Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
127
Societal Policies
Although there are many situations in which policies at an urban level can reduce
crime rates it must be accepted that wider societal factors are also at work, issues
that can only be effected treated by action at a state level. Although this is really
beyond the scope of this urban-based review some general concluding points must
be made. For example, many studies have shown that crime seems to be positively
correlated with unequal societies (Wilkinson
2004
; Wilkinson and Pickett
2009
). So
the most obvious way of improving the situation is to reduce the level of inequality
within a society, not in absolute income levels compared to other countries but rela-
tively within a state. Many people have argued that inequality is usually the result of
structural factors, the seemingly hidden mechanisms in society that create unequal
rewards, which means some groups experience poverty, ill-health, lack of oppor-
tunity and oppression, and leads some into criminality. This is so often taken for
granted and naturalised that the worse-off are assumed to be the ones at fault, creat-
ing additional marginalization through stigmas and ideological discourses which
justifies repression. Scheper-Hughes (
2004
, p. 14) has argued on the basis of her
anthropological studies of violence in many parts of the world that although it is the
affluent who have the power, they often see themselves as being endangered. Hence
she argues that the affluent are really the 'endangering' classes because they benefit
from the unequal rewards. For most of the twentieth century the development of
progressive social policies have drastically reduced inequality levels, but as Chap. 3
has shown, the last two decades has seen increasing inequalities, although the basic
income safety net in most developed countries is still present, something that still
needs to be applied to many countries of the developing world. However, few urban
areas, except city-states, have the powers to undertake the task of reducing societal
inequalities effectively, for the financing and delivery of such social welfare mea-
sures, as well as other societal based programmes, are mainly a matter of national
jurisdiction, so they are mainly beyond the remit of this review. Nevertheless, as
Chap. 3 has shown, there are a number of urban policies that can help reduce the
level of inequalities, from housing provision by municipalities, to charity organiza-
tions such as food banks, as well as more fundamental programmes that ensure that
decision-making in the city is transparent, fair to all and involves effective citizen
participation.
128
Security Policies
Space constraints mean that this review has not dealt with additional problems that
cause threats to people living in urban areas that are more usually described as relat-
ing to the security of the population. Again relatively few of these are incorporated
in what are described as Safe City strategies, yet need to be identified for the sake
of completeness. Some of these issues have been dealt with in other chapters, such
as finding ways of making urban places more resilient against natural disasters from
natural hazards (Chap. 9). Although many community and urban scale policies can
