URBLOG

Surveillance city

These cities within cities are eating up Britain's streets

Anna Minton on how urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards.

This monitoring and surveillance of innocent activities, which does not necessarily require anti-terror laws, is taking place all around Britain as a result of the growing private ownership and private control of cities. Liverpool One, which spans 34 streets in the heart of Liverpool, is effectively owned by the Duke of Westminster's property company, Grosvenor, which leased the entire site, including streets and public places, from the council for 250 years. Cabot Circus in Bristol, Highcross in Leicester and what promises to be the biggest of all, Stratford City in London, are all owned and run by property companies.

How not to prevent violent extremism

Spooked: a report published  by the Institute of Race Relations finds that the government's Prevent programme for tackling extremism fosters division, mistrust and alienation.

"The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to risk losing funding and facing isolation as an 'extremist', while those organisations which support the government are rewarded. "

LSE Autumn Public Lectures

Events open to the LSE community and the public

 

Tuesday 6 October, 6.30-8pm

Bringing the Penal State Back In

SPEAKER: Professor Loïc Wacquant

 

Monday 19 October, 6.30-8pm

Beijing Inside Out: Caochangdi

SPEAKERS: Robert Mangurian, Mary-Ann Ray

 

Tuesday 10 November, 6.30-8pm

 The First Legacy Games: the physical and

socio-economic transformation of East London

SPEAKERS: Andrew Altman, Councillor Paul Brickell,  Ricky Burdett

 

Tuesday 17 November, 6.30-8pmC

Cities, Design and Climate Change

SPEAKERS: Professor Saskia Sassen, Professor Richard Sennett

“I’m sorry, you can’t drink here.”

A Public Nuisance:  Tim Abraham investigates the increasing control of public space.

“Something is lost when our understanding of the public is reduced to consumers on best behaviour.”

Our city centres are turning into secure enclaves that erode trust

Can we banish fear and loathing from the city?

While the centres of our cities are turning into secure enclaves, high security is also becoming an ever bigger feature of the homes we live in.

The real issue is that most people simply don’t know what is happening, presuming that because the streets have always been public, as far as they are aware, they will continue to be so.

Review by Owen Hatherley

New report compares community revitalization in the United States and the United Kingdom

Community Revitalization in the US and the UK

A new report from iCoCo and the Urban Institute compares approaches to community revitalization, community cohesion and sustainable neighbourhoods in cities across the UK and the US.

Fear and the city

In July, citizens of ten major world cities were surveyed for the World Social Summit (WSS) to find out how London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, New York, Mumbai, Beijing, Tokyo, São Paulo and Cairo experience fear and insecurity. The report, Fear in the Mega-Cities,  presented to the WSS in Rome  reveals much about the state of global anxiety. 

Frank Furedi in New Statesman

Mapping "endz" and "boundaries"

Young people and territoriality in British cities 

A new study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundationinvestigates territorial behaviour by young people to see whether this imposes significant constraints on their lives, and to consider the implications of this kind of behaviour for communities.

Full report          My neighbourhood - young people's maps

Rowena Davis in The Guardian

'Globalisation may be breaking down international boundaries, but children are increasingly confining themselves to their immediate neighbourhoods. Many of them inhabit a world where stepping onto the wrong side of the road is insult enough to justify attack, where postcodes mark out borders that can't be crossed and where urban tribes spend their lives patrolling areas as small as 200 sq metres.'

 

FEARLESS: combatting global anguish

Sessions of the the World Social Summit meeting in Rome will consider the issue of metropolitan insecurity. Big cities are where modern fears are concentrated (crime, social insecurity, poverty, terrorism, various type of risks and environmental hazards). Through a research realised by WSS on ten big cities around the world, WSS will analyse the current conditions of urban life and study the solutions that have been implemented to reduce insecurity. The Summit will endeavour to shed light on the future path of fear, starting from the reconstruction of cultural evolution of fear, to then analyse its possible future projection, and the role of science and technology in generating or contrasting anxieties. The central theme of WSS 2008 will seek to identify the instruments and the models that modern societies use to face up to anxieties, try to engage them, thus creating a more secure and fearlessenviroment.

Climate of fear grips sunny Rome  - The Guardian

Rome's citizens are most scared in the world   Daily Telegraph

Loïc Wacquant in London and Manchester

Loïc Wacquant, author of Urban Outcasts, will be lecturing in London and Manchester at the end of May.

"Drawing on a wealth of original fieldwork, surveys and historical data, Urban Outcasts casts new light on the explosive conjunction of mounting misery and stupendous affluence evident in the cities of advanced and advancing countries throughout the globe."

The lectures will be at the Royal Society of Arts on 28th May and Manchester University on 29th May (details to be posted).

Urban Outcasts was the subject of a special feature of a recent edition of CITY.