By Brunilda Pali and Marc Schuilenburg
The “smart city” has become the latest urban buzzword to rethink the elementary functions of the modern city. It attracts money, corporate power, and private tech companies (e.g. Tesla, Google, Cisco, IBM). An important reason why the smart city has become such a popular brand is the fact that it is presented as a value-neutral, objectivist, rational, and evidence-base concept. In this paper, we will question what we call the “non-ideology” ideology of the smart city and argue that the phenomenon of the smart city demands a critical criminological response as much as a philosophical one. First, we argue that instruments which were traditionally classified as tools of surveillance and control are now rebranded as essential components of the smart city-package in order to increase the properness of the city. Second, we consider how the smart city oscillates within a social imaginary populated by feelings of fear and fantasy. We conclude by suggesting that the smart city not only reproduces the social order, but also produces new social categories out of new forms of smart governance of crime and disorder.

Critical Criminology; 2019; Vol. 27; iss. 4; pp. 1 - 14

Edited ByVania Ceccato, Mahesh K. Nalla.

No city environment reflects the meaning of urban life better than a public place. A public place, whatever its nature—a park, a mall, a train platform or a street corner—is where people pass by, meet each other and at times become a victim of crime. With this book, we submit that crime and safety in public places are not issues that can be easily dealt with within the boundaries of a single discipline. The book aims to illustrate the complexity of patterns of crime and fear in public places with examples of studies on these topics contextualized in different cities and countries around the world. This is achieved by tackling five cross-cutting themes: the nature of the city’s environment as a backdrop for crime and fear; the dynamics of individuals’ daily routines and their transit safety; the safety perceptions experienced by those who are most in fear in public places; the metrics of crime and fear; and, finally, examples of current practices in promoting safety. All these original chapters contribute to our quest for safer, more inclusive, resilient, equitable and sustainable cities and human settlements aligned to the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

London. Taylor and Francis. Imprint Routledge. 2020. 484p.

By Wilhelm Heitmeyer Simon Howell Sebastian Kurtenbach Abdul Rauf Muhammad Zaman Steffen Zdun. This book is the first comprehensive study of the street code concept attempting to determine if this concept and process exists in milieus beyond the United States, and if so where, and when it does, its extent, and how and why it is manifested. In sum, the purpose of the study is to provide “an international, cross-cultural comparison of the norms which define and make meaningful violence in three countries, namely Germany, South Africa, and Pakistan.

Open Access (2019) 196p.