We all want to feel safe. Our ability to use and enjoy our cities and the relationships we establish with one another depend on this. Moreover, unsafe environments always exclude the most vulnerable.

However, after years of community safety being high on the political agenda, as a response not only to geopolitical anxieties but also a growing feeling of social disarticulation,  we don’t seem to feel safer –in fact, most studies suggest we feel less and less safe in urban environments, and more and more distrustful of people we don’t know.

This blog will thus address issues related to how safe people feel in cities, and what is being done to improve the overall feeling of security from a critical –or at least skeptical- perspective: if years of monitoring behavior in public space as a response to the growing angst about incivility and anti-social behavior have not achieved the expected results, shouldn’t we be exploring other policies? Is it justifiable to continue to spend public money on regulating behavior and public space when the results of such policies are unclear?

And, more importantly, is it possible that the kinds of behaviors being clamped down offer some potential for civility and social rearticulation?