1. Public Space and Security
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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 !

6. Polycentric
urbanism

7. Streets and Urban Public Spaces Growth of Private Consumption Enclaves

8. Urban Landscapes Increasingly Reflect This Polarisation: e.g.
Liverpool One: Privatised City Centre Enclave

9. Residualisation of Public Streets: Hong Kong

10. Local Bypass of the Street: Boston

11. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs):
“Malls Without walls’

13. 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’

14. CCTV on a Typical NYC Shopping Street

15. Domestic Fortressing
and Secession of Elites
e.g. Post-Apartheid
S. Africa

16. Gating now norm around many US cities
(e.g. Phoenix)

18. 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/

20. Event Space (AIPAC
summit, Sydney, UEFA
Euros, Switzerland)

21. New Elite
Technology
Districts e.g.
Kuala Lumpur

22. Splintering of Key
Financial Cores
as ‘Security
Zones’
e.g. London’s
Ring of Steel

23. London’s Ring of
Steel and New York’s
New ‘Lower
Manhattan Security
Initiative’

24. 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

25. • 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?