OTHER PROJECTS

KEY ISSUES

Urban violence and insecurity are two problems that prevail in contemporary urban society and increasingly affect the quality of life and urban development in large cities throughout the world, both in the North and in the South.

On the basis of two case studies conducted in the working-class areas of Barcelona (Spain) and Bogotá (Colombia), this project will explore public and private tools developed in response to residents’ safety concerns. In focusing on how urban planning aims to address the problems of insecurity, this research project will analyse the roles played by safety, insecurity, and violence in the radical transformation of cities and their residents, which, in turn, can reinforce spatial and social fragmentation. To what extent does sustainable public policy promote free movement within local boundaries? And how does social violence itself redefine territorial boundaries?

Studies show that urban planning can have a significant impact on safety if its policies take a preventive approach. But many areas of research remain to be developed:

• Ensuring that urban planning takes a preventive approach: the roles of all stakeholders need to be clearly defined.
• The municipality: a crucial actor to be mobilized and whose ability to put preventive plans into force must be promoted.
• The partnership: acknowledging the need for collective action urges all social actors to cooperate.
• The availability and use of weapons such as small arms: its consequences on levels of urban safety and the need for appropriate public policy must be analysed.
• A common element in both the North and the South: the need to organize public, private and collective policies.
• A comparative perspective that permits an inter-urban dialogue: learning from others’ experiences.

METHODOLOGY

This study will benefit from a comparative, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach. It combines a global, theoretical perspective on the issue with an analysis of urban methods used in working-class areas in two cities, one in the North (Barcelona) and one in the South
(Bogotá). The selected cities were identified on the basis of the
following criteria:

• Explicit engagement in the development or the implementation of local crime prevention policies
• Interest in inter-city exchange
• Existence of databases and adaptation of analytical tools
• Existence of the local capacity to run case studies and engage in a North–South exchange.

Research will be undertaken in close collaboration with the local authorities and their civil society partners, meeting their needs in terms of analysis, evaluation and the development of tools. The international partners seek to help build local capacities through this research project.

The proposed analytical techniques will vary and will be applied according to the identified focus areas and issues. These include surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and statistical analysis.

These research activities will subsequently develop a programme of exchange between cities through the UN-HABITAT Safer Cities Programme.

GOALS

• To review and analyse the lessons learnt concerning urban safety policies, focusing on the privatization of urban space and the policies of desegregation.
• To design a survey that will assess the levels of actual and perceived insecurity among inhabitants of the Barri La Mina area in Barcelona and Ciudad Bolivar area in Bogotá.
• To develop mechanisms of cooperation between cities on the issue of urban violence.
• To provide recommendations on strategies and policies to local and national authorities.
• To help develop tools to evaluate the success and sustainability of urban policies in terms of the reduction of both real and perceived insecurity and efforts to curb urban violence.
• To administer this research project in areas affected by violence and neighbourhoods notorious for insecurity in Barcelona and Bogotá, with the goal of integrating it into UN-HABITAT tools for the prevention of urban violence.

PARTNER INSTITUTIONS

• UN-HABITAT, Safer Cities Programme
• Urban Sociology Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL/LaSUR)
• Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva

FUNDING

Project funded by Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) - http://www.ruig-gian.org

CONTACTS

For more information, please contact:

Charlotte Boisteau
Coordinatrice du projet "Violences urbaines et politiques de
sécurité"
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Laboratoire de Sociologie Urbaine
CH-1015 Lausanne
SUISSE
Tel : +41 21 6936213
Fax : +41 21 6933840
E-mail : charlotte.boisteau@epfl.ch

BROCHURE

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