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?