Surveillance in the city: Primary definition and urban spatial order

Abstract

The shift to an entrepreneurial city has inaugurated changes in the surveillance and control of urban space through a myriad of technologies and legal-moral ordering practices. This has occurred as cities attempt to reimage and remarket themselves in the context of regional, national and international inter-urban competition for capital investment. A re-emphasis on the visual in the politics of the street underpins changes in the primary definition over urban spatiality and statecraft. This article examines these powerful definitional processes as a strategy to create visually pleasing space that is impacting on discourses and practices of surveillance that target forms of ‘crime’ and ‘incivility’ and contribute to the spatial production process itself. It is argued that in producing urban spaces of an entrepreneurial kind, contemporary surveillance practices need to be placed within wider debates about continuing urban inequality and the meaning of spatial justice.