Download - Public space and security
Public Space and Security
Stephen Graham Newcastle University
Public space and security
• 1. Increasing securitisation, fragmentation and privatisation of public space
• Response to: growing social inequality; • market-based ideologies of urban development
(‘neoliberalisation’); • competition between places as sites of investment, tourism and
consumption; • growing fears amongst urbanites about risks of mixing on streets; • and growing norm of mall-like, suburban environments in
people’s lives
Above all, the idea of the ‘Revanchist City’ where business and consumption elites work to ‘take back’ the city centre they feel
they’ve ‘lost’ to the poor in the name of ‘regeneration’ or ‘renaissance’
Revenge on urban poor in the name of ‘security’?
* Anti-social behaviour orders
Criminalisation of begging, Big Issue selling, groups of young people ‘loitering’, homeless, street vending etc
Extend powers of corporate retailers
The Splintering Urbanism Thesis (Graham and Marvin, 2001)
• Broad pressures to shift from monopolistic, universal, and redistributive planning and public space and infrastructure provision to fragmented, splintered, systems
• (Neo)liberalisation, globalisation, and dominant applications of new technology
• Shift from progressive cross subsidies to regressive ones • Growth of ‘premium network’ spaces which overlay, run
through, or are increasingly separated from rest of city • Threatens to deepen urban polarisation • But patchy: not universal !
Polycentric urbanism
Streets and Urban Public Spaces - Growth of Private Consumption Enclaves
Urban Landscapes Increasingly Reflect This Polarisation: e.g. Liverpool One: Privatised City Centre Enclave
Residualisation of Public Streets: Hong Kong
Local Bypass of the Street: Boston
Business Improvement Districts (BIDs): “Malls Without walls’
Growth of Street CCTV • 6 million cameras in UK • Average Londoner viewed 300 times per day! • Linked to privatization and enclosure of public
space and normalisation of shopping-mall style controls: “malls without walls”
• Moral panics e.g. Jamie Bulger murder, Liverpool • Geographical diffusion towards near ubiquity • “Surveillance creep” as extra functions added • Militarisation of law enforcement: ‘Homeland
Security’
CCTV on a Typical NYC Shopping Street
Domestic Fortressing and Secession of Elites
e.g. Post-Apartheid S. Africa
Gating now norm around many US cities (e.g. Phoenix)
Global Offshoring of Elites (Offshore finance
cities)
Even Efforts at Complete Territorial
Secession
(e.g. Freedom Ship “The City at Sea”)
see http://
www.freedomship.com/
Event Space (AIPAC summit, Sydney, UEFA
Euros, Switzerland)
New Elite Technology Districts e.g.
Kuala Lumpur
Splintering of Key Financial Cores
as ‘Security Zones’
e.g. London’s Ring of Steel
London’s Ring of Steel and New York’s
New ‘Lower Manhattan Security
Initiative’
Conclusion
• Need to be critical of use of one idea of ‘security’ – for elites, investors, wealthy, tourists, property owners etc. – to justify the active undermining of the social and economic welfare and security of marginalised and powerless groups!
• Must look beneath official and orthodox rhetorics of developers, urban managers and organisations like BIDs
• Case study : 1990s New York (Video) • How are certain ideas of ‘security’ being used
to re-make the public spaces in New York example?
• What are these ideas of ‘security’? Security for whom? Security from what?
• What are the social and geographic effects on the City?