Fear Space And Urban Planning

This book examines the phenomenon of urban fear – the increasing anxiety over crime and violence in Western cities despite their high safety – with a view to developing a comprehensive, critical, exploratory theory of fear, space, and urban planning that unravels the paradoxes of their mutual relations. By focusing especially on the southern European cities of Palermo and Lisbon, the book also aims to expand upon recent studies on urban geopolitics, enriching them from the perspective of ordinary, as opposed to global, cities. Readers will find enlightening analysis of the ways in which urban fear is (re)produced, including by misinformative discourses on security and fear and the political construction of otherness as a means of exclusion. The spatialization of fear, e.g., through fortification, privatization, and fragmentation, is explored, and the ways in which urban planning is informed by and has in turn been shaping urban fear are investigated. A concluding chapter considers divergent potential futures and makes a call for action. The book will appeal to all with an interest in whether, and to what extent, the production of ‘fearscapes’, the contemporary landscapes of fear, constitutes an emergent urban political economy.

How does the city’s urban fabric relate to crime and fear, and how is that fabric affected by crime and fear? Does the urban environment affect one’s decision to commit an offence? Is there a victimisation-related inequality within cities? How do crime and fear interrelate to inequality and segregation in cities of developing countries? What are the challenges to planning cities which are both safe and sustainable? This book searches for answers to these questions in the nature of the city, particularly in the social interactions that take place in urban space distinctively guided by different land uses and people’s activities. In other words, the book deals with the urban fabric of crime and fear. The novelty of the book is to place safety and security issues on the urban scale by (1) showing links between urban structure, and crime and fear, (2) illustrating how different disciplines deal with urban vulnerability to (and fear of) crime (3) including concrete examples of issues and challenges found in European and North American cities, and, without being too extensive, also in cities of the Global South.

Britain's streets have been transformed by the construction of new property - but it's owned by private corporations, designed for profit and watched over by CCTV. Have these gleaming business districts, mega malls and gated developments led to 'regeneration', or have they intensified social divisions and made us more fearful of each other? Anna Minton's acclaimed and passionate polemic, now updated to cover the UK property collapse and London's controversial Olympic Park, shows us the face of Britain today. It reveals the untested - and unwanted - urban planning that is changing not only our cities, but the nature of public space, of citizenship and of trust.

Pathologies of Modern Space traces the rise of agoraphobia and ties its astonishing growth to the emergence of urban modernity. In contrast to traditional medical conceptions of the disorder, Kathryn Milun shows that this anxiety is closely related to the emergence of "empty urban space": homogenous space, such as malls and parking lots, stripped of memory and tactile features. Pathologies of Modern Space is a compelling cultural analysis of the history of medical treatments for agoraphobia and what they can tell us about the normative expectations for the public self in the modern city.

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, Fourteen Volume Set embraces diversity by design and captures the ways in which humans share places and view differences based on gender, race, nationality, location and other factors—in other words, the things that make people and places different. Questions of, for example, politics, economics, race relations and migration are introduced and discussed through a geographical lens. This updated edition will assist readers in their research by providing factual information, historical perspectives, theoretical approaches, reviews of literature, and provocative topical discussions that will stimulate creative thinking. Presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage on the topic of human geography Contains extensive scope and depth of coverage Emphasizes how geographers interact with, understand and contribute to problem-solving in the contemporary world Places an emphasis on how geography is relevant in a social and interdisciplinary context

With the urbanization of the world's population proceeding apace and the equally rapid urbanization of poverty, urban theory has an urgent challenge to meet if it is to remain relevant to the majority of cities and their populations, many of which are outside the West. This groundbreaking book establishes a new framework for urban development. It makes the argument that all cities are best understood as ‘ordinary’, and crosses the longstanding divide in urban scholarship and urban policy between Western and other cities (especially those labelled ‘Third World’). It considers the two framing axes of urban modernity and development, and argues that if cities are to be imagined in equitable and creative ways, urban theory must overcome these axes with their Western bias and that resources must become at least as cosmopolitan as cities themselves. Tracking paths across previously separate literatures and debates, this innovative book - a postcolonial critique of urban studies - traces the outlines of a cosmopolitan approach to cities, drawing on evidence from Rio, Johannesburg, Lusaka and Kuala Lumpur. Key urban scholars and debates, from Simmel, Benjamin and the Chicago School to Global and World Cities theories are explored, together with anthropological and developmentalist accounts of poorer cities. Offering an alternative approach, Ordinary Cities skilfully brings together theories of urban development for students and researchers of urban studies, geography and development.

This book reviews the structure, applications, technologies, governance, environmental sustainability, smart communities, gender space and other issues related to smart cities. The book is divided into four parts. The first one entails the conceptual background, growth and development. The second part presents diverse issues on smart cities in terms of environmental sustainability, the role of the community, and gender space, among others. The third part revolves around economic and technological issues, and the fourth is a compilation of case studies in connection with smart cities. This collection of diverse issues from different locations presents a holistic view of smart cities contributed by authors who have undertaken research projects and implemented their own unique perspectives and methods. A variety of innovative concepts such as digital governance, polycentric structures, geodata repositories, geoweb services and advanced geospatial technologies in smart city planning, urban microclimatic parameters, and urban heat islands provide invaluable knowledge for researchers and practitioners in these fields.