, maintenance, and community participation from First and Second Generation CPTED. The principle of “community participation” was never included as a specific principle of First Generation CPTED, it was only adopted that way within the Latin American region. This article will describe how the CPTED project of Villa Andes del Sur, activated what is mentioned in anthropological literature as AI[1] (Ancestral Intelligence). AI is defined as the ability to access and store information linked to survival process in the context of human evolution through the lengthy process of change by which people originated from their ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from their ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. Linked to this idea is the concept that, distinct from the social brain hypothesis (Dunbar, 2009), cultural intelligence (known as the cultural brain hypothesis), dictates that human brain size, cognitive ability and intelligence has increased over generations due to cultural information from a mechanism known as social learning.[2]
Cultural intelligence could explain why elderly people in a difficult and challenging COVID scenario manage to reduce the perception of insecurity, crimes of opportunity and increase community cohesion (in addition to female empowerment of the grandmothers of the Villa Andes del Sur).
In this implementation, CPTED is outlined as the new Ancestral Intelligence given that the community is mainly composed of older female adults and the close relationship that exists in the transfer of ancestral wisdom and intelligence from grandmothers to their children and grandchildren, especially in relation to the sustainability principle of Third Generation CPTED.
Keywords: CPTED Third Generation, Ancestral Intelligence (AI), crime, extreme COVID context, social stigmatization
[1] Evolution of human intelligence. (2022, September 7). From Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence
[2] The hypothesis also predicts a positive correlation between species with a higher dependency and more frequent opportunities for social learning and overall cognitive ability. This is because social learning allows species to develop cultural skills and strategies for survival. In this way it can be theorized that heavily cultural species should in theory be more intelligent.
Cite the article: Rau Vargas, M. (2025). Ancestral intelligence for a CPTED sustainable intervention in Villa Andes del Sur, Chile. The CPTED Journal of The International CPTED Association. Available at: https://www.thecptedjournal.net/2025-rau-vargas.html
Author correspondence: [email protected]
DOWNLOAD PDF
***
Abstract
The following article describes the application of the CPTED methodology, from a Third Generation CPTED approach, in a neighbourhood called Villa Andes del Sur, located in the communal limit between the Municipality of Puente Alto and La Florida, in the metropolitan region of Santiago de Chile, during 2021-2022. This villa has struggled the past two years with theft, extreme COVID consequences and social stigmatization.
Third Generation CPTED (Mihinjac and Saville, 2019) incorporates principles such as Sustainability and Public Health Sustainability into the principles of natural surveillance, natural access control, territorial reinforcement, maintenance, and community participation from First and Second Generation CPTED. The principle of “community participation” was never included as a specific principle of First Generation CPTED, it was only adopted that way within the Latin American region. This article will describe how the CPTED project of Villa Andes del Sur, activated what is mentioned in anthropological literature as AI[1] (Ancestral Intelligence). AI is defined as the ability to access and store information linked to survival process in the context of human evolution through the lengthy process of change by which people originated from their ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from their ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. Linked to this idea is the concept that, distinct from the social brain hypothesis (Dunbar, 2009), cultural intelligence (known as the cultural brain hypothesis), dictates that human brain size, cognitive ability and intelligence has increased over generations due to cultural information from a mechanism known as social learning.[2]
Cultural intelligence could explain why elderly people in a difficult and challenging COVID scenario manage to reduce the perception of insecurity, crimes of opportunity and increase community cohesion (in addition to female empowerment of the grandmothers of the Villa Andes del Sur).
In this implementation, CPTED is outlined as the new Ancestral Intelligence given that the community is mainly composed of older female adults and the close relationship that exists in the transfer of ancestral wisdom and intelligence from grandmothers to their children and grandchildren, especially in relation to the sustainability principle of Third Generation CPTED.
Keywords: CPTED Third Generation, Ancestral Intelligence (AI), crime, extreme COVID context, social stigmatization
[1] Evolution of human intelligence. (2022, September 7). From Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence
[2] The hypothesis also predicts a positive correlation between species with a higher dependency and more frequent opportunities for social learning and overall cognitive ability. This is because social learning allows species to develop cultural skills and strategies for survival. In this way it can be theorized that heavily cultural species should in theory be more intelligent.
