four - Is urban regeneration criminogenic?

Summary

This chapter examines some of the taken-for-granted assumptions in the relationship between urban regeneration and crime and disorder reduction and opens them up to critical scrutiny. Against a backdrop where public–private partnerships are vigorously marketing their localities in efforts to secure inward investment, the place of crime and disorder in these imaginaries are outlined. The chapter comments on the assumptions underpinning neighbourhood regeneration and in particular their relationships with crime and disorder reduction strategies in the contemporary setting. It shows how initiatives, which have the ostensible aim of addressing the problems of social exclusion and urban crime and disorder in a ‘holistic’ way, are nevertheless exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, ‘social injustice’ in a range of ways in the contemporary setting with the consequences bearing down disproportionately on the most marginal groups. Indeed, urban regeneration strategies and policies are beset with irresolvable tensions that arise from attempting to marry neoliberal economic policies with a moral communitarian social project. The chapter draws on and applies recent criminological insights, informed by empirical observations from Merseyside, UK, and studies conducted in city-regions elsewhere, to support the view that urban regeneration has both criminogenic and criminalising consequences under current frameworks.

Social inclusion and ‘radical urban policy’

A number of writers have advocated the development of radical urban policies to prevent crime by addressing social injustice, economic exclusion, and political marginality, which lead to crime and victimisation (Donnison, 1995; Hope, 1995). They observed that reliance on the private market for the distribution of goods and services, particularly housing, has meant that those suffering the greatest economic and social hardships increasingly live in close proximity to each other, in the poorest quality housing stock, the concentration of crime closely reflecting poverty and disadvantage (Hope, 1998). The gap between the most disadvantaged and most affluent areas within cities widened between the 1981 and 2001 Censuses. Over these decades, wider social, economic, and political shifts brought in their wake chronic shortages of decent employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged groups and reductions in the value of welfare benefits that further impacted the living conditions of those living in already distressed localities.