Urban Studies

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information

Click here for more information

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Raco, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 9, 1869-1887 (2003)
DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000106645
© 2003 Urban Studies Journal Limited

Remaking Place and Securitising Space: Urban Regeneration and the Strategies, Tactics and Practices of Policing in the UK

Mike Raco

Department of Geography, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AB, UK, M.Raco{at}Reading.ac.uk

Urban regeneration programmes in the UK over the past 20 years have increasingly focused on attracting investors, middle-class shoppers and visitors by transforming places and creating new consumption spaces. Ensuring that places are safe and are seen to be safe has taken on greater salience as these flows of income are easily disrupted by changing perceptions of fear and the threat of crime. At the same time, new technologies and policing strategies and tactics have been adopted in a number of regeneration areas which seek to establish control over these new urban spaces. Policing space is increasingly about controlling human actions through design, surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement. Regeneration agencies and the police now work in partnerships to develop their strategies. At its most extreme, this can lead to the creation of zero-tolerance, or what Smith terms 'revanchist', measures aimed at particular social groups in an effort to sanitise space in the interests of capital accumulation. This paper, drawing on an examination of regeneration practices and processes in one of the UK's fastest-growing urban areas, Reading in Berkshire, assesses policing strategies and tactics in the wake of a major regeneration programme. It documents and discusses the discourses of regeneration that have developed in the town and the ways in which new urban spaces have been secured. It argues that, whilst security concerns have become embedded in institutional discourses and practices, the implementation of security measures has been mediated, in part, by the local socio-political relations in and through which they have been developed.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
Prog Hum GeogrHome page
M. Jayne, G. Valentine, and S. L. Holloway
Geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness: a review of progress
Progress in Human Geography, April 1, 2008; 32(2): 247 - 263.
[Abstract] [PDF]


Home page
European Urban and Regional StudiesHome page
M. Raco
Securing Sustainable Communities: Citizenship, Safety and Sustainability in the New Urban Planning
European Urban and Regional Studies, October 1, 2007; 14(4): 305 - 320.
[Abstract] [PDF]


Home page
European Urban and Regional StudiesHome page
C. Paskell
`Plastic Police' Or 'Community Support'?: The Role of Police Community Support Officers Within Low-Income Neighbourhoods
European Urban and Regional Studies, October 1, 2007; 14(4): 349 - 361.
[Abstract] [PDF]


Home page
Prog Hum GeogrHome page
R. Yarwood
The geographies of policing
Progress in Human Geography, August 1, 2007; 31(4): 447 - 465.
[Abstract] [PDF]


Home page
Crime Media CultureHome page
R. Coleman
Surveillance in the city: Primary definition and urban spatial order
Crime Media Culture, August 1, 2005; 1(2): 131 - 148.
[Abstract] [PDF]