URBAN FUTURES: HOW SECURITY AND ASPIRATIONS TO COSMOPOLITANISM RECONFIGURE THE CITY CENTRE
A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities
2014
ELISA PIERI
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Department of Sociology
Contents Abstract ...... 5
Declaration ...... 6 Copyright statement ...... 6 Acknowledgements ...... 7
Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 9
Chapter 2 Methodology and Research Design ...... 19 2.1 The Contribution of Science and Technology Studies ...... 20 2.1.1 Expectations, Visions and Futures ...... 21 2.1.2 Multi-Stakeholder Engagement, Contested Knowledge and Up-Streaming Participation ...... 22 2.1.3 Socially Robust Policy Making ...... 24 2.2 The Contribution of Surveillance Studies, Governmentality and Biopolitics ...... 25 2.3 The Contribution of Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis ...... 28 2.4 Mixed-Methods ...... 30 2.4.1 Documentary and Media Analysis ...... 30 2.4.2 Interviews and Focus Groups ...... 31 2.5 Conclusions ...... 33
Chapter 3 Researching Manchester City Centre ...... 35 3.1 Manchester ...... 35 3.2 The City Centre ...... 45 3.3 Media ...... 50 3.3.1 Recurrent Themes and Portrayals of Manchester in Local Printed Media ...... 51 3.4 Conclusions ...... 56
Chapter 4 Security and the City: Risk, Securitisation and the Built Environment ...... 59 4.1 Risk ...... 61 4.2 Risk and the City ...... 63 4.3 The Process of Securitisation ...... 69 4.4 Security by Design ...... 73 4.4.1 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) ...... 75 4.4.2 The UK Secured by Design (SBD) Scheme ...... 81 4.4.3 Designing out Terrorism and the UK Legacy ...... 84 4.5 Branding and the Security Paradox ...... 88 4.6 Conclusions ...... 91
Chapter 5 Stakeholders’ Views of City Centre Safety and of Security by Design ...... 93 5.1 Stakeholders’ Views, Values and Experiences of Manchester City Centre’s Safety and Security ...... 93 5.2 Feeling Vulnerable? Stakeholders’ Take on the Disjoint Between Fear and Incidence of Crime ...... 96 5.3 Stakeholders’ Take on Variability of Risks and Risk Exposure ...... 102 5.4 Stakeholders’ Views, Values and Experiences of Everyday Security by Design Solutions ...... 104
2 5.5 Stakeholders’ Views of Security by Design for Temporary Events ...... 111 5.5.1 Participants’ Views of the Ring of Steel ...... 111 5.5.2 Participants’ Views of Village Gating during Pride ...... 118 5.6 Conclusions ...... 126
Chapter 6 Security and Surveillance in the Sensor City ...... 129 6.1 ICTs and Visibility in the Sensor City ...... 130 6.2 Theorising Virtual Surveillance ...... 134 6.3 Configurations of Surveillance in Manchester City Centre ...... 138 6.3.1 CCTV in Manchester City Centre: Stakeholders’ Experiences and Views ...... 139 6.3.2 Ubiquitous Surveillance ...... 141 6.3.3 Identity Dominance ...... 141 6.3.4 Networked and Clustered Surveillance: Public-Private Hybrids ...... 143 6.3.5 Resident Databases...... 144 6.3.6 Para-Policing and Soft-Policing in the Sensor City ...... 148 6.3.7 Shop a Looter ...... 150 6.3.8 Proactive Policing ...... 153 6.3.9 Exclusion Zones ...... 156 6.4 Conclusions ...... 159
Chapter 7 Cosmopolitanism ...... 163 7.1 The Current Cosmopolitan Turn ...... 163 7.2 A Critique of Cosmopolitanism ...... 165 7.3 Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism ...... 167 7.4 Banal Cosmopolitanism and the Regeneration of Manchester ...... 168 7.5 Cosmopolitanism in Local Policy and Promotional Discourses ...... 169 7.6 Mapping Participants’ Views of Cosmopolitanism in Manchester City Centre ...... 173 7.6.1 Diversity versus Cosmopolitanism ...... 175 7.6.2 Cosmopolitan Built Environment and Practices ...... 177 7.6.3 Cosmopolitanism, Danger and Security ...... 180 7.7 Conclusions ...... 181
Chapter 8 Stakeholders’ Priorities and the Future(s) of Manchester City Centre ...... 183 8.1 Future Priorities and Security ...... 183 8.2 Public Space ...... 189 8.3 Resident Population, Property Development and Housing ...... 192 8.4 Hospitality, Leisure and Activity Planning ...... 200 8.5 Partnership and ‘Community’ ...... 203 8.6 Boundaries, Mobility and Diversity ...... 207 8.7 Conclusions ...... 208
Chapter 9 Conclusions ...... 211 9.1 Future Research ...... 223
Appendices ...... 226 Appendix 1: Details of Participants ...... 226 Appendix 2: Maps of Manchester ...... 229 Appendix 3: Media ...... 231 3a) Assembling the Manchester Evening News (MEN) Dataset ...... 231
3 3b) Coverage of the August 2011 Unrest ...... 231 3c) MEN Coverage of Other Manchester Events ...... 232 3d) Stakeholders’ Views of Manchester in the Media ...... 232 3e) Stakeholders’ Perceptions of the Role of the Media ...... 234 Appendix 4: Fieldwork Schedules and Prompts ...... 236 4a ) Interview Schedule and Prompts ...... 236 4b) Focus Group Schedule and Prompts ...... 239 Appendix 5: Images of Temporary Events’ Securitisation and Gating...... 243 5a) Photos of Ring of Steel, Manchester City Centre ...... 243 5b) Photos of Gating for Gay Pride 2012, Manchester City Centre ...... 247 Appendix 6: Surveillance & Society Peer-Reviewed Journal Article ...... 248 Appendix 7: Cosmopolitanism Peer-Reviewed Book Chapter ...... 249
Figures Figure 1 – Excerpt from Police Questionnaire ...... 98 Figure 2 – Police Leaflet Circulated over Christmas 2013 ...... 99 Figure 3 – Screenshot Image of the Police Interactive Tool ...... 106 Figure 4 – Great Northern Tower Newsletter...... 146 Figure 5 – Shop A Looter Poster ...... 151 Figure 6 – Message Displayed on City Centre Buses ...... 152 Figure 7 – Map of Manchester within the UK ...... 229 Figure 8 – Map of the City Region ...... 229 Figure 9 – Map of Manchester City Centre ...... 230 Figure 10 – Map of City Centre Ward ...... 230 Figure 11 – Interview Prompt 4 ...... 238 Figure 12 – Focus Group Brainstorming Prompt ...... 241 Figure 13 – Conservative Party Conference 2011 ...... 243 Figure 14 – Conservative Party Conference 2013 ...... 243 Figure 15 – Conservative Party Conference 2013 ...... 244 Figure 16 – Conservative Party Conference 2013 ...... 245 Figure 17 – Conservative Party Conference 2013 ...... 245 Figure 18 – Labour Party Conference 2012 ...... 246 Figure 19 – Labour Party Conference 2012 ...... 246 Figures 20-25 – Gay Village 2012 ...... 247 Figure 26 – First Page of Publication 1 ...... 248 Figure 27 – First Page of Publication 2 ...... 249
References ...... 251
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4 Urban Futures: How Security and Aspirations to Cosmopolitanism Reconfigure the City Centre Elisa Pieri, The University of Manchester, PhD Sociology, 4th June 2014 ABSTRACT
The futures of cities occupy a central role in policy-making today. Many of the challenges to social organisation and their solutions are framed at the scale of the city. The planning, management and ‘making’ of cities are pursued also through the mobilisation of futures. The aspirations of city makers and branders play a central role in shaping how cities evolve in certain directions rather than others. Yet theoretical and empirical work looking at how imagined futures are mobilised - and, more importantly, exploring whether they are shared by various actors beyond the main institutional stakeholders - remains scarce.
This thesis focuses on Manchester and critically investigates contested visions of securitisation and cosmopolitanism in the city centre. Building on Science and Technology Studies’ theories of public engagement, multi-stakeholder mapping, uncertainty and contested knowledge, this research looks at processes of ‘futuring’, eliciting and contrasting the views, experiences and priorities of a variety of stakeholders. The thesis uncovers the values embedded in institutionally endorsed current visions, and points to the trade-offs they engender.
Securitisation in the West in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack increasingly subsumes under its logic a wide range of practices and policy domains. Scenarios of future insecurity frequently come to justify pre-emptive interventions. Distinctions between safety and security become increasingly blurred. In the context of place competition for investment and event tourism, this thesis critically appraises how securitisation reconfigures Manchester city centre. It considers security by design and the spread of interdictory spaces. It offers a multilayered account of the interplay between the material fabric of the city and the virtual architectures of security, in the context of an increasingly ‘sentient’ or ‘sensor’ city. Combining and integrating a variety of qualitative data sources generates a thick and multifaceted description of emergent security configurations in the city centre.
The theoretical framework for qualitative analysis is derived from a combination of Science and Technology Studies, Governmentality and Surveillance Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis and Frame Analysis. The thesis examines the discourses of risk, their applications to the urban, and their biopolitical effects. It tracks the revival of cosmopolitan debates and the mobilisation of discourses of cosmopolitanism in policy, media and promotional materials. The thesis questions the relationship between security and cosmopolitanism, and their role in place making and city branding.
5 Declaration
No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.
Copyright statement
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6
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Prof Alan Warde and Prof Simon Guy. I am forever indebted to them for their close engagement with this work and, in equal measure, for making this PhD journey so enjoyable and memorable. Extremely generous with their time, they supported me with their attentive feedback, invaluable advice, unfailing enthusiasm and friendship.
I am also grateful to the participants of this research for their willingness to contribute their time, expertise and views on the city centre, making this multi-stakeholder work possible.
I would like to acknowledge the support of Pathways to Cosmopolitanism, the research initiative linking the University of Manchester with the National University of Singapore (NUS), which awarded me a studentship and financed my research visit to Singapore in January and February 2013. I thank Prof Brenda Yeoh for mentoring me during my stay at NUS.
I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the departmental conference fund, which enabled me to present my findings at various conferences, the Helsinki Collegium for hosting my talk within its 2012 symposium, and Pathways to Cosmopolitanism (again) for supporting my July 2013 visit to Singapore to present my work.
I would like to thank all the colleagues in Sociology and at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre for making my everyday life at university so enjoyable, and Dr May (in Sociology) and Dr Darling (in Geography) for letting me guest lecture within their courses. I wish to thank the Media Centre for the recording equipment used in my fieldwork, and Ann Cronley for her exceptional administrative assistance.
Last but not least, I am grateful to my friends and family for sharing my everyday experiences and excitements of doing this PhD research.
7 8 Chapter 1 Introduction
With more than half of the world population currently living in urban areas (United Nations 2012;Hammer et al. 2011), and a projected and sustained growth in this number in the near future, the debate over urban futures is extremely lively and only likely to intensify. Cities remain highly differentiated, not least in respect to how governance is exercised, but also in their response to growing populations and infrastructural needs (Parnell 2012). However heterogeneous, the futures of cities occupy a central role in policy-making today, and many of the challenges we face, and the solutions we seek, are often framed at the scale of the city – for instance under the paradigms of the sustainable city (Hammer et al. 2011;Guy and Marvin 2001) , the smart city (Batty 2012),1 the resilient city (Coaffee et al. 2009),2 and the multi-cultural city (Amin 2002;Wood and Landry 2008).3 Imagining cities in the future can engender discussions about urban ideals4 or about the transformation and adaptation of existing settlements (Amin 2013)5 in response to pressing challenges.6 These processes are accompanied by the resurgence of lively debates about the infrastructure of cities, the nature of city living, the public realm, risk, urban sociability and cosmopolitanism.
Urban futures are a crucial site of sociological investigation. They require urgent scholarly attention since futures are not value-free temporalities. These imaginaries come packaged with the values and priorities of those who mobilise them (Brown and Michael 2003;Borup et al. 2006;Pieri 2009b). They are immediately performative, as they engender present trade-offs in terms of investment, R&D and the political commitments that they mobilise (Brown and Michael 2003). However, futures as political constructs receive remarkably little attention beyond the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and that only recently. In response, Brown and Michael (2003) have strongly advocated the diffusion of a theoretical focus on futures within STS. However, exploring futures in this fashion,7 as
1 E.g. the European Commission’s initiative on Smart Cities http://ec.europa.eu/eip/smartcities/index_en.htm (accessed 1 June 2014). 2 E.g. the UN campaign on Making Cities Resilient on http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/about (accessed 1 June 2014). 3 E.g. UN-Habitat. (2004). Migrants and Multicultural Cities: Problem or Possibility? UN-Habitat Report Celebrates Multiculturalism: UN-Habitat Features. Available on http://cn.unhabitat.org/documents/media_centre/sowc/Featuremigrants.pdf (accessed 23 May 2014). 4E.g. the new cities or neighbourhoods under construction in the Middle East, such as Masdar City http://masdarcity.ae/en/ (accessed 1 June 2014). 5 E.g. Amin’s ‘slum/squatter city’. 6 From climate change to the pursuit of the knowledge economy. 7 By contrast, the practices of conducting risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis are prevalent in both policy and practice across the board, and problematic, as this thesis discusses in chapter 4.
9 political objects, is still largely confined to the domain of technological innovation8 and its interface with policy and practice (its most impactful applications remain in the STS field of medical sociology, for instance Hedgecoe and Martin 2003;Hedgecoe and Martin 2007). This thesis sets out to redress the imbalance by engaging with futures as political objects in the urban domain. It focuses specifically on the futures of Manchester city centre.
Despite the crucial importance of cities as sites of contemporary social life (Savage et al. 2003), cities cannot be considered as entirely bounded (Graham 2004:3). They are performative of the tensions between fixity and mobility (Castells 1989;Savage et al. 2003;Urry 2000) because they are entangled in global networks and relationships with other locales (Massey 2004;McCann et al. 2013), and spatial scales. They are co-shaped by politics of connectivity and by global trends (Harvey 2013;Savage et al. 2003). As well as relational entities, they are also not unitary, but multifaceted, and akin to a ‘multiplex’ (Amin and Graham 1997). They can be seen as ‘sites of heterogeneity juxtaposed within close spatial proximity, and as sites of multiple geographies of affiliation, linkage and flow’ (Amin 2004: 38). Cities are as much imagined as they are territorial entities (Massey 2004).
Multiple views, experiences and visions of the city therefore need to be accounted for. As well as analysing the mobilisation of specific futures in policy and media discourse, this research addresses the pressing need to move beyond critical studies of ‘city-makers’ and ‘city branders’.9 Futures are used as a heuristic to reveal the existence of a variety of aspirations and priorities in relation to Manchester city centre, as well as to disclose how the city centre is experienced, viewed and used today by a variety of actors. By mapping the visions, values and priorities of these actors, the research tests the degree to which these may be shared or contested. Drawing on an STS theorisation of situated and contested knowledges (Wynne 1991;Callon et al. 2001), multi-stakeholder engagement is used to engender greater transparency over the priorities currently pursued. It allows participants to frame their own priorities, without enrolling stakeholders in the superficial pursuit of consensus. By contrast, as it opens up urban futures to closer scrutiny, it also foregrounds the value of negotiation and contestation in opening up debate (Davies et al. 2003;Burgess et al. 2007;Stirling and Mayer 2001;Stirling 2008;Horst and Irwin 2010)10
8 E.g. in the domains of genomics, nanotechnology, biometrics, grid computing, ICTs and the internet of things. 9 Equally, it seeks to move away from approaches that are merely bottom up. 10 Amin (2003) similarly highlights the importance of agonism (which he distinguishes from antagonism), and so does Watson (2006), who does not ‘argue for a world where differences are ironed out, equalised, placated’
10 about urban policy, with a view to pursuing more socially robust and resilient policy making (Callon et al. 2001;Stirling 2005;Felt et al. 2007).
The exploration of Manchester city centre and its urban futures occurs in relation to the trajectory of its securitisation. Securitisation has today become pervasive and, as Agamben notes,
security becomes the basic principle (..) the sole criterium of political legitimation (..) security finds its end in globalization: it implies the idea of a new planetary order (..) Because they require constant reference to a state of exception, measures of security work towards a growing depoliticization of society. In the long run they are irreconcilable with democracy. Nothing is more important than a revision of the concept of security. (Agamben 2001: 45)
The process of securitisation has significantly accelerated since the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks. As mobility increases (Szerszynski and Urry 2006), citizens have been affected by securitisation both in their travel practices and within the everyday spaces, physical and virtual, that they routinely inhabit. The logic of security is increasingly legitimising pre- emptive action (Anderson 2010;Massumi 2005a;Amoore 2012;Castel 1990). Future insecurity comes to justify present interventions. An investigation of securitisation is therefore urgent.
The study of security is often pursued by focusing on its technologies and their ethical legal and societal implications (ELSI), for instance biometric and identity convergent technologies (Mordini and Tzovaras 2012), or discrete applications in high security settings, such as at borders. Other studies illustrate specific technological military assemblages (for instance Sharkey and Suchman 2013's study of the use of drones in military conflict). Yet even when exploring the urban domain, for instance through research on CCTV, studies tend neither to confront security at large as a doctrine or a logic, nor to engage with its effects on the urban more widely, beyond the individual technology they focus on. Geopolitical studies of securitisation, on the other hand, often privilege the analysis of security in relation to the role of the state (Graham 2004: 24), even if they acknowledge its entanglement within discourses and trends at a transnational level (as also alluded by Agamben 2001, above). As Graham notes, the ‘political violence against cities and its inhabitants’ (2004: 24) mostly eludes the attention of geopolitical and critical social science studies of security. So while
(Ibid:6) but views the public sphere (and public space) as an arena for acknowledging differences, and the agonistic relations these may produce (Ibid:18).
11 all are valuable in their own right, these efforts do not counteract the dearth of critical social science research about both the micro and macro effects of securitisation on cities. This thesis appraises everyday effects of securitisation in the urban domain, thereby connecting them to larger trends in the theorisation of securitisation. It analyses the processes of framing (Entman 1993) that enable a wide spectrum of concerns to be ascribed to the logic of security and subsumed under its agendas. The self-validating and all-consuming discourses of risk, uncertainty and threat (Massumi 2005b;Anderson 2010) which sustain it are also critically unpacked, including in their biopolitical effects (Castel 1990;Amoore 2011;Rose 2003). The prevalent risk paradigm (Beck 1992;Giddens 1999a) often obscures the constructed, discursive and diffuse nature of risk (Lupton 1999a;Lupton 2006). It enables the governing of citizens at a distance (Rose et al. 2006), enrolling them in practices of self-stirring and risk avoidance. It individualises responsibility for personal safety (Krahmann 2008;Rose 1999), and legitimises expert knowledge and the involvement of a constellation of non-governmental actors in the pursuit of security.
Cities cannot be considered as entirely bounded (Graham 2004:3), yet their specificity and materiality are important when considering security. Geographical and architectural studies of Western cities, particularly within the US, but also in the UK, increasingly contend that they have become militarised (Graham 2009), and describe their role in building resilience (Coaffee et al. 2009). The fortification of the built environment (Sorkin 2004;Sorkin 2008;Cozens 2002), in particular that of affluent neighbourhoods (Flusty 1997;Raco 2003), has been traced in studies which lament the spread of privatised space and gated residential solutions (for instance Blakely and Snyder 1997;Caldeira 1999;MacLeod 2002) and which criticise the politics of marginality that they reinforce (Flusty 2001;Smith 1996). These studies often privilege an analysis of security solutions in civilian contexts, either in the extraordinary sites of Olympic Games parks, or in gentrified plazas, malls, and residential citadels. However, they often appear relatively unidirectional in perspective, not only in their inscription of security to the process of gentrification, but in tracing the discourses circulated by experts or city makers, providing ethnographic accounts of a site, or offering a bottom up account of how a marginalised group experiences a change to the built environment. I welcome the spatial turn endorsed by many of these studies, their attention to the materiality of the city, and I build on their work and theorisation of urban politics. But I also seek to remedy their lack of multi-stakeholder engagement by teasing out and contrasting the views and priorities of a variety of actors. I explore the productive
12 tensions and divergences in their accounts, experiences and values. My research first theorises insecurity futures (Massumi 2005b;Amoore 2012;Anderson 2010). Secondly, it traces the mobilisation of these futures as they are circulated by security experts and by institutional actors, also in policy and media discourse. Finally, it contrasts them with the security priorities and futures envisaged by other actors, including residents and city centre workers. Attention to the spatial, the material fabric of the city and its increasingly sentient nature, is blended with a focus on its temporality, its futures and their present effects. In doing so, I build on a more relational understanding of cities, in which the material fabric of the city is not treated as mere backdrop or stage (relational as in Yaneva 2012;Yaneva 2008: 3;Farias and Bender 2010). However, I also understand the city as in the making and as being viewed, experienced, and imagined differently by a variety of actors. This approach sees security reflexively, foregrounding questions about whose security is being pursued and to what effects.
Securitisation is also analysed in its complex relationship with cosmopolitanism. A much debated characteristic of the urban is its diversity, with the unpredictability and heterogeneity of encounters it allows (Wood and Landry 2008;Yeoh and Lin 2012;Valentine 2008;Amin 2008). At first sight the trend towards securitisation and that towards pursuing cosmopolitanism might appear to be in conflict. While security is controlling mobility and regulating wider migration flows, the trend towards cosmopolitanism both engenders the benefit of variety and contact with those constructed as ‘different’, and at times stirs a host of anxieties about cultural dilution, hybridisation, fear of the unknown and the unpredictable. While debates over multiculturalism, intercultural relations, migration, cohesion and diversity are always high on the political agenda, there has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitanism within academic debates (Delanty 2012;Vertovec and Cohen 2002). To some extent, cosmopolitan aspirations may have crossed over from these scholarly debates to some dimensions of policy, at local, national and transnational level (where, for instance, they re-shape the figure of the European Union citizen). Manchester, a city of many historical migration flows and of considerable diversity even today, might also seek to project its cosmopolitan image. My research will explore this trend within the city centre, in the regeneration or creation ex-novo of spaces, from Chinatown to the Gay Village, which might be specifically envisaged as cosmopolitan, and as embodying the aspirations of the city leaders and branders. Examining the role of these sites in articulating the transformation that the city of Manchester has undergone over time, especially during
13 its regeneration, I seek to uncover whether aspirations towards cosmopolitanism continue to circulate in current local policy too. My research considers the part that these aspirations might play within a context of increased place competition between cities for investment and visitors.
As the thesis unfolds, I ask whether the trends towards securitisation and cosmopolitanism might be conflicting or mutually validating, and consider the type of spaces they produce. I investigate the understandings of cosmopolitanism operationalised by stakeholders and contrast them with those circulating in its contemporary scholarly debates. I explore the spaces and practices described by stakeholders as cosmopolitan, considering how these places perform as sites of engagement with diversity and with respect to their security and securitisation, particularly during temporary events like carnivals and street festivities.
This research employs qualitative mixed-methods. The fieldwork includes multi-stakeholder interviews and focus groups, documentary and media analysis, and ethnographic observation of the city centre. The specific research questions that this thesis addresses are:
1. How is the process of securitisation reconfiguring Manchester city centre? (1b) what are the implications? (1c) what are the views and priorities of different stakeholders (including city councillors, developers, businesses, citizens) in relations to the security currently deployed? (1d) whose priorities are being pursued? 2. What are the priorities and visions for the future of the city centre embraced by different stakeholders? (2b) Do these overlap, if so how? (2c) Do these diverge, if so how? (2d) Which visions of the city centre are currently being prioritised? 3. How is Manchester city centre framed in local media coverage? (3b) Which frames and images are circulated in relation to security (if any) and (3c) to cosmopolitanism (if any)? (3d) What are the implications of the current media framing of Manchester city centre? 4. How are aspirations to cosmopolitanism reconfiguring Manchester city centre?
14 (4b) what are stakeholders’ views and priorities in relations to these aspirations? (4c) whose priorities are being pursued?
The findings highlight the strengths and weaknesses of current practices within the city centre, for instance those related to the securitisation of temporary events, and contribute to inform academic debates on urban studies, biopolitics, surveillance and security. It is anticipated that the findings may impact also beyond academia, informing practice and policy making, at least at local level, in relation to the effects of current practices, their visibility and their democratic accountability. It is expected that the research findings will be useful to various stakeholders and indicate areas where a review of current practices might be desirable, as well as areas where further research ought to be conducted in the future.
The thesis weaves together a variety of theoretical inputs and debates to advance its arguments. The literature review is not confined to a single chapter. Instead, Chapter 2 engages the literature on the methodologies deployed, Chapter 3 discusses key literature on urban studies debates in the context of Manchester history and regeneration, Chapters 4 and 6 address the literature on security, risk, the built environment and virtual surveillance, and Chapter 7 that on the cosmopolitan debate. The thesis is organised as follows:
Chapter 2 presents the methodology and research design, discussing the various theoretical inputs, highlighting their unique contributions and their convergences, and clarifying the reasons and benefits derived from their complementary and integrated use in this study. This chapter also discusses the qualitative methods employed and justifies their appropriateness to the aims of this research.
Chapter 3 introduces Manchester and its city centre, briefly discussing its history and positioning its recent regeneration against various urban studies debates on city making, entrepreneurialism, and regeneration. It introduces and justifies the adoption of the city centre as a scale for analysis, and reviews its main features and current characteristics. The chapter also explores the portrayal of Manchester in local media and considers how these images relate to those circulated by policy makers and city branders.
15 Chapter 4 introduces and critically discusses the topic of security through the literature, as well as with reference to key policy documents. It discusses alternative understandings of risk and their dominant mobilisations, and connects debates about risk, threat and (in)security with the urban domain. It critically appraises current trends in the process of securitisation before focusing on security by design. It appraises the theory of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), tracking through the literature its development and recent revival and its uptake in the UK through the Secured by Design scheme (SBD). It then considers the convergence between SBD and other measures to design out terrorism, and discusses the use of security for branding purposes.
Chapter 5 presents the empirical data by analysing stakeholders’ perception of Manchester city centre’s security and safety, and reflects on convergences and divergences, also in relation to the literature introduced in the previous chapter. It then analyses participants’ views, values and experiences about security by design as normally deployed throughout the city centre, before appraising their views of the securitisation put in place for temporary events.
Chapter 6 introduces the notion of the ‘sensor city’, which complements the emphasis placed on the built environment in chapter 4 and 5. It critically appraises the literature on virtual surveillance and visibility, drawing attention to the interplay between the built environment and virtual security architectures. It then analyses various security assemblages deployed in Manchester city centre, discussing them in relation to the views and experiences of participants, as well as through the ethnography conducted in the city centre.
Chapter 7 presents the debates over cosmopolitanism, through a review of the scholarly literature and an analysis of local policy documents. It connects the regeneration of Manchester city centre with a specific understanding of cosmopolitanism and traces the institutional aspirations through local policy and promotional material. It then contrasts these discourses with those emerging from the fieldwork with other (non-institutional) stakeholders. It reflects on the impacts of mobilising the language of cosmopolitanism rather than that of diversity, the practices and geographies of cosmopolitanism identified by participants, and the relationship between cosmopolitanism and security within the city centre.
16 Chapter 8 analyses stakeholders’ priorities for the future of the city centre, highlighting areas of convergence and divergence amongst actors and underling alignments between stakeholders. Priorities for the city centre are discussed in relation to issues of security, but also in connection to a variety of other concerns, from issues affecting the public realm to property development, from activity planning to the role of public-private partnerships, and the relationship between the city centre and the city at large.
Chapter 9 summarises and critically appraises the findings, and discusses their implications. It reflects on their relevance in relation to various debates, appraises strengths and limitations of the current research, and identifies avenues for future research.
In this thesis I engage with a number of scholarly debates. First and foremost the thesis makes an original contribution to debates on security (as a doctrine and in its empirical configurations in the urban domain), risk (the biopolitical effects of the discourses of risk and uncertainty, the actuarial practices of governance that follow from the mobilisation of certain scenarios or the construction of certain groups as risky), the hardening of the built environment (the effects of security by design), surveillance (its alleged diffuse and mundane character and the link between traditional and virtual surveillance), and the relationship between security and cosmopolitanism.
My innovative theoretical framework integrates Science and Technology Studies (STS) with studies of governmentality and surveillance, and is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and Frame Analysis (CDA and FA). This combined framework brings significant added value. Firstly, it truly engages with the positionality of actors and with their contested knowledges and priorities about the city centre, while being attentive to the power asymmetries and the differential biopolitical effects of specific security configurations on certain groups of city centre users. Secondly, it engages a multiplicity of stakeholders in reflection not just over their own views and values but also over those mobilised by other actors. The process of inclusive and sustained engagement sets this research apart from traditional governance studies of policy makers or (of a limited range of) of stakeholders. A further key benefit of this combined framework, and the modular design it invites, is that it prompts reflection upon trajectories, highlighting their present implications. This foregrounds a reflexive approach to security, one that questions whose security is currently being pursued, and moves public engagement (as theorised in STS) beyond governance of scientific innovation and towards the urban domain (around which governmentality and surveillance studies
17 already gravitate, albeit with different priorities). By integrating CDA and FA within this theoretical framework, I position language as a central to my enquiry, going beyond an examination of the discourses of risk and uncertainty, which are central to many studies of governmentality. Considering more widely the relationship between discourse and society, I highlight the impact of mobilising certain other discourses too – of city regeneration, of competition, of partnership, of cosmopolitanism and so on. Ultimately, the combined theoretical framework allows an innovative examination of the process of securitisation and its unfolding in Manchester city centre by envisaging as active agents (or actants, in a Latourian sense) a number of dimensions that no single individual approach would sufficiently accounts for: the built environment, a series of socio-techno artefacts (such as Automatic Number Plate Recognition Systems), dominant discourses (circulating in policy, in the media, or mobilised by other powerful actors, such as city branders or property developers) and a much expanded set of actors, with a view to improve accountability and governance. The methodology, which has been developed in line with this theoretical framework, is presented in more detail in the next chapter.
18 Chapter 2 Methodology and Research Design
This chapter introduces the methodology and research design adopted in this thesis. It presents the theoretical framework that informs them and grounds the ethos of this thesis. This framework was developed through the productive combination of various theoretical inputs. This chapter further discusses their unique contributions and highlights their convergences. It clarifies the reasons and benefits derived from their complementary and integrated use in this study. Their integration remains a unique and original feature of this research. As explained in the introduction, several later chapters extensively engage with the literature reviewed for this thesis and bring it in conversation with its empirical dimensions and the theorisation of its findings. The current chapter is designed to highlight how the literature from three distinct but consonant theoretical traditions is integrated to support my methodology. The literature referenced here is often engaged in more detail and unpacked in subsequent chapters, and in conversation with further literature – including that on governance, the politics of city centre regeneration, public space, sociability and cosmopolitanism.
My theoretical framework is derived from a combination of Science and Technology Studies with Governmentality and Surveillance Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis and Frame Analysis. Applying a Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to the study of the urban has implications for the way urban space is conceived within this research, as always in flux, emergent, co-constructed, multi-faceted, relational and entangled in the interactions of various actors, objects, discourses and imaginaries. The innovative input of STS here, however, is located in its theorisation of multiple and contingent knowledges, of futures as political objects, and of multi-stakeholder engagement as key to engender more socially robust governance.
From the theory of Governmentality this research draws specific understandings of the discourses of risk, their applications to the urban, and their biopolitical effects. From Surveillance debates it derives an attention to the built environment as a potential panopticon, as well as to virtual networks of security and their effects on the fabric of the city.
From Critical Discourse Analysis and Frame Analysis this thesis develops an attention to the discursive expedients mobilised to formulate specific scenarios, desired futures and
19 imaginaries of risk. These approaches are chosen for their critical engagement with the performative effects of discursive practices.
Finally, this chapter also discusses the qualitative methods employed and justifies their appropriateness to the aims of this research.
2.1 The Contribution of Science and Technology Studies
Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a flourishing field of academic enquiry that investigates the inseparable nexus between science and society. STS originated from disparate scholarly interests in the 1960s, exploring the history of medicine, the philosophy of science and the production of knowledge. Its theoretical underpinnings of the time were probably best represented by the work of Kuhn (1962). Considerable theoretical and empirical development occurred in the 1980s and STS is today a fully-fledged discipline. Its sociological lines of enquiry have remained varied, in keeping with the debates that led to its original development – focusing on sociology of scientific knowledge (for instance Knorr Cetina 1981;Knorr Cetina 1999), the scientific community and its (laboratory) practices (Latour 1987;Latour and Woolgar 1986), the assemblages of actants, including material- semiotic ones, constituting heterogeneous relations and networks (for instance Latour 2005). Current STS theoretical and empirical work therefore encompasses the nature and practices of science and technology (its methods, institutional behaviours, trajectories and commitments) and its governance (policy-making about innovation and emergent technologies; ethical, legal and social impacts of science and technology; democratic and participatory practices and decision-making; mapping of controversies; risk assessments and human values; patenting, ownership and liability). Whilst a large body of work has been produced around various technologies in genomics, the life sciences and convergent technologies (such as nanotechnologies or the neurosciences), work in STS has also productively explored a variety of other fields, from e-science and cloud computing to the financial markets (for instance see MacKenzie 2006). More recently STS has also begun travelling beyond its more established disciplinary boundaries, though it was always interdisciplinary in its nature (for instance see Yaneva 2012 for applications of STS in architecture; or see Farias and Bender 2010 for an attempt to apply Actor-Network Theory to urban studies).
20 The main theoretical and methodological contributions offered by the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to this research are in the areas of theorising expectations and visions, multi-stakeholder engagement, the role of contested and contingent knowledge, and the prioritisation of upstream engagement. Within an STS approach, these are pursued in order to engender greater reflexivity and accountability, and with a view to producing more socially robust policy-making.
2.1.1 Expectations, Visions and Futures
As the title of this research suggests, the analytical angle pursued is that of investigating (urban) futures. A key objective is to illustrate the ways in which certain projections and expectations of future scenarios affect the present, contributing to shaping how urban space is currently used, planned and lived out in Manchester city centre.
One of the key theoretical contributions of sociology of expectation is in the notion that the future is not a neutral temporal space, but rather the catalyst of very real and very present trade-offs, for instance in terms of investments, R&D and allocation of resources (Pieri 2009b;Borup et al. 2006).
STS scholars have followed and critiqued the promotion of technological innovations, such as those produced in the fields of biotechnology, genomics, nanotechnologies and grid computing, which are embedded within specific promissory discourses and expectations of their applications (for instance Hedgecoe and Martin 2003;Brown and Michael 2003;Pieri 2010;Hedgecoe and Martin 2007;Brown et al. 2000). These promissory discourses and expectations integrate those technologies within specific future scenarios and representations of the everyday – for instance that of personalised medicine, of nutriceuticals (foods that contain enhanced nutrients/pharmaceutical features), of the smart home responsive to its user and the environment via nanosensors and other convergent technologies.
It is possible to account for the growing preoccupation with governing futures in many ways – from a focus on risk assessment and cost-benefit calculations (Giddens 1991) to historical perspectives on futuring, futurology and forecasting (for instance Andersson and Rindzeviciute 2012;Andersson 2006) or as prompting different types of precautionary, pre- emptive or preparedness strategies (Anderson 2010;Massumi 2005a;Rose 2007). STS
21 scholars in particular have tried to move away from debates over the likelihood that a given scenario might materialise, and from its possible benefits (and risks), which are not yet achieved (or perhaps will never be achievable) and look instead at the very real trade-offs being made today, on the basis of some of these promises (Pieri 2009b).
As Brown and Michael have noted when looking at the life sciences and innovation in health domains, the future is more fruitfully engaged heuristically, and there is an urgent
need for scholarship to engage with the future as an analytical object, and not simply a neutral temporal space into which objective expectations can be projected. In particular, [recent STS developments] highlight the need to shift the analytical angle from looking into the future to looking at the future, or how the future is mobilised in real time to marshal resources, coordinate activities and manage uncertainty (2003: 2).
A major implication of conceiving of futures in this way is that, as political constructs, they can then be opened up to contestation. Therefore the process of eliciting visions and imaginary of the future of Manchester city centre (through reflecting over strategic policy documents and media coverage, and through accessing views and priorities of a variety of stakeholders via interviewing and focus group work, as described in section 2.4 below) aims at rendering explicit some of the value judgements and priorities that different stakeholders may pursue now. These are embedded in specific future projections and discourses of what the city centre will be like and ought to be like in the future. Rendering these priorities and embedded values explicit aims at opening them up to greater scrutiny and accountability. It also allows to test the extent to which they might be shared across various stakeholders or be held by certain stakeholders only (Pieri 2009b).
2.1.2 Multi-Stakeholder Engagement, Contested Knowledge and Up-Streaming Participation
Another strand of STS methodological input to this research is closely connected to sociology of knowledge and theories of engagement. As it has been eloquently argued, knowledge is situated and produced in context. Rather than being value-free, it is laden and imbued with the values and practices of the communities that generate it (Knorr Cetina 1999;Knorr Cetina 1981;Latour and Woolgar 1986;Latour 1987).
Knowledge is contingent (Wynne 1991), and open to systemic and irreducible uncertainties (Stirling 2008;Callon et al. 2001). Its value and trustworthiness are judged against the
22 institutional behaviours and constraints that have produced it (Wynne 2001) and that would accompany its implementation, and against the institutional body language and routine practices of the expert communities that generate it (Wynne 1991;Wynne 1993). Moreover, knowledge is also tested against various other forms of lay knowledges, as
[p]eople judge whether or not they can use or trust expert knowledge partly by measuring it against elements of their own already-tested knowledge and direct experience (Wynne 1991: 115) and against expert knowledges from different sources (for instance scientific reports produced by NGOs or Industry).
In other words, knowledge is often contested, and much STS debate around contested knowledge has centred on increasing participation in knowledge creation and policy making (Callon et al. 2001;Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994;Stirling 2008). While irreducible system uncertainties have always existed and will continue to exist (for instance see Callon et al. 2001:31 for a discussion of radical uncertainty; see also the 'uncertainty matrix' in Stirling 2010), much trust in expert knowledge has been eroded (Irwin and Wynne 1996;Giddens 1991). Hence, it’s been suggested that a system akin to an extended and augmented peer-review (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994) ought to be set up so as to incorporate as many different values, interests and standpoints (Stirling 2008) – as many publics as possible. This is seen as key to opening up (Stirling 2008;Stirling 2005) and democratising the process of knowledge generation and validation, and governance (of innovation). Ultimately, this would positively affect policy-making at large, as it would allow the reflexive questioning of its entire process, starting from the framing and problem definition stage (see section 2.3 on Frame Analysis, below) down to the financial, political and social commitments that might ensue from the uptake of a given course of action in governance, practice, or public policy. The focus on inclusionary practices and the attention on framing policy, its commitments and trajectories (Wilsdon et al. 2005) are being discussed in STS literature in terms of participatory and upstream engagement, while acknowledging that innovation and policy follow a non-linear process, and therefore the concept of ‘upstream’ has to be taken metaphorically (Ibid: 38-39). In other words, engagement becomes a (repeated and) distributed process or cycle rather than a tokenistic one-off event (Pieri 2010). Similarly, the city and its city centre are engaged in a non-linear process of change whose trajectory and governance are also non-linear. Governance of the city centre, it has been claimed above, is at least partly achieved through the mobilisation
23 and reproduction of imaginaries concerning its future(s). The working hypothesis to be tested in this research is that city centre users, publics and many stakeholders contribute different and at times contested knowledges and priorities about the city centre use - current and future - and the aspirations to be pursued. The methods employed in this research allow different angles of analysis and complementary insights, as they combine media coverage and policy document analysis, with interview and focus groups work, and researcher’s ethnographic observation and participation in various city centre events. They also allow the kind of ‘looping’ involved in conceiving of engagement as a process (Wilsdon et al. 2005, especially pp. 30-42), by continually inviting reflections and eliciting feedback throughout the various stages of fieldwork and research. For instance, media coverage, event ethnographic records (such as photographs) and extracts from policy documents are presented to stakeholders to elicit their views and reflections on these. The views expressed by stakeholders are themselves presented within the focus groups and interviews with residents, to elicit further reflection. Ultimately, the write up of the research results will also be communicated back to participants, as well as to other interested practitioners and members of the public (along with the relevant academic communities), providing a further loop. This PhD research - at least within its temporal confines, and hopefully beyond them - therefore enacts the procedural character of participatory multi-stakeholder engagement described and advocated by the STS literature above.
2.1.3 Socially Robust Policy Making
Multi-stakeholder engagement, as theorised in STS literature, is thus used to map out priorities, preferences and values and with a view to enhance governance (at least at the local scale in this research) and accountability. This would be achieved by enhancing reflexive awareness of which priorities are mobilised, and awareness of the extent to which they may be shared by various stakeholders (Pieri 2009b). Highlighting areas where priorities may not be shared is thus equally (if not more) important, in enhancing transparency of whose priorities may gain purchase in policy (at least at a given time), and which are traded off - thus potentially allowing avenues for challenge, contestation or change.
Thus this research is methodologically and theoretically supported by STS scholarship that recognises the importance of these mapping practices – from the work on Multi-criteria
24 Mapping (Stirling and Mayer 2001) to that on Deliberative Mapping (Burgess et al. 2007;Davies et al. 2003) - while acknowledging that these methods too need to be approached reflexively (ie. paying attention to their framing, including the framing of the scenarios they use for instance), and rejecting the consensus driven biases that may arise from some of these methods (for instance in participatory methods such as citizens juries and consensus conferences). While some STS scholars have privileged the engendering of consensus between actors (Rowe and Frewer 2005), and promoted engagement activities such as consensus conferences or citizens juries (Wakeford 2001) for instance, this research instead takes its cue from STS work that has critiqued that emphasis on consensus-building (Horst and Irwin 2010;Irwin 2006;Stirling 2008). As Felt et al. argue,
the idea that consensus is central to participatory exercises – as expressed in consensus conferences – should be rejected. Indeed, we should ask why consensus should be a better input for policy making than identifying the central areas where authentic disagreement, or even dislocation remain (Felt et al. 2007).
Both processes of mapping of overlaps and mapping of areas of divergence would arguably contribute to more socially robust and resilient policy making.
Finally, a further element of analysis derived from an STS methodology consists in highlighting the connections that may link some of the actors. While no formal Actor- Network Theory (ANT) analysis will be pursued (Latour 2005), it remains of interest to see how the narrative or frame of Manchester as a city that today, as in the past, successfully achieves governance through partnership is experienced and talked about by various research participants – from councillors to property developers, from those who market the image of Manchester city centre to those who manage and police its space, from those who work to those who live in the city centre.
2.2 The Contribution of Surveillance Studies, Governmentality and Biopolitics
Both surveillance studies and studies of governmentality are heavily indebted to the thought of Michel Foucault. Studies of surveillance have been drawing particularly from Foucault’s critique of the panopticon (Foucault 1977), Bentham’s prison design, to theorise the effects of visuality and visibility, drawing on Foucault’s notion of ‘total gaze’ (ibid). They have drawn attention to the complex and ambiguous effects of surveillance, including the internalisation of certain norms and behaviours, and explored its application within a wide range of settings, from the urban, to the virtual (as discussed through the literature
25 reviewed in chapter 4 and 5, see for instance Koskela 2000;Lyon 2004;Bauman and Lyon 2013).
The governmentality school mainly draws from Foucault’s lectures at the College de France in the late 1970s (for instance see Foucault 1991;Castel 1990;Lemke 2000;Osborne and Rose 1999;Rose et al. 2006). The term governmentality broadly refers to the ‘techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour’ (Foucault 1997:87). The concept highlights the ‘semantic linking of governing ("gouverner") and modes of thought ("mentalité")’ (Lemke 2000:2). It captures both the ‘governing of others’ and the ‘governing of the self’, in that it addresses the enactment of procedures that manage populations through sorting them into groups and acting on them, but also the practices and techniques which enrol individuals in self-stirring towards certain goals (i.e. in embracing technologies of the self). Governmentality is government of government, or government with a small ‘g’, precisely to distinguish it from notions of a centralised unified will in the exercise of power or producing domination. Governmentality draws attention to the new modes of subjectivity created as individuals self-task to ‘freely’ embrace and fulfil the ends of government. This enables the governing of citizen ‘at a distance’ (Rose and Miller 1992), without implying a diminished exercise of power. Nor does governmentality necessarily result in a loss of state sovereignty. Rather, it often indicates the emergence of a multiplicity of new actors and the creation of new relations between the state and civil society (Lemke 2000: 11).
The main theoretical contributions offered by the fields of Surveillance Studies and Governmentality are discussed in the literature reviews within the chapters on security (Chapters 4, 5 and 6), which appraise dominant contemporary discourses of risk (Lupton 2006;Rose 2007;Osborne and Rose 1999;for an overview of the prevailing risk paradigm instead see Beck 1992;Giddens 1999a), threat and crime, and the history of security by design with particular reference to the theory of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (Jeffery 1971;Newman 1972;Cozens et al. 2005;Armitage 2012). The current policy applications of this theory are reviewed there, including the UK implementation of the Secured by Design Scheme (Cozens 2002;Armitage 2012;Armitage and Monchuk 2009), and the UK historical legacy and current aspirations for designing out terrorism (Coaffee et al. 2009;Graham 2004). The literature on the effects of these security practices and aspirations on public space is there discussed (for instance see Koskela 2000;MacLeod 2002;Raco 2003;Armitage 2002), together with the need to account for the ‘sensor city’
26 (Telhan 2010;Crang and Graham 2007) and the various intersecting - but not necessarily overlapping - layers of networked and digital/virtual surveillance (Gane 2011;Lyon 2004;Bauman and Lyon 2013), their effects in terms of governmentality and self-regulation of behaviour.
From a methodological perspective the research design, therefore, incorporates on one hand an attention to the built environment (theorised as a possible panopticon, as in Koskela 2000, or as militarised and fortified - see for instance Sorkin 2004; Marcuse 2004; Graham 2004 and 2000), which includes public spaces, the public realm at large (for instance Flusty 2001), and the securitisation of temporary sites (for instance Coaffe and Rogers 2008), such as for party conference or urban festivals. On the other hand, it foregrounds the need to focus on the less-tangible circuits of surveillance as well (Bauman and Lyon 2013), from hybrid CCTV systems operated by the city council, private businesses and city centre managers, to Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems and to other Police interoperable databases, from the ad-hoc deployment of police operations that use social-media to the widespread sharing of user- (or citizen-) generated media content witnessed in the aftermath of the August 2011 Manchester riots.
The mixed methods used offer analytical entry points within both of these dimensions, by also blending and complementing researcher observation with a media coverage analysis, and integrating focus groups with residents with interviews with variety of other stakeholders, including with those responsible locally for designing, implementing and managing these security approaches and surveillance operations. In combination and through appropriate integration (Mason 2006) these methods allow to approach both the physical and virtual circuits of surveillance and control and their biopolitical effects in terms of ‘self-regulation’, normalisation and enrolment into certain ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault 1991;Lemke 2000;Rose et al. 2006;Rose 1989;Rose 1999;Rose 2003). One example of such biopolitical effects that can be best studied via this multi-method approach is the construction of riskiness (Castel 1990) enacted in the aftermath of the recent Manchester riots (see Chapter 6 and Pieri 2014b, in appendix 6). The mix of interviews with senior police personnel and institutional spoke-persons, the ethnography and photography of the unfolding events and responses, the analysis of media coverage and multi-stakeholder reflections on the police operations, all provide critical insights on the phenomenon from various angles, allowing a richer analytical understanding of it.
27 2.3 The Contribution of Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis
Finally, the third methodological input comes from Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, which are the chosen methodologies for the largely qualitative and Atlas.ti assisted (Lewins and Silver 2007) data analysis of the media coverage, and of the interviews and focus group conducted. Recourse to these two highly interdisciplinary methodologies acknowledges the large and productive overlaps between them. However, from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) specifically this research derives the intent to pursue a specific type of discourse analysis (Gill 2000) that places more emphasis on reconnecting micro- level linguistic analysis to the macro-level contextual contributors to discourse and meaning. It also indicates the orientation towards critically studying the use of language and discourse from an applied linguistics perspective, i.e. within an empirical domain or case study (Cook 2003).
CDA is most notably associated with the work of its founder Norman Fairclough (Fairclough 1989;Fairclough and Wodak 1997) and understands discourse
as socially constitutive, as well as socially conditioned (..) as an opaque power object which CDA aims to make more transparent. CDA also advocates interventionism in the social practices it investigates; explicitness in political interest and in the political use of social scientific research are welcomed. CDA thus openly professes strong commitments to change, anti-power biases and practice-orientedness (..) an attempt towards blending linguistic analysis and social-theoretical insight goes hand in hand with the desire to produce ‘relevant’ research, as well as with political commitment. (Blommaert 2001)
The status of CDA remains the subject of debate, with some scholars regarding it as a method and others as a theoretical approach (Meyer 2001) or ‘a theoretical perspective on language and more generally on semiosis’ (Fairclough 2001:121). The work of those who practice it often involves recourse to a multiplicity of methods (see Blommaert 2005:24-28 for a review of CDA as a 'school' and the various approaches taken by its key members) and a trans-disciplinary orientation to its objects of research. CDA is here embraced as a methodology, following Fairclough’s understanding of it (Fairclough 2010:5), as a ‘theory- driven process of constructing objects of research (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992)’. The methods of research employed are, therefore, ‘selected according to how the object of research (..) is theoretically constructed’ (Fairclough 2010:234).
28 Central to this analysis is the process of thematic and linguistic coding, which though largely qualitative, can be supplemented with elements of computational corpus linguistics - for instance through extraction of keywords, collocations (Stubbs 1996), and analysis of semantic prosody (Sinclair 1991;Stubbs 1996), and assisted with Atlas.ti software for qualitative analysis, amongst others.11 Looking at discourse under this approach also involves paying analytical attention to the continuous shift between lessical/linguistic features and meta-linguistic ones, of which metaphorical language is but an example (Lakoff and Johnson 1980;Nerlich et al. 2002;Cook et al. 2006;Cook et al. 2004), and presupposes a theoretically informed approach to linguistic transcription (Cameron 2001;Myers and MacNaghten 1999). As in the case of Frame Analysis (see below) therefore, analysis cannot be reduced to counting isolated individual units (Kitzinger 2007), but must rely also on higher level interpretation of data, recognising cultural, symbolic and representational patterns. It might, for instance, also require the questioning of perceived ‘absences’, through contrasting specific uses of discourse against alternative possible (discursive) representations of a phenomena.
Frame analysis (FA) is another popular multi-method research approach, currently being employed in a broad spectrum of disciplines within the humanities. As argued elsewhere,
[a] wide range of disciplines have conceptualised and capitalised on the idea of frames, either as cognitive schemata through which we perceive, organise and communicate experience or as conscious devices used strategically for casting ‘events’ in a certain light, defining ‘the issues’ that we ought to attend to, and prioritising some interventions and responses over other possible ones. It is perhaps unsurprising that the different disciplines involved in using frame analysis – including Cognitive Psychology, Sociology, Politics, Journalism, Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies – emphasise different accounts of framing, the more or less conscious use of these frames, and a more individualistic or culturally embedded notion of what it means to ‘use frames’. A more postmodern take, and the contributions of cognate disciplines such as critical discourse analysis, have also engendered the need to explore not only the ‘intentions’ of frame producers, nor just the frames as recovered by analysts, but also to pay attention to frames as these may be perceived by communities of readers/consumers of texts and discourses. This means that frame analysis can be thought of as a multi-method approach and one that relies and lends itself to making use of a variety of data sources too (Pieri 2009a:9).
11 I am also using WordSmith Software to introduce some elements of corpus linguistic analysis. While conducting frame analysis and critical discourse analysis, some of the procedures and heuristics are in fact shared with Corpus Linguistics (Stubbs 1996). Others are shared with Grounded Theory, including the practice of inductive and reiterative coding, constant cross-comparison, and the heuristic of visualisation of aggregate coded material for both serendipity and uncovering of patterns.
29 Beyond the bewildering range of approaches to FA, the one embraced here is prevalent in media studies (Kitzinger 2007) and indebted to the work of Robert Entman, who highlighted how frames can generally be used to perform four distinct but often interrelated functions - problem definition, causal analysis, express moral judgement, and promote a remedy (Entman 2007). Entman’s definition of frame analysis is most widely recognised (Halfpenny et al. 2009) and it states that
[t]o frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (Entman 1993: 52).
Frame analysis is therefore used to investigate a variety of elements - in the media coverage, in policy and other grey literature and in the interview and focus group data – including for instance the ways in which events held within Manchester city centre may be framed as key to Manchester economic competiveness and positioning on the Global scene, as in the case of the National Party conference hosting. Similarly, it is employed to uncover the ways in which certain actors are framed. The latter can range from city centre residents to members of the ‘Manchester partnership’ (discussed in Chapter 3), from visitors and tourists to risky individuals - known criminals, rioters and other groups who occupy more ambiguous positions within the city centre and its economy, such as ‘the stag night crowds’ who are likely to bring both revenue and nuisance to the city centre.
2.4 Mixed-Methods
In conformity with the methodologies and theoretical positions endorsed above, the methods used in the fieldwork are also interdisciplinary, qualitative and used in an integrated way. As the findings of the following chapters illustrate, the methods build on each other and provide a metaphoric 360 degree view of the city centre, offering multiple analytical entry points, and allowing a thick description of the dynamics at play.
2.4.1 Documentary and Media Analysis
Two newspaper and magazine datasets were collected, principally to provide a snapshot view of how Manchester city centre was discussed and portrayed in the local printed media in a chosen daily newspaper (the Manchester Evening News, August to October 2011), and in a weekly city centre magazine (Urban Life, mid-July to mid-October 2011), which were
30 sampled for a three month period (details of data collection and analysis are in Chapter 3). A further database was compiled by collecting national daily printed media coverage about Manchester (in both national tabloid and quality papers) over a period of one month (August 2011), which overlapped with the other two collections and with the urban unrest, the 2011 UK Riots. The latter was used as a reference database when investigating the local coverage in the Manchester Evening News of these events.
The local newspaper collection also fed into various stages of the fieldwork, as some excerpts were used to design prompts then used with focus group and interview participants (as described above). The analysis of the newspaper dataset also led to the identification of a first cohort of prominent institutional actors and business stakeholders that were approached to be interviewed.
Selected policy documents were also investigated. Whilst not compiled into a dataset, these tended to be strategy documents and grey literature (for instance the City Centre Strategic Plan 2009-2012), and were considered a catalyst for further policy development. In this research they were treated as heuristics for highlighting, questioning and probing aspirations and imaginaries over Manchester City Centre, including during interviews with stakeholders, as well as for informing this research more generally, in dialogue with the rest of the literature review. These documents are one off pieces of policy and strategy – for instance they can be a national policy document on security and anti-terrorism, a (national/local) planning policy document, or strategic or documentary material promoting the Secured by Design police operated Scheme. These were treated as actant (Latour 2005), as elements that interact with actors such as policy makers, certain sets of practitioners, or even members of the public, and affect the further development of policy, practices, aspirations and imaginaries.
2.4.2 Interviews and Focus Groups
The core dataset collected for this research includes semi-structured interviews and focus groups – 39 people were accessed in this way - approximately 7 institutional stakeholders and 2 property developers actively involved in shaping the city centre, 5 security experts, 12 city centre workers and users, and 13 people who were accessed as residents of the city centre. As mentioned in the discussion of the findings (see also appendix 1 for details of
31 participants), a number of overlaps occurred, as reasonably expected, with some of the institutional stakeholders also living in the city centre, and some of the residents also working in the city centre.
A total of 28 participants were accessed via semi-structured interviews - 26 of these through one-to one on site interviews, whereas the views of another two participants where accessed through a group interview. Amongst these interviews a handful were elite interviews, in which the interview schedule developed and piloted was introduced in an ad- hoc fashion. In those cases, certain prompts were at times skipped or introduced in alternative ways or order to accommodate the unique insights in specific areas of expertise that were offered by certain elite interviewees. The interviews were of variable duration, most commonly lasting just under an hour.
This dataset also includes two focus groups with residents. Focus groups lasted just under 2 hours each, and 11 residents were accessed this way. Another 2 residents, initially recruited to attend a focus group, were interviewed separately.
In depth interviewing was chosen as the best method to access individual experiences, preferences (Gaskell 2000) and priorities of various actors, and reflect in depth on a set of probes (illustrating specific police measures, or other issues derived from media coverage, images of specific events and quotes from previous interviewees). This method is also particularly indicated for accessing participants that are difficult to recruit, as they are elite or high status respondents (Ibid), as indeed was the case with many of the people interviewed for this research.
The focus groups method was also chosen because it provides a very rich understanding of participants’ experiences and beliefs. It allows in-depth exploration and discovery, and contextualisation of views, also due to the specific group dynamics it engenders (Morgan 1998a). Furthermore, as argued by Waterton and Wynne (1999:129), ‘[f]ocus groups, if treated the appropriate way, permit us to open up epistemological assumptions about the subject matter’. The proviso of designing and running focus groups in the appropriate way underlines the importance of framing the issues (Krueger 1998a;Morgan 1998b), and allowing opening up and reframing by participants (as discussed above when looking at the issue of framing and contested knowledge), but it also points to the role of the
32 moderator/researcher in running the group (Krueger 1998b) and in analysing it afterwards (Myers and MacNaghten 1999). As Myers and MacNaghten note,
[f]ocus groups offer a practical way of eliciting (..) complex talk, and in analysing the conversation we acknowledge the situatedness of opinion, and recover some of the richness and complexity with which people express, explore and use opinion (1999: 174).
Focus groups are also an extremely useful method to explore diversity and investigate the motivations behind preferences or value judgements. It is important, however, that participants understand why they are invited to be involved, and what they have in common (in this research their status as city centre residents), given that, as noted by various sociologists (Gaskell 2000 for instance), focus groups work well when individual participants do not perceive themselves to be representing radically different interests and statuses from those of the others participants, and when they are reasonably comfortable in each other’s company (Morgan 1998a). In other words, it would be problematic to design a focus group that attempted to include employers and employees in a focus group looking at work practices, or patients and nurses, or prisoners and guards, or - to get closer to this research- city councillors and residents for instance. Within this research, though, the method suited perfectly the chosen target participants who were brought together as they were all residents of the city centre.
2.5 Conclusions
In conclusion, this chapter has discussed the various inputs that Science and Technology Studies, Surveillance Studies and studies of Governmentality, Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis bring to the theoretical framework and methodology adopted in this research, individually and in aggregate. Many of these theoretical and methodological positions share common premises and languages, including a strong preference for interdisciplinarity, applied research and a commitment to approach critically power differentials, contested knowledges and governance.
However, combining them into a single framework brings important benefits. It allows me to innovatively integrate as active agents, or actants, the built environment, socio-techno artefacts, dominant discourses and a much expanded range of actors. The integrated methodology enables me to engage with the positionality of these actors, and stimulate
33 their reflexivity about themselves and about the position of other stakeholders too. Simultaneously, my integrated framework also foregrounds the presence of power asymmetries and through it I can follow the differential biopolitical effects of specific security configurations on certain groups of city centre users. Thanks to this integrated design I am able to pursue the study of security reflexively, questioning whose security is being pursued and stimulating participants to do the same. This is achieved through looping of various modular elements of the research, and through the prompting of reflection upon trajectories and their present implications. The approach is, thus, also innovative and beneficial as it investigates futures as heuristics, extending STS applications of multi-stakeholder engagement beyond the domain of governance of scientific innovation, and onto the urban domain. Furthermore, by integrating CDA and FA within this theoretical framework, my examination of the discourses of risk and uncertainty, which are central to studies of governmentality, is accompanied by close attention to other dimensions of the relationship between discourse and society. CDA and FA enable me to highlight the impact of mobilising certain other discourses too – such as those of city regeneration, of competition, of partnership and of cosmopolitanism. I can explore, for instance, how certain groups are framed as being part of the community, engaged in city centre partnerships or envisaged as desired future users of given sites - as well as study groups that may be constructed as risky or deviant (as often of interest to governmentality studies). The combined framework takes discourse and language seriously, considering discourse not merely as a stimulus or a reflection of existing practices, but as performative and (co-) constitutive of these practices. My study of the language mobilised is a central component of this thesis, alongside the study of the materiality of the city centre, informed by both STS and governmentality approaches.
As with the specific methods used in the research - from media analysis to focus group and semi-structured interviewing - it is the combination, integration and complementarity of these methodologies, and their application to the urban that provide both the novelty of this research and its analytical strength, granting multiple entry points into the complex phenomenon of governance, planning and use of city centre urban space, and critical insights into the process of its increased securitisation.
34 Chapter 3 Researching Manchester City Centre
This chapter introduces Manchester and discusses salient features of its history, from its role as a catalyst to the industrial revolution to its recent IRA bombing. Focusing specifically on its recent regeneration, it connects these developments with ongoing debates on urbanism and city making, branding, entrepreneurialism and the politics of city centre regeneration. The chapter introduces the history and role of public-private partnerships that have come to characterise the City’s style of governance, as well as considering some of the city’s specificities that have come to be associated to its image in the UK and beyond.
The chapter then discusses the rationale for focusing on Manchester city centre, and for using this angle as a means to access various debates – such as those on visioning, public and civic space, exclusion and belonging, the performance of diversity and cosmopolitanism, securitisation and the interplay between the materiality of the built environment, virtual architectures, and flows and networks. It draws on various sources to present its current salient characteristics, including its current resident composition, its property market, its local economy and level of connectivity.
As well as offering multiple entry points into the process of securitisation, the city centre is also seen in this research as entangled within media and policy discourses that contribute to shaping its current uses and future aspirations. The chapter therefore traces the discourses that circulate in local media about the city centre and its futures, and considers how dominant portrayals mobilised in the media may relate to those that key stakeholders articulate through other channels.
3.1 Manchester
Manchester could be described as a city undergoing perennial transformations, a place of great energy and many contradictions. Positioned within the North West of England (Figure 7 in appendix 2), its history dates back to the early medieval period, although earlier remains indicate the presence of previous temporary iron age and Roman settlements (Hartwell 2001). Its first and most evident transformation took place with the industrial revolution, of which it became the birthplace, and which rapidly propelled the medieval trade town, already notable regionally, on the world stage during the late 18th and 19th centuries:
35
In 1835, ‘Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world’ (Hall 1998:310) (..) it was the innovative focus of several of the most important developments of the newly industrialising world economy (Dicken 2002: 18).
As a world city, its influence - and that of the industrialists and tradesmen that led its expansion - rested on both manufacturing (famously of cotton and textile) and trading, and was often pursued also through large engineering and infrastructural projects, such as the building of a canal network, and later the use of the steam engine and rail network.
The living conditions of its burgeoning population during this time, often squalid, unhealthy and miserable, have been documented by Engels in his The Condition of the Working Class in England, written during his stay in Manchester between 1842 and 1844, when he also became acquainted with Karl Marx. Along with Marx and Engels, the history of the city is also associated with many notable political and social thinkers, revolutionaries, activists and reformists, from the chartists to the cooperative activists and the suffragettes.
Manchester has also been a city of inward migration, especially during the industrial revolution. After the influx of the Irish, several Jewish migrations followed,12 and, towards the end of the 19th century, the Chinese migrants also set up their largest community and Chinatown outside London. Many others have later followed – most notably a large group of migrants from the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century, as well as migrants of African- Caribbean and Somali origin13 (see also chapter 7 on cosmopolitanism).
The trajectory through which Manchester turned from a globaliser to a globalised city in the 20th century has been eloquently traced by Dicken (2002), who also describes the large role played by foreign direct investment (mainly from the US) in sustaining Manchester’s economy at that stage, for instance through its contribution to the development of the industrial area known as Trafford Park. In the post-World War II period, in fact, Manchester entered a phase of post-industrial decline. As Dicken notes
although it is no longer in the global city super league it is, like all such cities, a global city in the sense that it is tightly integrated in the global economic system (Ibid: 32).
12 Manchester as a World city. School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester. Available on http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/postgraduate/worldcity/ (accessed 11 March 2014). 13 Ibid, see footnote 12 above.
36 Some of the contradictions that previously existed became more pronounced during this phase of economic decline,14 with the subsequent closure of many manufacturing sites soon resulting in high rates of unemployment and large numbers of people living in poverty:
Manchester was a city in steep decline. Employment in textile, the industry that had given the city its nickname, Cottonopolis, had halved between the two world wars; from 1961 and 1983 the city lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs, and between 1966 and 1972 a quarter of its factories and workshops disappeared (King 2006: 74).
While this transformation contributed to crystallise the city’s image as that of a grim Northern city, marred by dereliction and high levels of criminality, it also appeared to have channelled the city’s creative energy in a music and clubbing scene that made it renowned across the UK and beyond, attributing to the place a reputation that was later refashioned and embraced with gusto in the professional re-imaging and branding of Manchester and its city centre. Similarly, the city’s image has been closely connected with the history of its football. The support that Manchester’s two major clubs have enjoyed,15 and the popularity of personalities like George Best, have projected an alternative and often successful image of the city, which today has a global reach too.
Following further economic decline in the early 80s, the subsequent transformation of Manchester coincided with its regeneration and especially that of its city centre,16 starting from Castlefield and the warehouses in key city centre locations, such as those on Whitworth Street. The process, which began in the late 80s, was catalysed through the bidding for investment for large events - Mega events, such as the Olympics (Cochrane et al. 2002) and the Commonwealth Games - and for other regeneration investment funds, such as the City Pride scheme in 1994. Even when unsuccessful, these bids played a central role in promoting the City’s image and cementing its aspiration to be a global player again. As Kellie puts it,
[w]hile Manchester did not go on to host the Olympics, there is no doubt it changed people’s perceptions of the city. Suddenly it stopped competing on a regional level with neighbouring towns such as Bolton, Blackburn and Stockport. It was now starting to ‘muscle it in’ with Barcelona, Madrid and Atlanta. As in the 19th century, people were beginning to take Manchester seriously again (2010: 36).
14 Decline began in the inter-war period. It became more pronounced after the Second World War and was further exacerbated in the early 80s. 15 Manchester United FC http://www.manutd.com/, and Manchester City FC http://www.mcfc.co.uk/ (both accessed 1 June 2014). 16 The regenerations of Hulme, to the South of the city centre, was also a turning point in the city regeneration roadmap in the early 1990s.
37 These bids, pursued through partnerships across the public and private sectors (discussed further in Chapter 8), further consolidated an entrepreneurial turn in the city’s urban politics and established a new modus operandi for the city’s governance (Quilley 2002; for a discussion of the rise of the' enterpreneurial city' instead see Savage et al. 2003:176-177).
This new model would gradually come to be regarded by some as enacting a form of proto- Blairite politics and as anticipating the creation of New Labour (King 2006: 89), given for instance the active cooperation with local partners in the private sector that it involved. This type of governance17 has also rested on a property-led strategy of urban regeneration (Peck and Ward 2002: 3;Quilley 2002: 84), as well as on setting a ‘growth first, welfare later’ order of priorities (Quilley 2002: 85; see also Herd and Patterson 2002) that
invoke[s] an urban version of ‘trickle-down’ theory to justify the glitzy make-over of the city centre: poor residents of the peripheral council estates will not feel the effects immediately, but will reap the longer-term rewards of a restructured economy and a concretely pro-business climate (Peck and Ward 2002: 7).
While this entrepreneurial style of governance is not unique to Manchester - and McLeod for instance eloquently describes the unfolding of Harvey’s concept of entrepreneurial urbanism in the setting of Glasgow’s regeneration (MacLeod 2002) - the city ‘is often held up as the epitome of entrepreneurialism and dynamism in urban governance and one of the proving grounds of what has been labelled ‘new urban politics’’ (Cochrane et al. 2002: 95). The idea that all cities are engaged in ‘place wars’ and in open competition with each other, nationally and internationally, to attract funds and foreign investment, (Kotler et al. 1993;Hall 1997), continued to be a catalyst and a dominant discourse informing the city’s aspirations (Robson 2002:36;Quilley 2002:86-87) and its redevelopment.
At the same time the regeneration trajectory embraced by Manchester can also be seen as the city’s attempt to stake a claim within the city-region (Deas and Ward 2002). Deas and Ward highlight the (often frustrated) expansionist attempts and certain forms of ‘local imperialism’ (Peck and Ward 2002: 15) in which Manchester engaged, attempting to expand beyond its boundaries and seeking to exercise influence within the city region
17 This proto-Blairite governance embraced what Quilley calls ‘a ‘post-industrial script’, (..) a willingness to abandon manufacturing as the necessary foundation for the regional economy’, a re-orientation towards the political centre, and an elitist orientation towards ‘key players’ politics, partnership arrangements, and an executive-driven style of decision-making (Ibid: 86-87). This governance pre-dated New Labour, and later fully embraced its New Deal-inspired work-first model of welfare-to-work, critiqued by some for not re-dressing issues such as job gaps, skill gaps, low wage levels, and the presence of the working poor in Manchester (Herd and Patterson 2002, especially page 194).
38 (Figure 8 in appendix 2)18 also through three key mechanisms. These were the City Pride investment competition (which for instance included neighbouring Salford), the establishment of an inward investment body, MIDAS, which also included other neighbouring authorities, and later the creation of Marketing Manchester, a strategic marketing agency to cover all ten Greater Manchester districts, and seeking to ‘articulate the singularity of the interests of the core city and its satellites’ (Deas and Ward 2002: 131).
Even then – for all the clarity and single-mindedness in embracing entrepreneurial urbanism - the path of city centre redevelopment would not have progressed so rapidly and radically, had the city not been confronted by a new and unexpected challenge – the bombing of its core area by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 15th June 1996. This was as part of a bombing campaign that the IRA had been waging since the beginning of that year (effectively ending the previous cease-fire agreement), and that had until then mainly focused on London and on targeting its financial heart. On Saturday 15th of June, however, the IRA announced that a bomb would be exploding within one hour in one of three central locations. The police began the evacuation of 80,000 people (Lester and Panter 2006: 12), identified the parked vehicle containing the bomb, and attempted to defuse it. The bomb, however, exploded at 11.17am, damaging much of the retail core within the city centre, and injuring about 300 people. Although no one was killed and only a dozen people were seriously injured, the blow had a very large emotional and psychological impact, as well as material repercussions for the city and the region at large,19 and for those whose businesses and work places were more directly affected.
The Labour council20 proactively collaborated with the Tory government deputy PM, Lord Heseltine (who previously, as environmental minister, had sanctioned the demolishing and regeneration of the area of Hulme, to the South of the city centre) to secure central
18 Manchester city region currently includes the districts of Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Stockport, Salford, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan - and is under the governance of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), see footnote 25. The ten local authorities in the city region have a track record of working together since the mid-80s. 19 Its effects on current perceptions of security in the city centre and on securitisation are discussed in section 4.4.3 and in Chapter 5, especially in section 5.5.1. 20 Manchester City Council has been governed by Labour since the 1984 election, without interruption. As Quilley (2002) argues, the council first briefly espoused a form of municipal socialism, until 1987 (when the Conservative won their third general election), when it rapidly embraced an entrepreneurial style of governance (Ibid: 80-84). Two charismatic figures have acted as Leaders since 1984, Stringers (1984-96) and Leese (since 1996). Current council composition on http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/362/elections_and_voting/4658/previous_election_results/5 (accessed 1 June 2014).
39 funding for the reconstruction, and to draft plans for the remodelling of the city centre through an international competition (Ibid: 90). The competition, which was going to include the revamping of 59 acres of city centre shopping,21 as well as some public space, a face lift for the Arndale shopping precinct, and the regeneration of some of the damaged historic buildings, was won by the EDAW consortium.22 Local architect Ian Simpson signed many of the new regeneration projects (from N1 Deansgate to the Urbis building), although BDP architects also contributed, for instance with the regeneration of Cathedral Street. For a while, the growth of residential city centre living - still fledgling, with resident numbers not yet reaching the 1,000 mark (Lester and Panter 2006: 105) - appeared at risk, and so did visitors’ confidence in coming back into central Manchester. To dispel the possibility of either of these trends setting in, rapid action was taken within the council, especially through the leadership of Richard Leese and the executive role played by Howard Bernstein and in collaboration with the private sector, in order to catalyse change fast and to win back public confidence. Events in the city centre, including a public party organised by Councillor Karney in the Town Hall square, were also aimed at restoring citizens’ confidence (see eyewitness account by Pat Karney in Lester and Panter 2006: 98).
In a short space of time the city centre continued to be remodelled at a fast pace. The language of opportunity that soon came to frame the bomb and the urban interventions that followed has been documented by Holden (2002), who also points to the impact that the bomb had as it gave a new lease of life to partnerships and networks that, as Peck and Ward put it, ‘may have otherwise begun to show signs of post-Olympic fatigue, or even sclerosis’ (2002: 14). The authors also note that ‘the vigorous response to the bomb invoked a strong sense of Mancunian pride’ (2002:14) about the city’s capacity to respond and show resilience. With time public opinion began to see the bomb in the same light and
[t]he success of the new city centre has been such that what was once whispered quietly – that the bomb may have been the best thing to happen to Manchester – is now said quite openly by many in both Whitehall and the city itself (King 2006: 85).
However, as the entrepreneurial turn that makes of Manchester ‘the entrepreneurial city writ large’ (Ward 2003) had been embraced before the bombing, these events ought to be seen as unexpected accelerators rather than as significantly reshaping the urban politics being pursued. As such, the regeneration of Manchester and its city centre, as Holden
21 Just as the Trafford Centre shopping centre was getting ready to open, outside Manchester, in 1998. 22 EDAW’s plans and vision are on http://www.rudi.net/pages/17390 (accessed 1 June 2014).
40 argues, need to be positioned within the broader context of the urbanisation of capital (Holden 2002: 150), and the restructuring and reimaging of Manchester’s political economy (ibid:148).
With the advent of the entrepreneurial turn, as theorised by Harvey, cities are also argued to be ‘driven by a political economy of place rather than territory: the benefits of flagship projects like convention centres and festivals are often more readily experienced by those, like tourists and place-mobile capitalists, who live beyond the immediate locality’ (Harvey 1989, quoted in MacLeod 2002: 604-605).
In the regeneration of Manchester this economy of place was achieved also through the creation of a conference facility,23 Manchester Central, near the Town Hall and within the area currently known as the Civic Quarter. This converted site, previously a disused railways station, has been hosting very high profile events since the mid 90s, including National Party conferences. Redevelopment of this site has been accompanied by sustained expansion in the hospitality industry, mainly through investment in high-end hotel facilities, but also through an extension in the range of restaurants and entertainment venues available. While Mellor claims that ‘the most remarked feature of Manchester’s transformation has been the ascendancy of the leisure industry ‘(2002:219), Bell and Binnie note that ‘[a] powerful emblem of this new Manchester is the development of new spaces of gastronomy and hospitality’ (2005: 79). The scholars also argue that these facilities cater and are more closely attuned to the preferences of certain socio- demographics:
as cities compete with each other to attract capital, businesses and visitors, they are increasingly reoriented to meet the consumption and life style needs of (..) ‘the new middle class’ (..) a group famed for its reflexive taste-making practices and aestheticisation of everyday life (Ibid: 79).
Bell and Binnie take the view that the regeneration process in places like the Northern Quarter or the Printworks in Manchester city centre has not resulted solely in the production of homogenised and purified spaces (Ibid: 85). However, other urban studies literature on gentrification has largely highlighted how these processes tend to be totalising in their approach, and to engender exclusion and displacement (Smith 1996;Smith 2002),
23 And accompanied by major infrastructural projects, including the airport expansion (first established in 1928, http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/manweb.nsf/Content/OurHistory, accessed 1 June 2014) and the creation of the Metrolink tramline (in the early 90s, www.metrolink.co.uk/ accessed 1 June 2014).
41 even if specific studies of middle-class gentrification elsewhere in the UK highlighted that the enactment of gentrification can result in a variety of localised outcomes (Butler and Robson 2001). According to this strand of literature regeneration at best treats diversity as a form of ‘social wallpaper’ (Butler 2003), and at worst produces forms of revanchist urbanism (MacLeod 2002;Smith 1996) or vengeful interventionism against any groups (the homeless, the squatters, the ‘hoodie’ or the skateboarders for instance) perceived to disrupt or challenge the progress of regeneration. Manchester city centre did not have a resident population before regeneration (in the 80s only a few hundred people lived there), and therefore the current upsurge in its population, now approaching the 20,000 mark, has not directly priced out or displaced previous residents. Nonetheless, Manchester regeneration too has been pursued with a view ‘that new users of the city could work and play while remaining sheltered from those whose very presence might disrupt this very carefully manufactured ‘utopia’’ (MacLeod and Ward, quoted in Ward 2003: 118).
Furthermore, as Smith noted, claiming the city for the middle-classes now involves much more than simply providing gentrified housing (Smith 2002: 443). Amongst one of the most recent regeneration projects, the privately owned neighbourhood of Spinningfields is probably the most emblematic, and the one that best fits Smith’s idea of a third-wave gentrification, as a process that transforms
whole areas into complexes that pioneer a comprehensive class-infected urban remake. These new landscape complexes now integrate housing with shopping, restaurants, cultural facilities (cf Vine 2001), open space, employment opportunities – whole new complexes of recreation, consumption, production and pleasure, as well as residence. Just as important gentrification as urban strategy weaves global financial markets together with large- and medium-sized real estate developers, local merchants, and property agents with brand-name retailers, all lubricated by city and local government for whom beneficent social outcomes are now assumed to derive from the market rather than from its regulation (Ibid: 443).
However, long before the recent Spinningfields redeveloped, it was the creation of the Gay Village in the 90s that constituted another important step in the regeneration of the city centre, and its consolidation as a destination for visitors. The Village, which became a more visible presence also through the opening of the famous Manto bar on Canal Street, was a novel concept in Britain at the time, and by the late 90s it had already acquired an iconic status, also thanks to a Channel Four television series, ‘Queer as Folk’, broadcast in 1999 and 2000, which depicted it (Binnie and Skeggs 2004). While Binnie and Skeggs note that the Gay Village prompted the creation of similar spaces in other UK cities (including
42 Birmingham), they express their unease with its development, particularly through arguing that the Village was used to market the city as cosmopolitan and user-friendly (Ibid: 49), but only in so far as it prompted the consumption of certain types of difference, and not others (Ibid: 52). Furthermore, Bell and Binnie comment on the negative effects of creating bounded communities and consumption spaces instead of diffusing certain practices and their visibility more widely, and lament the exclusion or marginalisation of less mainstream, less assimilated or desirable forms of sexual expression within the Village (Bell and Binnie 2004: 1810-1811).
Despite these scholarly debates, city branders, and Marketing Manchester specifically, see the Village as an important asset to attract investment and tourism (Binnie and Skeggs 2004: 49-50), and Bell and Binnie also highlight the Village’s position within ‘a global repertoire of themed gay villages’ (2004: 1808). The scholars problematise
the promotion of gay spaces and events as part of broader urban entrepreneurialism agendas (..) the process of purifying space and the concomitant eradication of strangeness and danger that inevitably results from these strategies of boosterism (2004: 1813) and argue that ‘gay-friendliness has come to be used as a form of cultural capital deployed by powerful groups and by cities themselves as they jockey for position on the global urban hierarchy’ (2004: 1816-17). In this respect, the creation of the Village, and the opening of new and iconic bars and clubs on Canal Street cannot be separated from a range of events, including the famous Gay Pride parade and weekend that were also being seen as fulfilling similar objectives:
(..) ‘spectacular’ events, such as Mardi Gras in Manchester or in Sydney, are also significant in emphasising the role of queer cultures within the narratives that cities tell about themselves (Bell and Binnie 2004: 1813).
Just as the Olympics bids and the Commonwealth Games had previously become a way for Manchester to attract funds and to climb ‘the urban hierarchy’, allowing the city to join again the club of the global cities whose names are known and recognised (Cochrane et al. 2002), a whole series of events were beginning to be run in parallel with the physical regeneration of sites within the City and especially the city centre. Some have today become regular dates in the City’s social calendar, whilst others are more recent additions - for instance the biennial Manchester International Festival. The regeneration of physical sites within the city centre, the organisation of events, the selective and re-interpreted
43 appropriation of certain elements of Manchester’s history (from its political past to its iconic music and clubbing scene),24 have arguably all contributed to rearticulating the image of the city in order to accomplish what urban studies scholars referred to as ‘place- making’ and ‘place selling’ (Gibson 2005;Kavaratzis 2004;Philo and Kearns 1993). As Philo and Kearns have argued (1993), the process of city selling has two objectives:
to encourage geographically flexible or footloose economic enterprises to locate in a specific place and to encourage tourists to visit in large numbers, whilst convincing local people that they are an important part of the process and that ‘good things’ are being done on their behalf (Miles 2010: 41-42).
From this perspective, therefore, the regeneration of Manchester city centre, whilst reputed to have been successfully accomplished, has been achieved at a cost. As Peck and Ward have cautioned, the jury may still be out on its long-term effects: whilst the instigators and protagonist of the regeneration may bet on the ‘trickle-down’ effect of wealth generation and redistribution, the critics warn about
an increasingly ‘Americanised’ city: economic and social polarisation will have become perversely underwritten by a set of policies which effectively legitimate the transfer of funds form social safety-net programmes into subsidisation of speculative accumulation, zero-sum competition and middle-class consumption (..) the cumulative outcome is a form of regressive social redistribution (Peck and Ward 2002: 7-8).
Such concerns remain pertinent today too. Manchester continues to successfully re- negotiate its status regionally and nationally, most recently through the establishment of the first Greater Manchester Combined Authority (in 2011) with statutory rights to coordinate its operations in areas of key economic development, regeneration and transport.25 A Local Enterprise Partnership was also set up to support the delivery of the strategy for Greater Manchester, further building on existing partnerships with the private sector. Greater Manchester’s recent City Deal with government, defined as ‘a range of bespoke agreements helping to empower us to make our own decisions about what is needed to support growth’ (GMCA 2013: 4) was another pivotal step. To secure economic growth till 2020 (and beyond) the current governance strategy, acknowledges the economic downturn and the need to reduce demand on public services (ibid: 13), and continues to prioritise entrepreneurialism and partnership with the private sector. Global
24 Property developers have recuperated significant elements of Manchester’s history for branding purposes, naming apartment blocs after famous suffragettes or iconic clubs (Hartherley 2011, ‘The Big Regeneration Debate’, event held in Manchester on 2nd March 2011). 25 http://www.agma.gov.uk/cms_media/files/4i_statutory_city_region_agreement_21_july_2009v2.pdf?static= 1 and http://www.agma.gov.uk/latest-news/new-powers-for-greater-manchester/index.html (both accessed 1 June 2014).
44 positioning, foreign investments, competiveness as a destination and as a global brand are all viewed as key to creating the conditions for growth (ibid: 13,39).
This section briefly presented a critical reading of Manchester’s history, the many transformations and contradictions that have characterised it, and the changing role it played vis a vis other locales. Having discussed key phases and features of its extensive regeneration, and the governance and debates that have accompanied it, the next section briefly reflects on the city centre as a scale of analysis.
3.2 The City Centre
This research focuses on the city centre, as it offers an advantageous angle from which to observe both the specific material inscriptions and configurations of certain practices and policies (such as the enactment of a real time exclusion zone via the use of an automatic number plate recognition system, described in chapter 6) and their footprint on the built environment. On the other hand, this angle still allows to observe complex global dynamics, such as the entrepreneurial urbanism described above, which do not simply play out local politics but rather inflect them with global trends and mobilise scripts that circulate at other scales too - from the local, to the regional, the national and the global. That of the city centre is also a scale around which the experiences and views of individual stakeholders, city centre workers and residents may already be organised,26 and might be easily mobilised for further reflection. Imaginaries and aspirations at the city and city- centre scales are already widely circulated by city leaders and branders too - and a range of policy documents and task forces exist that focus on the city centre as a unit. What is more, the aspirations that city makers and branders (and some private stakeholders, such as property developers) hold for the city centre arguably act as a focal point for the wider aspirations that they hold for the City as a whole. The city centre is often invested with the added meaning and remit of acting as a window shop for the City at large, at times even for the city-region itself. These further layers of aspirations for the city centre are clearly detectable in policy discourse:
26 Even before becoming involved in this study the city centre residents and workers would hold ideas, views and preferences about the city centre, at least in connection to their everyday perceptions and experiences of it. Those stakeholders professionally involved in directly shaping certain aspects of the city centre were also extremely likely to possess articulated views also about its future aspirations and priorities.
45 This plan (..) recognises that Manchester and its city centre are competing internationally. Capital is global and investment decisions are based on a range of factors, not least of which is the perception of what a place is like. External views of Manchester’s quality of life as a whole are strongly determined by perceptions of the city centre. These opinions will be formed by factors such as a distinctive cityscape and public realm, business diversity, the cultural offer, a range of global hotel brands, high quality civic functions and accessibility. Achievement of our vision for the city centre will ensure positive perceptions of Manchester, for both investors and residents (A Strategic Plan for Manchester City centre 2009-2012, p.3, my emphasis).
Manchester is the original modern city. Since the first Industrial Revolution it has been at the leading edge in innovation and creativity. With this rich heritage at its foundation, the city centre will reflect Manchester’s ambition to be in the front rank of cities in Europe and the world (Ibid, p.7).
These imaginaries and aspirations are also often articulated in the media (as discussed in 3.3). This scale therefore allows a process of analysis that is multi-layered, that can be ethnographically enriched and that lends itself to be empirically grounded in many ways - through media analysis, policy document analysis, interviews and focus groups with a wide range of stakeholders, and also through the researcher’s own participant observation.
The working boundaries of the city centre used in this research are those of the map produced by Visiting Manchester, the City’s tourist board (also see Figure 9 in appendix 2).27 Its population count somewhat varies.28 The city centre ward (whose borders are slightly different to the city centre map produced by the tourist board – Figure 10 in appendix 2) in 2011 counted approximately 18,000 residents (Office for National Statistics 2011a;Office for National Statistics 2011b), a number that is expected to have increased already. The majority of the residents recorded in 2011 were aged between 18-29 years. This cohort accounts for 12,394 (out of the 18,000) residents, and within that the 20-24 age group on its own accounts for 6,160 residents. The number of residents aged between 30- 44 years was the next prevalent group after the 18-29 age range.29 The mean age for city centre residents was 27 years of age (considerably lower than that of the City at large).
27 The map used during the 2012 interviews and focus groups is on http://www.visitmanchester.com/media/115401/pocket%20map%202011_2010.pdf (accessed 1 June 2014). A newer version, with a slightly larger city centre, is on http://www.visitmanchester.com/media/718221/city_map_2012_reprint_2_-_lisa_map.pdf (accessed 1 June 2014). 28 Possibly due of the transience of the city centre population and the criteria for inclusion in the count. The 2011 Census statistics counted ‘usual residents’ of the UK, i.e. anyone who ‘stayed/intended to stay for 12 months or more, or had a permanent UK address and was outside the UK and intended to be outside the UK for less than 12 months’ (Office of National Statistics 2011, Table on Manchester Ward Population Age Structure). The number reported is therefore likely to be conservative considering the high resident turnover characterising Manchester city centre. 29 The residents aged between 30-44 years in 2011 were 3,633, and the numbers for those at either ends of the age range were significantly lower. The number of children and young people aged between 0-17 was less than 400, and that of adults and older citizens between the ages of 45 and 90+ merely reached 1,358.
46
In terms of gender balance, the city centre resident population was reported to have a slightly larger percentage of women within the 20-24 age group,30 and a slightly larger percentage of men in all other age groups between 29 to 65 years of age (Manchester City Council and NHS Manchester 2011: 6).
According to the latest 2011 census data (Office for National Statistics 2011c: 2, Table KS201, ethnicity of residents), the city centre resident ethnic composition is largely white (68%). This is slightly above the average for Manchester as a whole (which is at 66.6%). The city centre contains a lower number of residents who described themselves as of mixed ethnicity when compared to Manchester as a whole, and a much lower number of Black or Black British residents (only 2.4% versus the 8.6% average for the city). There are instead higher numbers of Asian or Asian British residents (21.3% versus the 17.1% Manchester average), and of residents of other ethnicities (5% versus 3.1%).
While the city centre is characterised by a high level of connectivity with the city region,31 and by a commuter flow across the ten local authorities, and mainly directed towards Manchester, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority estimated in 2009 that
on average across the ten local authorities just 60% of residents live and work in the same borough but 90% live and work in Greater Manchester. This means that 330,000 people regularly cross GM’s administrative boundaries to access work. The area is also a coherent travel to learn geography: only 71% of 16 to 18 year olds live and study in the same borough but 96% live and study in Greater Manchester. The figures are even more stark for young people undertaking work-based learning: 60% do so in their home borough but 95% do so within the city region (AGMA 2009: 4).
In the city centre population density is higher than elsewhere in Manchester, while household size is smaller (1.79 person per household) on average (Manchester City Council and NHS Manchester 2011: 4-5). When not living on their own, residents share flats, and very few households count children amongst their occupants - a mere 2.7 % (Ibid: 8).32
According to a recent report by Manchester City Council and NHS Manchester on the ‘City Centre Ward Profile’, this ward is characterised by high household incomes, and low deprivation levels, particularly when compared to other areas of Manchester (2011: 14).
30 A 1.2 male to female ratio was reported in these 2011 city centre resident statistics as a whole. 31 No statistics are available on the relative contribution to the city centre economy made by residents or commuters who come to work in the city centre. 32 According to the 2001 census, this was much lower than the 36.3% City average.
47 The vast majority of city centre residents (96.6%) lives in private accommodation – privately owned or more often privately rented – and the number of social housing is extremely low. Private tenure in the rest of Manchester instead was estimated at only at 68.7%. The most prevalent type of property is flats, and although the value of property has fluctuated - as has the number of sales - it has remained much higher than that of the Manchester average (ibid).33
According to the ACORN34 classification system, which segments the population taking into account demographic data and analysis and patterns of consumption, the dominant ACORN type in Manchester City Centre is that of ‘suburban, privately renting professionals’ (ibid: 12). Residents are described as sitting within the subset of the ‘educated urbanites’ group and the ‘urban prosperity’ category (ibid:12).
The city centre economy, was in 2010 mainly based on real estate, retail and wholesale, hospitality (mainly hotels and restaurants), and financial services (then followed by social work, and other sectors),35
[h]igher than City average proportions of workers in the ward were employed in the financial intermediation, hotel and real estate sectors, with lower proportions in the education, health, manufacturing and wholesale and transport sectors in 2010 (ibid:13-14).
Mellor noted that the city centre economy is also characterised by the presence of a ‘business-service complex’ that, whilst based in the centre, services the entire region:
Manchester’s business community comprises specialised financial and professional services, many of which are not available elsewhere in the North West (..) they are regional (if not national or global) facilities; they retain central city bases (Mellor 2002: 121).
The Granada TV Studios 36 are also based in the city centre and the recent BBC headquarters’ move to a new MediaCity in Salford, just outside Manchester, is expected to further stimulate the contribution of the media and creative industries to the local economy and to that of the city centre.
33 One third of property are within Council Tax band D (much higher than the 6.6% city average), and followed by a very significant number of band C and band E properties (ibid 2011: 10). 34 http://acorn.caci.co.uk/ (accessed 1 June 2014). 35 See economy tables in Manchester City Council and NHS Manchester (2011) for further details. 36 Successfully operating since the 50s.
48 At the southern edge of the city centre, a Corridor37 connecting Manchester universities, hospitals and various centres of excellence and science parks is currently undergoing major redevelopment and integrating further these sectors of the local economy and their transport infrastructure.
Despite its high connectivity, the city centre is compact and it is perhaps worth noting that when compared to the rest of the city it has the highest proportion of residents walking to work, and the lowest percentage of resident car ownership and of resident travelling on buses (Manchester City Council and NHS Manchester 2011: 22).
Finally, some of the quality of life measurements, such as sense of place and sense of belonging, reveal that
[r]esidents in the ward report higher levels of satisfaction with their local area as a place to live as the Manchester average. (..) [they] are less likely to say they feel they belong to their local area and fewer feel that they can influence decisions that affect their local area (this was the lowest proportion in the City). (..) Residents in the ward show a higher proportion who say that they are happy, and there are higher rates of satisfaction with their lives, compared to residents in Manchester as a whole (ibid: 26).
This data, obtained via telephone survey, suggests that the city centre residents sampled also complained about rowdiness and drunken behaviour more than residents in other parts of Manchester, perceived more anti social behaviour and were less satisfied with ‘the way the Council runs things’ (ibid: 27), although they also were more appreciative of leisure and sport facilities, galleries and museums, and only slightly less appreciative of events in the city centre than the other Manchester residents surveyed (Ibid: 25-26). Some of this data confirms earlier findings by Wynne et al (1998), who investigated earlier cohorts of city centre residents in the mid 1990s, particularly in relation to the reported widespread sense of not belonging (Idib:854). Other earlier findings, such as the desire for and consumption of a city centre lifestyle of cultural events and amenities as a prime motivator for relocation to the city centre (Wynne et al 1998:855), have arguably now lost relevance, as discussed throughout this thesis.38 These include the privileging of lifestyle over convenience and proximity to work (Ibid: 855) or the aura of bohemia allegedly associated with the initial phase of city centre repopulation.
37 http://www.corridormanchester.com/ (accessed 1 June 2014). 38 For instance in chapter 5, where attitudes towards gating of events are discussed.
49 In conclusion, after briefly examining the reason for focusing on the city centre analytically, this section concisely outlined some of its salient features including some of the demographic characteristics of its current population, its property stock, its connectivity, its economic base. It also touched on both the aspirations that city makers hold about the function of the city centre in projecting an image of the city as a whole, and on some of the habits and perceptions of those who live there. The next section instead focuses on current media representations of Manchester and its city centre and uncovers some of the dominant aspiration mobilised about their present and future.
3.3 Media
An important site of articulation and mobilisation of images and visions about Manchester city centre is the media. To explore whether the dominant image of Manchester city centre circulated by policy makers and city branders in policy discourse and grey literature was also mobilised in the local media coverage, a snapshot of printed coverage from the Manchester Evening News (MEN)39 was analysed.40 This was complemented with other more openly promotional local publications,41 including the weekly magazine Urban Life,42 distributed by the same newsgroup.
In line with a multi-layered account, the images recovered in the media added another dimension to the understanding of the city centre. The coverage was ‘looped’ into the fieldwork in the form of excerpts used as prompts to stimulate participants’ reflections on certain aspects of the city centre, and on the role of the media in generating and circulating certain images of the city.43 It also informed the selection of a first wave of institutional stakeholders to be interviewed.
39 This is widely circulated, mostly freely, within Greater Manchester and the city centre, a well as online. Founded in 1868 and previously part of The Guardian group, the paper is now owned by Trinity Mirror and second nationally, after the Liverpool Echo, for its circulation amongst regional daily newspapers outside London. The latest ABC figures report its circulation at 73,622 per day (http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2013/news/abc-figures-how-the-regional-dailies-performed-6/ , accessed 1 June 2014). Its website is said to count 2.4 million unique readers every month (http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/about-us/, accessed 1 June 2014). 40 August to October 2011 inclusive. 41For instance the magazine MCR, circulated by the tourist board authority, Visiting Manchester, see http://www.visitmanchester.com/articles/mcr-manchester-magazine/ (accessed 1 June 2014). 42 This is distributed in the city centre only, see http://www.getmemedia.com/ideas/manchester-urban-life- lifestyle-magazine/men-media-sales.html (accessed 1 June 2014), and its coverage was sampled for a three month period, from mid July to mid October 2011. 43 Participants’ views of the media coverage received by the city are summed up in appendix 3.
50 3.3.1 Recurrent Themes and Portrayals of Manchester in Local Printed Media
The MEN printed coverage was accessed electronically.44 Football stories were amongst the most recurrent coverage retrieved when recalling articles on Manchester,45 also in the national media.46 While these articles have been filtered out from the final dataset (when not relevant to the city centre), they point to the role of football in generating wider recognition and positive branding for Manchester, pursued also through the recent opening of a football museum in the city centre,47 and though city twinning (Jayne et al. 2011) and similar ‘ambassadorial’ events.
The final MEN dataset included 226 articles, heterogeneous in content and format. Qualitative coding, assisted by Atlas.ti software,48 revealed dominant themes:
Theme A: the Manchester riots. Part of the coverage reports and comments on the 9th August 2011 disturbances (95 articles, 42% of the total), at great length or in passim, discussing their chronology, the police response, the apprehension of suspects, the sentencing of those appearing in court, the reactions of various actors, including residents, the clean up campaign, the role of social media during and after the rioting, and the reputational and economic damage to the city centre. Excerpts from these articles were used to probe stakeholders’ views. How the disturbances were framed in the MEN coverage is discussed in Chapter 6 (see also appendix 3), and more extensively in Pieri (2014b, see appendix 6).
The events were condemned unreservedly (also in the national coverage). In the MEN coverage these events were framed as acts of ‘mindless violence’, looting and ‘thuggery’, with terminology largely borrowed from the national newspaper coverage describing the events in London, and later those in Manchester. The MEN coverage strived to separate
44 Via LexisNexis http://www.lexisnexis.com/ (accessed 1 June 2014), used for academic purposes and in compliance with The University of Manchester’s licence. 45 Details of the collection parameters are in appendix 3. 46 Part of the analysis involved contrasting the MEN coverage of the unrest that took place in Manchester city centre on 9th Aug 2011 against that of the same events that appeared on national newspapers. A reference dataset of national newspaper articles was created too. This included a snapshot of coverage appearing over one month (Aug 2011) in The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Times, The Sunday Times, as well as from The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun. 47 http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/ (accessed 1 June 2014). 48 http://www.atlasti.com/ (accessed 1 June 2014).
51 ‘rioters’ from the true Mancunians and good citizens of Greater Manchester, and to align the latter with the interests and views of city and business leaders. The attitude of disdain with which events of 9th August were depicted perhaps stemmed from their apparent dissonance from the otherwise dominant frame circulated by MEN – that of a city centre that is vibrant and secure. The outrage expressed resentment at the possibility that this image might be temporarily or permanently jeopardised by the events:
the shameful images of thuggery and rioting which could tarnish Greater Manchester's hard-won image as a first-rate region in which to do business. (..) The damage (..) is already said to run into millions of pounds. Potentially worse is the long term impact to the reputation of Greater Manchester's business community. Vaughan Allen, chief executive of CityCo (..) says the long term concern now is ensuring that the city does not lose the positive image which has been so hard won in recent years (MEN, 11 Aug 2011, p.8).
The coverage strongly aligns with local institutional stakeholders’ readings of events, whose interests and views are generally portrayed as harmonious, and acts as a platform to disseminate their views to a wide audience. Even when the occasional criticism or difference amongst institutional stakeholders is reported, this departure is only temporary. For instance MEN covered a local parliamentarian as he accused GM Police of acting too timidly during the unrest and failing to protect the city centre businesses, but then rapidly and enthusiastically endorsed the GM Police Shop a Looter operation launched soon after the riots.
Theme B: Manchester’s business performance and news: this coverage frames Manchester as a thriving business site, reporting on investment in transport and links, commercial residential and large scale urban property development news, launch of new premises, commercial activities of shops, new restaurants and clubs, with commentary by a variety of actors, such as representatives of the chamber of commerce, Cityco, consultancies like the New Economy, the Piccadilly Partnership and various business leaders. Recovery of these articles informed the selection of a first wave of key local personalities and institutional stakeholders (see appendix 1 for a participant list).
The positive image of Manchester and its business base was sustained in the coverage even when referencing the economic recession or the economic damage brought about by the August unrest. Allusions to the IRA bombing were made to remind readers of the resilience and entrepreneurship displayed by Manchester’s businesses in the past, and restore public
52 confidence. The statements of these powerful stakeholders, often quoted very extensively, blend with the editorial line:
He [Manchester Pub and Club Network rep] said: As we had expected, things were a lot quieter than we're used to on a summer's weekend but I think everyone's plagued with caution. We have been proud to see how determined businesses have been to return to normal. Members have been reluctant to let the trouble keep them closed and bars in the Northern Quarter and the Village have said we defy anyone who wants to ruin our city. We have to let people know it’s safe and vibrant and get them back in for the great nights out they always have. We're all feeling the pinch but we all have to pull together. This is when the true Mancunian spirit shines through. (MEN 15 Aug 2011, p.2)
This framing too seeks to align the interests of citizens with those of the business community (and of city leaders, given their interests are depicted as convergent with those of businesses too), which are openly promoted. It also dictates specific modes of operating as a model citizen and true Mancunian.49
Theme C: Events and event tourism. The coverage listed small and large scale events (from family-friendly pic nics to the Gay Pride parade and the Conservative Party Annual Conference). Public and private, these often connected to food, the arts or sport. These articles, used also to inform the interview and focus group schedule, frame the city centre, sometimes the city at large, as a culturally thriving and vibrant destination. These events are often constructed as opportunities for ‘event tourism’ and framed through economic arguments about the revenues they are said to generate:
IN JUST five years, Manchester has gone from also-ran to conference capital of Britain (..)This year, the Tory conference will generate £27m for the local economy a massive shot in the arm in difficult times. (..) So-called business tourism' in Manchester is now worth an astonishing £573m per annum. Some 60,000 events take place every year, with the city attracting 4.2m delegates and 2m hotel bookings. (..). Last year, Manchester was voted third best conference destination in the world by a leading trade magazine, behind London and Barcelona. Quite an achievement: but the level of ambition is such that city leaders won't be happy until they are number one (MEN 26 Sept 2011, p10).
This type of coverage widely circulates the visions of city leaders, promoting their aspirations and an entrepreneurial take on these events, and their expectations of what their benefits would be:
49 Ironically, the way of displaying good citizenship increasingly coincided, in the MEN coverage of the riots, with the imperative to consume and spend money in the city centre economy, as well as with the duty to actively engage in the policing of suspects, as discussed in Chapter 6.
53 Always something going on. Tourism isn't just about having fun. As an industry worth £5.4bn a year to the Greater Manchester economy it's serious business (MEN, 26th Sept 2011, p. 10).
As well as conferences and tradeshows, featured prominently as income generators, cultural events too were praised in the coverage as benefitting the city economy, as well as raising its profile, and attracting big personalities and visitors.
A small number of protest events were featured too - marches to coincide with the Conservative Party conference, and events by Anti-cuts campaigners, Trade Union Congress and independent protesters (against spending cuts to public services, or raising costs in higher education). While some events were covered as celebrating Manchester’s radical past, and its current achievements (as per theme E below), these were not connected to present day protest events. Whether annual commemorative events (such as the 1819 Peterloo Massacre Remembrance event) and guided tourist walks on Manchester’s radical past, or contemporary celebrations of selfless behaviour, like the ceremony for the Field Hospital doctors and nurses who volunteered on Afghanistan’s frontline, who received the honorary Freedom of Manchester and marched across the city centre (October 2011), these events were not linked in their coverage to contemporary events and protests by public sector workers (including nurses) against cuts to public services. The coverage aimed at boosting civic pride and the brand image of the city, even when promoted as a place with a radical past, home of the Suffragettes, of political thinkers and protestors. It projected a selective, unproblematic and in many ways post-political view of the city centre, largely depicted as a pacified and peaceful destination for visitors to come to.
Theme D: Manchester ‘brand’, civic pride and citizenship. The coverage discussing the civic pride displayed in the aftermath of the riots, the collective clean-ups, the support for the ‘I love MCR campaign’ and various initiatives to brand the city and ‘manage its reputation’ can be grouped together under this theme. Some coverage on city living, as well as that reporting on proposed changes to public space and parks, and to public services can also be subsumed under this heading; once more the framing of Manchester and its city centre is extremely upbeat.
Theme E: The history (or the histories) of Manchester. As noted above, the MEN coverage often framed Manchester as a site of rich historical significance, although the past is deployed a-politically to promote pride of place and encourage tourism, and is largely
54 unconnected to any coverage of contemporary protests or contestations. These histories are mobilised to selectively reference a variety of aspects of the city’s heritage and shape Manchester’s (brand) identity today - from allusions to its industrial past and migration fluxes (the development of a local Chinese community for instance) to those about the city’s radical and political history or its 1996 IRA bombing, as well as references to the city’s vibrant music scene, its established and thriving gay community, its football tradition, and its recent representation in popular culture within the TV soap ‘Coronation Street’.
References to security loosely cut across many of the framing and themes listed above, from the management of the August 2011 disturbances and the policing strategies introduced in their aftermaths, or the arrangements for the securitisation of city centre areas during major events. Sporadic references to the past terror threat (the 1996 IRA bombing), and a few instances of reporting of separate criminal incidents and their investigation (often outside the city centre, and sometimes affecting neighbouring authorities outside Manchester itself), as well as general issues of funding and resources allocated to policing and security were also recovered. These were not the dominant type of coverage circulated, and Manchester city centre was generally framed as a safe locale.
These overarching frames circulated also in Urban Life, the weekly lifestyle magazine – except for the riots theme. As the magazine focuses on lifestyle and property in the city centre rather than other types of news, the ‘I love Manchester’ campaign was given prominence in its place. Good business performance was evoked through the relentless advertising of new venues opening every week, and the framing of the city centre as a cosmopolitan and lively place was achieved, as in the case of the MEN coverage, through selective recourse to Manchester’s history, and extensive display of its exotic cuisine and restaurant offering. City Living was the dominant theme, primed through the extensive listings of events and shows available right on residents’ doorstep. As the raison d’être of the magazine is its 20-page long property guide, with adverts for residential property on sale and on rental mainly in the city centre, city living was framed also through extensive coverage of new or iconic residential properties, and the accessories and furnishing that readers may purchase to decorate them.
55 3.4 Conclusions
This chapter introduced salient historical developments of Manchester, including its regeneration, and critically discussed its entrepreneurial turn, as well as the images and visions that institutional stakeholders pursue and circulate in local policy and other grey literature, to successfully position Manchester within global networks of cities, to attract investment and visitors. While the city centre may be seen as continuously in the making, as argued in chapter 2, its present is stirred and shaped also through the mobilisation of specific visions, aspirations and imagery. With reference to the many transformations and contradictions that have characterised Manchester’s changing role vis a vis other locales regionally, nationally and internationally, it has been argued that its most recent and extensive regeneration has been hailed as a success within policy circles. Scholarly debates have often emphasised a more complex picture, highlighting some of the trade-offs generated, and greater awareness of the wider (and at times negative) implications of such developments. The chapter also highlighted the rationale for adopting the city centre as a scale of analysis, arguing that this is the preferential site that city branders use to articulate - through the mobilisation of images, policy and promotional discourse, through the built environment and the staging of events - the transformations, aspirations and trajectory projected for Manchester. This chosen unit of analysis also affords multiple and complementary entry points into the ongoing process of securitisation, as will be shown in the next few chapters.
The current chapter argued that city leaders and branders’ efforts to position Manchester nationally and globally are circulated and sustained through local media. Local media coverage overwhelmingly supports their vision for Manchester. It offers an upbeat representation of the city, unfailingly corroborates mainstream institutional accounts of its successful ranking, through a range of indicators, from the economic to the cultural, thereby framing Manchester as belonging to a network of ‘well-to-do’ cities, which includes London. Events are depicted as generating national and international attention, connecting today’s vibrant city centre with its (selective) historical past, generating income and attracting visitors to the city. As in the policy documents analysed, the city centre emerges in this media coverage as the prime stage for the display of the city’s self-assuredness, and its trajectory is projected as ever ascending.50
50 Confidence and determination even cut through the accounts of the damage done by the August unrest.
56
Media coverage also actively seeks to align citizens’ interests with those of business and institutional actors, whose interests are depicted as convergent and harmonious. The image of the city centre projected in the media is clearly defined, and deeply apolitical or even post-political. Any event capable of casting a shade over the ascending trajectory depicted for the city centre generates a stark and revanchist response, as epitomised by the depiction of the 2011 urban unrest.
After contextualising the study of Manchester, accounting for the methodological framework and the city centre scale of analysis adopted, and introducing the dominant institutional visions circulating in both local policy and media discourse, the next three chapters address the theme of securitisation and critically trace its many developments and implications within Manchester city centre and beyond.
57 58 Chapter 4 Security and the City: Risk, Securitisation and the Built Environment
This chapter is the first of three dedicated to exploring in depth issues of security and to unpacking their role in (co)shaping Manchester city centre. The chapters together investigate contemporary security policy, practice and everyday instantiations. They do so by critically mobilising literature that reflects on these issues at various scales, and from various disciplinary perspectives, and by discussing and integrating the insights thus gained with those emerging from the ethnographic and the empirical analysis of Manchester city centre, and the mapping of participants’ views, values and preferences in relation to its security.
This chapter opens with an introduction to the current discourse of risk, and its pertinence to the urban domain. As cities become increasingly securitised (Graham 2009;Crang and Graham 2007), management of risk (Beck 1992;Lupton 1999a;Lupton 1999c), preparedness and resilience (Coaffee and Rogers 2008) under various types of threat emerge as core concerns in contemporary Western Societies. However, rather than signifying the presence of greater risks, these trends might be indicative of a society more preoccupied with risk (Giddens 1999a), and investing more heavily in security (Krahmann 2008). Public perception of crime in the UK is symptomatic of this phenomenon. Yearly official surveys continue to report that citizens perceive crime to be on the rise, despite a significant and sustained reduction in crime over the last few decades. It may also partially motivate the exponential growth of public and private surveillance, especially CCTV-enabled surveillance (Armitage 2002;Koskela 2000;Graham and Wood 2003) in Britain.
The chapter then defines the process of securitisation, reflecting on key current trends and debates, before focusing on the securitisation of the built environment through design. Virtual layers of securitisation are instead discussed thoroughly in chapter 6 under the guise of ‘the sensor’ or ‘sentient’ city. While the built environment is one of the key sites of enactment of the trend towards securitisation, security achieved through design is a principle of building with a long history. Modern and contemporary studies of physical space in the enactment of power, surveillance and security, from Foucault’s Panopticon (1977) to the development of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (Cozens et al. 2001;Newman 1972;Jeffery 1971;Cozens 2002;Cozens et al. 2005) reveal the appeal that interventions at the level of design and physical environment have in contemporary policy and urban planning. The UK, along with several other countries (Cozens 2002), has been
59 favouring the incorporation of CPTED principles in urban planning strategy, also via the endorsement of the Police-led Secured By Design scheme (SBD), and in building regulations at national, regional and local level (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 1998;Department of the Deputy Prime Minister 1999;Manchester City Council 2007). This policy (for instance see Home Office 2011a) has also linked safety (against crime) with security at large (against political unrest, terrorism, pandemics..), sometimes implicitly, and at other times quite explicitly (HM Government 2010;Home Office 2011b;Home Office 2009).
Security by design occupies a prominent role within Chapter 4, in part by virtue of Manchester’s own specificity – the city’s expertise in implementing the Secured By Design scheme, and its growing reputation in securing high profile temporary events (often deploying bold interventions to the built environment, such as the ‘rings of steel’ discussed in Chapter 5). Its track record of withstanding a city centre terrorist bombing in 1996 might also motivate greater receptiveness towards strengthening the physical resilience of the city centre. But the extended focus on security by design is also motivated by other important considerations. Recent developments in security by design in fact offer insights into wider trends in the process of securitisation – of which urban securitisation is one domain. These trends include the consolidation of a continuum between internal and external security (discussed below in 4.3), and the growing interest in discouraging in public and semi-public places behaviours that are not per se illegal or criminal, but are (by some perceived as) anti-social or undesirable. Developments in security by design also reflect a shift away from strategies of prevention towards those of resilience in the face of threats now seen as unavoidable, and towards the sharing of policing responsibilities. Furthermore, security by design warrants a politics of anticipation, which works by evoking certain futures (in 2.2.1 and below, in 4.3). Last but not least, the built environment (and the city itself) has become alive with sensors (Telhan 2010). It has in many ways thus come to partly transcend its own materiality and interact with various technologies. These sensors measure citizens’ movement, vehicle traffic (checking anything from levels of congestion to individual entitlement to access the city centre), and interact with a variety of other indicators (of pollution, heat, activity).
So the process of securitisation eludes a simple and unproblematic relationship with the built environment. New ICTs and social media also create ways of tracing, tracking and exercising power that are neither ephemeral (Crang and Graham 2007) nor dispersed
60 (Castells 2006), but highlight the limits of a traditional conception of power as represented and enacted through physical space (Gane 2011). Although they may be removed from sight, other geographies of power overlay and only partially intersect with those more easily ascribed onto the built environment. Chapter 6 will therefore look more closely at the securitisation achieved through these less tangible networks and databases, as well as at how security is enacted through the strong interplay between the material fabric of the city and its sensory dimensions.
4.1 Risk
A great deal of sociological debate around risk views it through the lens of Beck’s (1992) theorisation of the Risk Society, positing that in late modernity our sense of selfhood is being transformed and shaped by a variety of pervasive risks and threats (Giddens 1991;Beck 1992). These risks, unevenly distributed and increasingly global, are different from those of the past:
[t]he risks and hazards of today thus differ in an essential way (..) through the global nature of their threat (people animals and plants) and their modern causes. They are risks of modernization. They are a wholesale produce of industrialization, and are systematically intensified as it becomes global (Beck 1992:21).
This leads to reflexive modernisation (Ibid 1992), an understanding of human activities, and industrialisation itself, as generating unintended risks and threats. In the presence of high uncertainty, and in the face of threats that may be difficult to perceive and assess, experts are seen as vital, and paradoxically also as suspect, as experts often disagree, and members of the public increasingly come to distrust their advice and motives. Albeit subject to a level of mediation, Beck’s risks are theorised as ‘real’ (Lupton 2006), and their presence as leading to reliance and normalisation of risk assessment and mitigation in policy and practice.
For Giddens too, who distinguishes between external and manufactured risks, we have witnessed a transition towards the latter, which are ‘created by the very progression of human development, especially by the progression of science and technology risks’ (Giddens 1999a:4). Like Beck, Giddens sees these risks as wide ranging and encompassing anything from health to environmental risks, from nuclear disasters to pandemic outbreaks. These risks also emerge in the everyday, and can include food poisoning or risks associated
61 to the use of additives, mobile phones or chemicals in the buildings we inhabit. However, Giddens (1999b) also distinguishes between ‘good’ risks (which may be worth taking) and ‘bad’ ones (best avoided), and does not read the current emphasis on risks as an indication (necessarily) of the greater threats that we might be exposed to:
[t]he idea of 'risk society' might suggest a world which has become more hazardous, but this is not necessarily so. Rather, it is a society increasingly preoccupied with the future (and also with safety), which generates the notion of risk (1999a:3).
Giddens is more concerned with what these prevailing discourses of risk and uncertainty might tell us about our preoccupations as individuals and as a society (ibid). As it is not necessarily possible to determine a priori whether a risk may be ‘real’ or ‘scaremongering’, Giddens too underlines the importance of calculating and managing risk via recourse to science, technology, and expert knowledge (1999b), whilst acknowledging that public trust in science and experts is waning.
Although, this theorisation of risk, especially championed by Beck (1992) has enjoyed great visibility, other theorisations are possible and arguably more fruitful, as noted by Lupton (1999c; 2006), who draws attention to Mary Douglas’s cultural anthropology work on notions of purity, danger and the body in relation to risk (see Lupton 1999c;Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). Douglas’ work (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982) understands risks as collectively generated and underlines the socio-cultural basis for understanding and responding to something as ‘a risk’ (for instance through processes of ‘othering’ or through notions of purity and contamination). This foregrounds the variability of risks (and risk perceptions) across different communities or groups, so that for Douglas risks are socially constructed not merely in the sense of being manufactured or triggered by humans and their activity (as Beck or Giddens would have it), but rather in their cultural and symbolic meaning.
A third productive strand of sociological theorisation on risk, and one that directly informs this research, is that developed by the governmentality school (Foucault 1991;Lemke 2000;Castel 1990) whereby the focus is placed on the actuarial logics (Castel 1990) enacted through the dominant risk paradigm (the prevailing practices of continuously calculating and assessing risks). In this framework risk becomes a strategy for governing populations at a distance (Rose 2000;Osborne and Rose 1999), and the prevailing discourses and practices of risk management aggregate subjects into risk categories and at risk groups (and as noted
62 elsewhere, ‘at risk individuals’ are easily turned into ‘risky individuals', see Pieri and Levitt 2008). These risk categories are then used to make predictions, justify new forms of monitoring and normalise anticipatory and pre-emptive interventions (Castel 1990). Risk within a governmentality perspective is seen as instrumental in governing citizens in neoliberal democratic societies, also by directing individuals towards ‘freely’51 enacting risk avoidance behaviours - for instance prompting pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic ‘patients’ to seek mitigation for presumed future illness (Novas and Rose 2000;Rose 2007;Pieri 2010), or towards reducing their chances of becoming victims of crime (Osborne and Rose 1999;Rose 2007;Pieri and Levitt 2008). This on one hand further individualises responsibilities over one’s wellbeing (for instance Lemke 2000: 12 discusses the shift from social risks to problems of 'self-care'), encouraging a form of ‘prudentialism’ (O’Malley 1992 and Dean 1997, as quoted in Lupton 1999a) and a trend towards privatisation of security (Krahmann 2008). On the other, it legitimises recourse to various forms of expert knowledge which individuals must now tap into. Within this theorisation risk is even more socially constructed than in Douglas’ cultural-anthropological account.52
So while the approach to risk taken within this research remains sceptical of (or at best agnostic about) claims that we are living in more dangerous times and exposed to greater threats than in the past, it also acknowledges that the discourses of risk, threats and dangers are powerfully mobilised (as discussed under the securitisation section, in 4.3 below). This has repercussions in the urban domain too, where they are used to justify an increasing securitisation. As Lupton argues, ‘whether or not life has become more dangerous or uncertain at the end of the twentieth century, it is apparent that many people strongly believe that it has’ (Lupton 1999a: 308). The next section explores risk in relation to the urban domain and considers its bearing on reconfiguring public space.
4.2 Risk and the City
Viewing the urban as a source or site of risk (as well as one of thrill, pleasure and excitement) is not new per se,53 although Osbourne and Rose note that it is only since the 19th Century that
51 These practices are embraced as self-actualising (hence they are a form of governmentality, rather than the result of discipline or sheer force). 52 As also noted by Lupton (2006), who places the three approaches on a continuum. 53 Different traditions of urbanism exist, including the classical (Greco-Roman) understanding of the city as a preferential site to exercise one’s virtuous sociability and a healthy and mutual interest in the ‘res publica’. A
63
the criminal diameter of urban space has been charted by the police forces of each nation through the collection, classification, and presentation of the statistics of crime. Perhaps this always gave rise to an image of the city in terms of zones of danger and safety, and a way of living in the city informed by a perception of the relative riskiness of particular zones. (..) our current image of the criminogenic city governmentalises risk as a spatialisation of thought and intervention. Using techniques pioneered by the commercial demands of insurance and based on informatics and postcode mapping, this spatialisation is now at the molecular level of urban existence. The contemporary city is thus visualised as a distribution of risks (..) Risk is thus as much a feature of spatialisation itself as it is of the particular 'characteristics' of people that inhabit certain zones (Osborne and Rose 1999: 753).
Crime itself is certainly not the only risk that has been associated with cities – across the world and throughout history cities have been associated at different times and by different groups to all sorts of risks –risk of corruption, alienation, epidemics, political disorder and many other hazards.54 Even when selectively focusing on crime as a source of insecurity in urban life, it is worth bearing in mind that empirical studies have shown that fear of crime cannot be easily disentangled from other risks and fears that people currently experience:
It is difficult, if not impossible, to single out people’s fear of crime from their concerns, anxieties and fears about other aspects of modern social life and social relations (Lupton 1999: 308).
Despite that complexity, public perception of risk of crime in the UK remains high. The link between fear of crime and incidence of crime, however, is slippery at best. In the UK, statistics on crime are collected and their analysis published in the Statistical Bulletin.55 The edition published in 2010, consulted on starting this PhD research in 2011, continued to report a reduction in crime for England and Wales, a trend consistent with the steady overall fall in crime since 1995:
The most striking new finding within this report is that both the 2009/10 BCS and police recorded crime are consistent in showing falls in overall crime compared with dominant motif in the British tradition of characterising city life has been to highlight its dangers and risks, probably due to the intense urbanisation brought about by industrialisation. Victorian representations of the city, for instance, offer images of them as sites of vice, corruption or contamination. Manchester itself, as depicted by Engel, was marred by poverty and injustice, crippled by disease and the risk of epidemics, although many other cities, beyond the Anglophone world too, including early renaissance Rome, were commonly seen as places of risk, of decadence and corruption. 54 From Renaissance time Rome to pre-crash New York, from modern-day African capitals to revolutionary Paris. For a review of some of the risks associated with cities, spanning from natural disasters to wars, see for instance Coaffee, Murakami Wood and Rogers (2009). 55 The Bulletin, published by the Office for National Statistics, integrates data from police crime records and the findings of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), previously known as the British Crime Survey, which also collects information on unreported crimes. See http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_360216.pdf (accessed 1 June 2014).
64 2008/09. (..) These results may be seen as surprising given there were expectations that crime, particularly property related crime, could rise in a period of recession. (Home Office 2010a: 2)
The same findings are echoed in the most recent edition (year ending Dec 2013), in which the CSEW reports another general fall in crime:
[l]atest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimate there were 7.5 million crimes (..) in the year ending December 2013. This was down 15% compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981 (ONS 2014: 1).
Along with the CSEW’s very encouraging findings, the latest edition of the Bulletin reported that the number of police recorded crime has also fallen, by 2% compared with the previous year (Ibid:2).
However, while the latest publication no longer shares data on public perception to crime (ONS 2014: 112-115), the 2010 bulletin also commented on the issue, thanks to the inclusion in the (then) British Crime Survey of questions about attitudes to crime.56 In contrast to the recorded and reported reduction in crime, public perception of crime continued to be that crime is constantly increasing:
The 2009/10 BCS continues to show that a large proportion of people (66%) believe crime has risen across the country as a whole in the last few years. There has been a large majority of respondents thinking crime has risen at a national level since the questions were first included in 1996 and this has been consistent throughout the period in which BCS crime has fallen. (Home Office 2010a: 7) .
The disjoint between the UK decline in crime and public perception of crime as on the increase (Bonnet 2013) could have different explanations57 and remains a source of debate and much criminological and sociological investigation. As Lupton and Tulloch (1999) argue, it is vital to move beyond thinking in terms of rational versus irrational fear of crime. This dichotomy only delegitimizes lay understandings of risk that end up often (if not always) being characterised as irrational (for a poignant critique of how public understandings of risk are conceptualised in policy and practice, see Wynne 2001;Wynne 1991). The dichotomy possibly reproduces a type of deficit model (Gregory and Miller 1998;Wynne
56 Latest CSEW data only reveals respondents perceptions in relation to seven indicators of anti social behaviours (rather than crime more generally), such as car burning, and in their local areas (rather than across the country). 57 E.g. different actors may circulate different discourses or such discourses circulate in different policy domains (Pieri and Levitt 2008).
65 2001), whereby fear of crime would be explained away as mere misunderstanding of one’s own statistical probability of becoming a victim of crime. This type of approach, seeking to establish how ‘rational’ someone’s fear is, is also unhelpful, according to Lupton and Tulloch, because it plays out within the models of the rationalist, individualistic subject (1999). As we indicated above, the approach to risk pursued in this research is instead theorising it in more relational, diffuse and co-constructed terms.58 Similarly, Lupton and Tulloch argue for an exploration of the
issues of symbolic representation, discourse and the micro- and macro-contexts in which fear of crime is experienced and given meaning. (..) the situated narratives, cultural representations and different levels of symbolic meaning that contribute to the dynamic constitution of fear (Lupton and Tulloch 1999: 507).
The sense of impending risk and uncertainty, also captured in official UK reports on attitudes to crime is argued to be ascribing itself onto the built environment to the point where it
has come to shape city space: shopping malls and shopping centres with their own internal security systems (..), as in the so-called gated communities that have arisen from Istanbul to Islington (Osborne and Rose 1999: 754).
Commentators have thus started talking of ‘architecture of national insecurity’ (Sorkin 2008), ‘architecture of fear’ (Ellin 1997), of ‘building paranoia’ (Flusty 1997), and cities (this side of the Atlantic too) are increasingly theorised as militarised and as ‘battlespace’ (Graham 2009). The development of private gated communities exemplifies this trend too. Whilst remaining most popular in the US (Blakely and Snyder 1997), South America (Caldeira 1999) and in countries with a past of colonialism or racial segregation (see Lemanski 2006 for an account of the situation in South Africa), gated communities are rapidly expanding worldwide (Quintal and Thompson 2007). The practice of zoning per se is not novel (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013).59 However, current gating practices, varied as they remain, are criticised in equal measure for fomenting a sense of paranoid fear about the outer (urban) environment, and for privatising (within their enclosing walls) space for collective use (Caldeira 1999: 87).
58 E.g. taking into account how such risks are framed by various actors, in local or national policy, and in media discourse. 59 It is observable in many post-colonial cities, like Singapore, and also occurred in Europe and in the US (as the 1920s plans for remodelling Chicago illustrate).
66 While the logics triggered by discourses of risk and fear will be discussed in the section on securitisation below, and will further be addressed when discussing cosmopolitan aspirations and sociabilities in public space, it is the privatisation of community space and functions, as well as residential ones, that is alleged by some to ‘undermin[e] the very concept of civitas, organized community life’ (Blakely and Snyder 1997: 85).
At the time of writing (in 2014) there are no gated communities within Manchester city centre (the only historical example of a gated community in Manchester was Victoria Park, Victoria Park Trust Committee 1937).60 However, when exploring a neighbourhood like Spinningfields, which is arguably totalising in its comprehensive urban remake,61 and exemplifying Smith (2002)’s third-generation gentrification, the practices associated with gating and their effects on producing normative behaviour within those privately owned spaces for public aggregation become relevant.62 Urban and public space are characterised as sources of risk and uncertainly, and in the city centre fabric, public space becomes rarer (Flusty 2001) and over-surveilled (Koskela 2000). New private developments, on the other hand, are endowed with ever more stringent access controls, ranging from smart access solutions to reliance on security personnel (Cozens et al. 2001;Association of Chief Police Officers 2004). Moreover, the current proliferation in Manchester city centre - and elsewhere (Caldeira 1999 and Flusty 1997) - of private spaces which appear public or have semi-public areas, may result in hybrid spaces that, like gated communities, may become (selectively) exclusionary. Partially motivated by the notions of mixed use of space and activity programming (discussed below in 4.4.1), and the aspiration to engender preferred patterns of use of these spaces, hybrid spaces can also discourage certain groups from accessing them, even if not by physically walling them out. An example of this type of hybrid space is the plaza. Flusty theorises this space as resulting from
a shared consciousness between developers and public institutions of the value of user-friendly urban designs and a differing conception of to whom the benefits should accrue (..) attempts are made to extract plazas from private developers in exchange for subsidies provided through below-market rate land sales or leases (..) in no small part because such spaces enhance the value of the project to the developers (..) plazas [are] accessible only at the discretion of private owners; plazas sit stealthy behind
60 Where 19th Century industrialists and their family escaped the grime and pollution of the city. 61 Simultaneously for recreation, consumption, production and pleasure, as well as residence; totalising also in its class-inflection, and involving alliances between actors at various scales, including a coalition of large corporate players, local entrepreneurs and local authorities (Smith 2002, as discussed in Chapter 3.1). 62 The effects of gating for temporary events will be discussed in 5.5, and those of creating city-centre wide exclusion zones through networked cctv and other analytics are discussed in greater detail in 6.3.8 and in Pieri 2014b (in appendix 6).
67 hedgerows and grade changes, jittery with blue-blazed private security (Flusty 1997: 54).
Flusty, who comments on the condition of cities in the United States, sees this phenomenon as particularly worrying given the general trend towards reducing and shutting down traditional public spaces (Ibid:51). The trend is mirrored in the UK (Lownsbrough and Beunderman 2007;Raco 2003), 63 and exacerbated by current Government cuts to public spending in the economic recession, which has also put at risk libraries and other leisure facilities.64 The new hybrid spaces that emerge, as illustrated by Spinningfields, are not completely sealed off. Rather, ease of entrance for selected users needs to be facilitated, as they are foremost places of consumption. Indeed, as Flusty phrased it, ‘‘[i]n these new, ‘post-public’ spaces, access is predicated upon ability to pay’ (1997:51-52).
Reflecting on the rapid increase in space that can be interdictory or selectively exclusionary (Flusty 2001: 659), it is possible to consider how features incorporated in and around recent private and semi-private developments in Manchester city centre have the potential to reinforce marginalisation (a discussion of the socialibilities theorised to occur in public space and in multi-cultural settings follows in Chapter 7). By looking at these sites, we can explore assumptions about public space and see the city as co-produced by a mix of local power relations and a global political economy dynamics. So a strong (or paranoid) emphasis on risk avoidance, the increased corporate and political interest in creating (or regenerating via) spaces of consumption and in projecting an image of the city as a safe locale (as is argue in 4.5 below) converge to support the emergence of such ‘post-public’ spaces.
It is tempting to discuss the trend towards ‘post-public’ spaces in terms of an undermining of the right to the city – understood as ‘not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart's desire’ (Harvey 2003: 939) and thus also at the same time a right to change ourselves through changing the city (Harvey 2008). However, arguably what is undermined is ‘a particular kind of liberal dream of the city as an open, civilised, and civilising habitat for the existence of free citizens’(Davis 1988:87, as quoted in
63 Raco for instance documents the same process within Reading’s large city centre shopping complex, The Oracle. 64 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7189020/Libraries-could-shut-in-wave-of-spending-cuts-under- Government-plans.html ; http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/30/public-spending-cuts and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12239388 (all accessed 1 June 2014).
68 Osborne and Rose 1999: 754). As Caldeira notes, reflecting on the alleged disappearance of public space
[t]he fact that new elite urban forms - theme parks, shopping malls, under- and overbridges, exopolis, and suburbia - negate the model of the modern and relatively democratic public life does not mean that public life has disappeared. It continues to exist, although in a much more segregated, enclosed, and controlled way. What is rapidly disappearing is the fiction of an equally open public space, the vital character of its urban mixtures, and a certain experience of collective life in the streets (Caldeira 1994: 67).
This research sets out to investigate exactly this interplay between aspirations (and perhaps fictions) of cosmopolitan urban mixtures and the effects engendered by the increased securitisation of city centre spaces. Before discussing the history and current implementation of security by design in the UK and in Manchester, the next section clarifies the concept of securitisation used in this research, which allows us to read the case of Manchester city centre within a wider process of securitisation.
4.3 The Process of Securitisation
The term securitisation is used throughout this research to refer to both the implementation of security solutions though various measures - in the physical urban fabric of the city and in less tangible or visible circuits of virtual monitoring, analytics and databases - and to the tendency to subsume under the logic of security a variety of issues that previously may not have been perceived or configured as such. The latter allows for an ever increasing role for the security apparatus (its technologies, personnel, policies, mentalities) in governance, as the reach of security extends over a range of previously unrelated policy domains, city planning issues and everyday practices.65
Through the projections of future threats and risks, and the mobilisation of fear (Massumi 2005a) the security logic allows to act rapidly (often with little public scrutiny or debate), and preemptively (Andersson 2006). Thus, through the mobilisation of discourses of insecurity, futures are governed in the manner described by Foucault (Lemke 2000), and summed up under the risk section above. They are governed by applying actuarial calculations, which themselves legitimise anticipatory actions, as Castel (1990) theorised,
65 From transport to event hosting, from migration to health or climate change.
69 and as Amoore (2011;see also 2012)66 empirically evidenced, as well as by persuading individuals to engage in certain courses of actions ‘out of their own volition’, as described by Rose (1999) . Continuous and normalised states of emergency follow each other in rapid succession as
[i]n a crisis-prone environment, threat is endemic, uncertainty is everywhere; a negative can never be proven. Positive military response must then be ever at the ready. The on-all-the-time, everywhere-at-the-ready of military response operatively annexes the civilian sphere to the conduct of war. Civilian life falls onto a continuum with war, permanently potentially premilitarized, a pole on the spectrum. Any domain harboring threats with a potential to disrupt the rhythms of civilian life is similarly annexed (Massumi 2009: 158).
Securitisation is also extending its reach due to the strengthening of existing trends, first and foremost the consolidation of a security continuum (also alluded to by Massumi in the quote above), and through the biopolitical extensions of the sites of security.67 The trend towards a security continuum blurs the classical distinction between external security focusing on issues such as war, defence, international order and strategy, and internal security, looking at crime-fighting, public order, policing (for a theorisation of this, see INEX 2011 for instance). In the UK too68 there has been a greater integration and blurring between the domestic agendas of pursuing safety (or internal security) by reducing crime and addressing perceptions of crime, and increasing (external) security - a trend that is easily traceable in policy and strategy.69 The National Security Strategy document released by the cabinet in 2010 and entitled ‘A stronger Britain in an Age of Uncertainty’ (HM Government 2010) highlights this tendency by promoting a secure and resilient UK in the face of risks that span from ‘real and present threats such as terrorism and cyber attack’ to ‘natural and man-made emergencies and crime’ (Ibid:22).
These trends have significantly accelerated in the wake of the 9/11 US terrorist attack and of subsequent attacks in the UK, as security measures have been stepped up nationally and
66 Amoore followed the development of the software analytics for border control at Heathrow Airport, and at St Pancreas International, which operationalised certain risk calculations and translated them into anticipatory action. 67 Increasingly we carry the border somatically within ourselves, through the growing reliance on biometrics for identity verification purposes (and for trivial practices of access control, like access to canteen meals), and we ‘hit a border’ long before getting to the airport, e.g. when applying for on-line compulsory travel visas. 68 INEX 2011 offers an overview of this process mainly from a pan-European perspective, although much of the theorisation arguably holds more widely, if not globally. 69 Integration is only one of the outcomes of the security continuum, whose inception is generally associated with the end of the Cold War. Tensions and conflicts of values also emerge, as reported by the ‘Converging and Conflicting Ethical Values in the Internal/External Security Continuum in Europe’ (INEX )FP7 project consortium (INEX 2011).
70 internationally.70 While many of the associated policies and agendas had already been under development, the public resonance of the attacks and the rhetoric circulating after the events created momentum for their rapid and widespread piloting 71 and implementation, as well as for the development of the accompanying legislation.72 The EU security agenda connected with national responses fostering a higher degree of coordination between states and organisations internationally, and favoring the transnational and regional dimensions and the merging of previously separate security fields (Security and Defence Agenda 2011).
At present, more than ten years after 9/11, these discourses of risk continue to circulate quite irrespective of the evidence base supporting heightened levels of threat, and despite sporadic attempts to re-dress any imbalance (HM Government 2011).73 So while at one end of the security spectrum threat of terrorism is declared by politicians and security personnel to be high in Britain, at the other extreme of the continuum fear of crime (in England and Wales at least) is also high amongst members of the public. Risk of crime continues to circulate widely as a discourse, also in the media. Concerns often aggregate around certain figures – for instance that of the unpredictable stranger (Hollway and Jefferson 1997;Lupton 1999b; see also Watson 2006) or the ‘hoodied’ out-of-control youth (see Pieri 2014b in appendix 6) – and around certain places (for instance crowded public sites or events, often discussed as at risk of being targeted, see Figure 2 in Chapter 5). Meanwhile, the risk discourse around terrorism feeds Islamophobia (Hancock 2012). Despite falling crime statistics, in Britain economic arguments to tackle crime are increasingly accompanied by other statistics and estimates relating to the high cost of
70 See US Department of Homeland Security initiatives to mitigate perceived risks and attacks post 9/11 on http://www.dhs.gov/securing-and-managing-our-borders (accessed 1 June 2014). 71 Notably, most of the biometric technologies and data sharing procedure currently in use at border control were being prototyped before the terrorist attacks. 72 In the UK see The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (which doubled the period of detention of terrorist suspects for questioning to 14 days), the ‘Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001’ Order 2003, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (which introduced control orders), The Terrorism Act 2006 (drafted in the aftermath of the London 2005 bombing, and extending detention without charge to 28 days –recently brought back to 14 days by the Protection of Freedoms 2012 Act, see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/part/4/crossheading/precharge-detention-of-terrorist- suspects/enacted, accessed 1 June 2014), The ‘Terrorism UN Measures’ Order 2006, The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, The Coroners and Justice Act 2009, The Terrorism ‘United Nation Measures’ Order 2009, The Terrorist Asset-Freezing (temporary provision) Act 2010. Full texts on http://www.legislation.gov.uk (accessed 1 June 2014). 73 These discourses of risk circulate even in the policy statements through which the current Coalition Government tries to redress the imbalance between security and civil liberties, weakening the efficacy of these recalibration exercises. For instance see the forward by the Home Secretary in HM Government (2011:4).
71 crime per year or per household (Brand and Price 2000;Chambers et al. 2009;Home Office 2013;Association of Chief Police Officers and Pease 2009).74
Therefore ‘crime remains an endemic problem in post-industrial urban society’ (Cozens 2002:129), and in the climate of spending austerity ensuing from the current economic downturn, security remains a top government priority (HM Government 2010), although one that is increasingly pursued through privatisation or new partnerships with industry, such as the newly launched Defence Growth Partnership (Dept. for Business Innovation and Skills 2013).75
At regional and local level, urban areas and large cities are also drawn towards the imperatives of investing in security and safety measures, to respond to perceived threats, and manage their records and image in relation to security and crime. The continuum between safety and security becomes particularly evident as cities compete to raise their international profile as global players, participating in the cultural economy (Scott 1997) and competing to play host to major events (as discussed in Chapter 3), including the recent Olympic Games (see 4.4.2 below). Planning for the security of such events in fact exemplifies the overlaps and the complexity of deploying security to simultaneously tackle fraud and the infiltration of organised crime, and enact contingency and mitigation strategies for crowded places and key infrastructure that might be targeted by terrorist attacks. It also reveals the role of security in city selling and branding (discussed in section
4.5 below).
Having considered key trends in the process of securitisation, the next section explores a key direction of much investment in security, that of interventions to the built environment, and critically reviews the concept and pursuit of security by design.
74 In 2000 the cost of crime in England and Wales was estimated to reach at least £60 billion a year by the Home Office (Brand and Price 2000). These statistics were subsequently adjusted for inflation by Chambers, Ullmann and Waller (2009), who estimated the cost of crime in 2009 to be more than £78 billion a year and to equate to £3,000 per household every year. A growing number of studies also attempt to cost the impacts of specific criminal activities - for instance cyber crime, or organised crime, as in a recent report by the Home Office (2013) and even seek to establish the carbon footprint of Crime (ACPO and Pease 2009). Similar stories appear in the media, with titles reporting ‘Violent crime costs the UK economy £124 billion’ (The Telegraph, 14 April 2013, accessed 1 June 2014 on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10013830/Violent-crime-costs-the-UK-economy- 124-billion-report-suggests.html). 75 See http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/237314/bis-13-1154- defence-growth-partnership.pdf and https://www.adsgroup.org.uk/pages/02230471.asp (both accessed 1 June 2014) for details of this partnership between Government and senior business leaders in the defence industry delivering a new UK national security strategy.
72 4.4 Security by Design
‘I take the stand that buildings are not primarily art, technical or investment objects, but social objects’ (Markus 1993:xix).
Using Thomas Markus’ claim as an opening gambit, and his interest in questions of power as performed (also) through buildings and architecture, this section explores the concept of security by design as currently applied to practices of urban planning and building. The focus on current practice, justified in the introduction to this chapter, should not detract from the idea that building in order to enhance security and safety is an age-old practice, certainly as old as the notion of building itself.
For millennia buildings have been seen as a source of shelter - as much against the elements as against human and other threats. They have been designed and built to enhance the security and safety of their inhabitants or owners - as well as to represent their wealth and fulfil other social aims.
Security by building – in its wider sense – has always been envisaged as an organic combination of security features that could be present inside a building,76 and features that reinforced the external security of individual buildings. Equally, security by design has traditionally been applied to individual buildings as well as to larger agglomerations and heterogeneous groups of buildings.77 Ultimately, considerations and aspirations to achieve security by design can even be argued to have played a key role in decisions about the very site chosen not just for the positioning of a building, but also for the location of entire villages or cities.78
As centuries went by other rationalities linked with security and safety also emerged and gained momentum. These underscore projects as different as the remodelling of central Paris to stamp out the possibility of barricades, or the creation of sewage systems and sanitation to protect burgeoning populations from the risk of disease and infection. However, the work of scholars like Markus help articulate the idea that security by design
76 Secret passages and safe exits, as well as traps for the enemy who moved - by force or invitation - through the external security features. 77 For instance the walls surrounding a Roman castrum or the ditch surrounding a medieval fortification. 78 Settlements were normally built in geographical sites maximising access to food, water or other resources, promoting visibility and commerce, they were also built – or, significantly, moved to - sites that minimised chances of sudden external aggression (i.e. near rivers or on natural elevations).
73 in buildings and urban planning, like many other architectural principles, always also reflects and perhaps even engenders specific power dynamics. A reflexive approach to security by design first and foremost invites the question of whose security is being pursued, and against whom.
Secure buildings and features of the built environment defend individuals and sections of society in ways that are also perhaps less obvious if not less efficacious. Foucault (1977) and scholars in the Governmentality school have for instance highlighted how the design of specific spaces stimulates the internalisation of certain practices and norms - from the physical spaces of confinement of the prison or the asylum, to the ‘asymmetrical’79 spaces of the present-day courtroom, the clinic, the school. Perhaps the most extreme and well- known example discussed by Foucault (1977) is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which centres around the concept of total gaze, with prisoners being constantly visible and exposed to the gaze of the guard. The guard may watch – without being seen - from a central tower-like structure onto the surrounding circular edifice containing the individual prisoner cells. This design engenders a state of constant monitoring of the self on the part of the prisoners, who can never be sure of when they are being watched – nor know by whom they are being watched – and thus end up adapting their behaviour under the assumption that they may be watched at any given time. This prison design and its effects on internalisation and normalisation of behaviour can render redundant certain types of more traditional security and surveillance technologies or practices, as we will discuss later. It is the concept of total gaze with its effects on normalisation, as we shall see, that is behind much preventative use (and objections to use) of CCTV cameras in public and private spaces.
Away from the prison and other obvious sites of institutional power and regulation,80 it was roughly at this same time, in the 1970s, that the modern concept of security by design was being developed in the United States, with the work of criminologist Ray Jeffery (1971) and architect Oscar Newman (1972), who independently from each other developed a theory of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED).
79 In terms of the power differentials played out in these places, including those emerging in the encounters between doctor and patient, judge and defendant, teacher and pupil. 80 American university campuses also offer interesting insights into changes of design in the aftermath of the civil rights student movements to curb future protests and assembly, see Diamond, B. (2010). Safe speech. Public space as a medium of democracy. Journal of Architectural Education, 64(1), 94-105.
74 4.4.1 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)
The immediate precursors of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) were works that looked at the discontents of life in large American cities, and lamented the high incidence of crime, as well as the migration of the more affluent classes away from the city centres (Wood 1961;Jacobs 1961). These contributions, which were at times critiqued for their impressionistic and anecdotal evidence (Cozens 2002:132) as well as on other grounds (see Van Soomeren 1987), were nonetheless useful to the development of CPTED for their focus on visibility (later developed in the concept of natural surveillance), as they lamented the lack of security of deserted streets and promoted the creation of a stronger sense of community, the generation of pedestrian traffic, and the practice of mixed use of space.
It was Jeffery (1971), though, that coined the expression ‘Crime Prevention through Environmental Design’ by publishing a book with that title. Simultaneously, although separately, Newman had been working on the concept of defensible space and in 1972 published his book entitled ‘Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design’. Despite their different approaches - Jeffery’s approach was more interdisciplinary and incorporated elements of offender’s psychology, as well as physiology and biology - and despite the somewhat rather reductionist take on the effects of environment on behaviour that both publications endorsed, both authors were highlighting how considerations and interventions to the built environment and urban planning could produce safer, better environments and reduce crime. As Newman puts it, defensible space was envisaged as a tool for ‘restructuring the residential environment of our cities so they can again become liveable and controlled not by police, but by a community of people sharing a common terrain’ (quoted in Cozens 2002:132). The term defensible space stands for ‘a range of mechanisms - real and symbolic barriers, strongly-defined areas of influence, and improved opportunities for surveillance - that combine to bring an environment under the control of its residents’ (quoted in Cozens, Hillier and Prescott 2001:139). The initial theory of defensible space was based on four key principles – territoriality or the sense of ownership and influence that people experience in relation to certain spaces; surveillance; the image or the perception of a specific place or development; and milieu or the wider environment of adjacent areas (Cozens 2002).
75 It was Newman’s approach that gained most popularity, and that has since been identified with CPTED. The subsequent revision of key CPTED concepts81 has since strived to include a more multidisciplinary approach, albeit one that continues to invite much criticism (Cozens et al. 2005;Cozens et al. 2001). This revised theory now goes under the name of Second Generation CPTED and is generally associated with the work of Tim Crowe (2000).82 Crowe defines CPTED as ‘the proper design and effective use of the built environment [which] can lead to a reduction in the fear of crime and the incidence of crime, and to an improvement in the quality of life’ (quoted in Cozens 2002:131). Supporters of CPTED, therefore, claim a double impact – on crime and on fear of crime.
As Cozens notes, many developments in criminology have affected the development of second generation CPTED, including the work on ‘geographies of crime’ that recognises the uneven distribution of crime and aims to map ‘hot spots’. Other key theories affecting the development of CPTED include
Wilson and Kelling’s highly influencial ‘Broken Windows’ thesis (1982) [which] stressed the vital importance of maintaining the environment as a physical indicator for levels of social cohesion and informal social control’ (Cozens 2002:131).
Although some of its critics are still more comfortable with the idea that the principles of CPTED might perhaps – as part of a larger strategy – contribute to (localised) crime deterrence, rather than to crime prevention per se, modern CPTED now includes risk assessments, forms of socio-economic and demographic profiling, as well as more formalised and active community participation (Cozens, Saville and Hillier 2005:329). Nonetheless, its core assumption remains the alleged ‘ability to influence offender decisions that precede criminal acts’ (Wikipedia 2011).
CPTED strategies still rest on a set of core concepts, which for the purpose of analysis can be separated, but which effectively operate with considerable overlaps.83 The first is
81 First generation CPTE concepts were seen by many as falling short of a holistic approach to crime and as based on a rather crude and deterministic understanding of the effects of build environment on (criminal) behaviour. 82 As security consultant, Crowe managed the US Government’s largest technical assistance and training programme on CPTED. See also http://www.cptedontario.ca/Bios/timothydcrowe.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_environmental_design (both accessed 1 June 2014). 83 For Moffat (1983, quoted in Cozens et al 2001: 248) these are: 1) Formal Surveillance, 2) Natural Surveillance, 3) Defensible Space, 4) Target Hardening, 5) Access Control, 6)Territoriality and 7) Activity Programming. But the grouping remains arbitrary as 1 and 2 could be subsumed under one principle (surveillance), and 5, 4 and 3 overlap, as access control is a component of target hardening, which in itself could be subsumed under the wider notion of defensible space). Formal surveillance is also part of access control.
76 territoriality, and is predicated on the idea that people are more inclined to protect (as well as to maintain and use more extensively) a space that they perceive as their own. The theory states that if a space is clearly marked (for instance through signage, informal and formal access points and barriers), ‘intruders’84 would stand out more, and it would become easy for ‘legitimate users’ to spot and challenge them. However, critics have pointed out that many of the assumptions inbuilt in this principle may be culturally dependent and remain subject to other factors. Cozens, Hillier and Prescott (2001) have noted that
[e]thnic heterogeneity and lifestyle variability may in some cases hinder social interaction and reduce the propensity to intervene. Lack of effective modes of intervention, such as a feeling of futility towards involving the police or an attitudinal dislike or fear of the police, may also reduce the possibility for resident intervention (..) The fear of crime or retaliation relating to intervention may also be important. In an environment where criminal activity is both open, visible and more socially acceptable, citizens may fear reprisals. Finally, the nature of the neighbourhood regarding ease of identification of strangers can influence both the levels and the extent of intervention (2001:142-143).
Cozens et al. also alert us to the possibility that socio-economic variables may be at play, as suggested by Taylor, Gottfredson, Brower and Shumaker (1984; see also Taylor et al. 1985), and result in
variation in levels of territoriality in different socio-economic groups. ``High'' and ``low'' economic status groups both exhibited low levels of territoriality, while the ``moderate'' socio-economic group possessed a higher degree of territorial sentiments. Clearly, this is an area which is highly complex and controversial, and in need of further detailed deliberation and study (Cozens et al 2001:145).
Another key principle of CPTED is surveillance. This includes both informal (or ‘natural surveillance’) and formal surveillance. The former can include the occasional surveillance that legitimate users may exercise over their perceived territory, and that can be enabled by other elements of design, such as having windows overlooking certain spaces, or introducing specific elements of landscaping, lighting and so on. More formal aspects of surveillance instead can be achieved through the use of professionals (receptionists, concierge teams, security guards) or of mechanical and automated solutions, such as CCTV. Finally, semi-formal surveillance can be achieved through mixed use of certain sites, for instance relying on the natural surveillance that shop keepers can exercise over spaces
84 Of course the concepts of ‘belonging’ or being a ‘legitimate user’ or an ‘intruder’ in certain spaces are themselves problematic. Although it may be easier to define legitimate users of a private development, the urban fabric contains spaces that have an indeterminate status as to whether they are public or private (or contain hybrid zones within largely public or private spaces) or open to all (e.g. shopping malls).
77 (immediately) adjacent to their premises, and through guaranteeing a relatively constant flow of passerby traffic throughout the day or night. The two main assumptions (which can also be seen as fallacies) inbuilt in this principle are that visibility, with its related fear of recognition and apprehension, is enough of a deterrent for would be criminals, and that criminal acts are the result of largely rationalistic and calculated behaviours. In fact, research demonstrated that, at least in the case of burglary, ‘house value was the variable found to relate most closely to vulnerability’ (Cozens, Hillier and Prescott 2001: 145). Moreover, in certain types of crimes85 - such as violent crimes or crimes involving drugs or alcohol - the ‘rationality’ element and risk assessment (by the offender), and consequently the surveillance pull towards deterrence, is often significantly reduced or altogether lost (Armitage 2002).
Specific elements of surveillance have been the focus of more extensive research in the UK. CCTV has been at the centre of many impact studies, perhaps due to the ever-growing reliance on this technology in Britain, and the consequent ever-growing investment in it. As Armitage notes,
Between 1994 and 1997, the Home Office made available £38 million to fund 585 CCTV schemes. Between 1999 and 2003, they have made and will make available a further £170 million for CCTV schemes. Over the period 1996 to 1998 (before the £170 million was allocated) CCTV accounted for more than three-quarters of total spending on crime prevention by the Home Office. Each pound of funding is matched by local authorities (2002:2).
Beyond the initial investment and the continuous maintenance and operational costs not included in these estimates, the growth of CCTV remains exponential. In her 2002 Nacro briefing Armitage reports that in 1990 there were three town centre schemes with approximately 100 cameras, and that by 1997 there were already 167 schemes with approximately 5,238 cameras (2002:2). More recent estimates by DDC Gerrard, Deputy Chief Constable of Cheshire and lead on CCTV issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers (DDC Gerrard and Thompson 2011), put the current number of UK CCTV at 1.85 million.86 This breaks down as an estimated 33,433 cameras being operated by local authorities, 115,000 cameras on public transit throughout the UK, and a staggering 1.7 million privately owned and operated cameras (Ibid: 12). The projection is considered
85 Other types of violent crimes may take place away from areas where CCTV can be positioned, as often the case with violent crimes related to prostitution or child or domestic abuse. 86 http://www.securitynewsdesk.com/2011/03/01/how-many-cctv-cameras-in-the-uk/ (accessed 1 June 2014)
78 conservative, when compared with others that have been circulating and that estimated the current number of CCTV in the UK as having exceeded 4 million.87
Despite its diffusion, the cost-effectiveness of this technology remains hotly contested. Armitage, in her review of research into CCTV effectiveness in crime reduction in the UK, concludes that ‘[t]he extent of CCTV coverage and the government’s funding of new systems has increased dramatically over the last decade with very little substantive research evidence to suggest that CCTV works’ (2002:6). Specifically, there is conflicting evidence supporting its usefulness in reducing property crime, with mild agreement on limited but positive effects on reducing car theft crimes, and agreement on lack of effects in reducing other types of crime, especially violent crime (see also Koskela 2000: 246). In their 2005 paper Cozens et al., review the recent bibliography, covering appraisals of CCTV schemes throughout the UK. They focus on applications on transport (incl. studies looking at CCTV on buses, or in the London Underground stations), in parking lots, and studies of effects on vehicle crime more generally, in city centres and in public housing (Ibid: 332-333), and come to similar conclusions (Ibid: 333). While the effects of CCTV (and other forms of surveillance) will be discussed further in Chapter 6, suffice here to say that its use has engendered a wide set of questions beyond its efficacy, that pertain to issues of proportionality, legality, accountability, subsidiarity, 88 necessity 89 and many others - including its potential to engender discriminatory practices in monitoring, given its uneven distribution (Armitage 2002:6).90
Aside from these concerns, the claim that use of surveillance and CCTV can reduce fear of crime is also being challenged, and as Koskela notes, ‘while an official aim of surveillance is to increase safety, if the public do not know who is watching them and from where, the
87 http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+cameras/2291167.html (accessed 1 June 2014). 88 Armitage uses this term to refer to issues of privacy and argues under the principle of subsidiarity that ‘[t]he operation of the CCTV system should cause minimum interference with the privacy of the individual’ (2002:6). 89 Armitage (Ibid:6) uses the term to question whether there would be other crime reduction measures which would achieve the same ends. 90 The recent UK Protection of Freedom 2012 Act echoed some of these concerns, introducing a requirement for the Government to draft guidelines on CCTV use. The code of practice presented to Parliament in June 2013, whose implementation is still pending, remains only a first step in this direction, only covering CCTV use in public spaces by relevant authorities (Council, Police and Transport authorities) and not by the private sector, nor by third parties sub-contracting for various authorities. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/204775/Surveillance_Camera _Code_of_Practice_WEB.pdf (accessed on 1 June 2014).
79 effect will be feelings of being unsafe’ (2000:253). At best surveillance (and CCTV) is said to engender ambiguity:
[t]he variety of feelings surveillance evokes is enormous: those being watched may feel guilty for no reason, embarrassed or uneasy, irritated or angry, or fearful; they may also feel secure and safe (Koskela, 2000). Quite often people’s feelings are ambivalent (Koskela 2000:257-258).
Aside from the issue of the effectiveness of surveillance in reducing or deterring certain types of crime, Cozens et al (2001) have for instance highlighted its potential for crime displacement – both geographical displacement, but also the deflection towards other types of crime for instance91 - whilst acknowledging that
[it] might even be postulated that in this era of ``place-marketing'', where cities compete for global investment and business opportunities, displacement may represent a perfectly acceptable option (2001:141).
Equally, as Armitage points out, all crime prevention initiatives follow a finite life cycle, and this also applies to technological solutions such as CCTV, as ‘[s]everal CCTV evaluations have revealed that the initial reductions in crime and disorder following the installation of CCTV can fade if publicity is not maintained’ (Armitage 2002:4).
Together with territoriality and surveillance, access control is another principle of CPTED that works at various levels – through the deployment of physical barriers and bolts, locks and other electronic solutions (including smart access keys and RFID enabled technology), through the use of signage and space definition, as well as through the presence of security personnel on site (e.g. receptionists). Access control forms a part of a larger strategy of target hardening (i.e. the reinforcement of a site so as to render it harder to access or attack), making a site impenetrable (as much as possible)92 to those not seen as its legitimate users.
Finally, activity programming also features centrally in second generation CPTED, as a recuperation of both the concept of image (that a site projects) and the notion (from Jacobs 1961) that it is preferable in terms of safety to have a certain flux of people or
91 Armitage (2002:3) too reports that the apparent reduction of vehicle theft from parking lots has in certain studies being matched by an increase in property crime, such as theft from vehicle and criminal damage. 92 Newman also talks of ‘indefensible space’ (1972). Others mobilise the term to criticise the state of paranoia under which ‘every space is susceptible to attack, every person a potential attacker’ (Sorkin 2008: xvii) or point to a lack of proportionality between current threats and current levels of securitisation and urban fortification (Ibid).
80 activity (to exercise informal surveillance) rather than having deserted sites and spaces. While the original concept has been critiqued on grounds that certain types of criminal activity thrive in the buzz and concentration of people, activity programming is more about ensuring that ‘design and signage encourage intended pattern of usage of public space’ (Cozens et al. 2005:337), while also relying on the ‘broken window’ theory approach highlighting the importance of maintenance of this space, and the principle of mixing use. Events and festivals held in public spaces, like those occurring in Manchester city centre, can be seen under this light too, as examples of activity programming (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 7).
Despite its limitations (first and foremost a penchant for a deterministic, rationalistic and reductionist understanding of criminal behaviour), there has been a great deal of renewed interest in CPTED theory. Its applications, which remain controversial, are increasingly common, especially in new build,93 in the UK, in Europe (AGIS 2006) and in various other countries.94
4.4.2 The UK Secured by Design (SBD) Scheme
The main contemporary application of CPTED in the UK goes under the name of Secured by Design (SBD). The scheme was launched in 1989 as
a police initiative to encourage the building industry to adopt crime prevention measures in the design of developments to assist in reducing the opportunity for crime and the fear of crime, creating a safer and more secure environment. Secured by Design is owned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and has the support of the Home Office Crime Reduction & Community Safety Group and the Planning Section of The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Association of Chief Police Officers 2004:1).
It is a scheme that has gradually become more comprehensive and currently covers new homes, refurbished properties, sheltered accommodation, multi-storey dwellings, railways stations, play areas, schools, hospitals, licensed premises, youth shelters and sport systems.95 While accreditation remains voluntary for the private sector, the Association of Chief Police Officers underlines that
93 Retrofitting costs are sometimes seen as prohibitively high, so CPTED is most frequent applied in new developments and re-landscaping (Cozens et al 2001). 94 Crowe reports of CPTED-inspired initiatives in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa, Japan, France, Holland and Sweden (in Cozens 2002:133). 95 SBD guidebooks on http://www.securedbydesign.com/professionals/guides.aspx (accessed 1 June 2014).
81
[c]urrent government planning policy strongly supports this principle and makes clear that community safety is an integral part of the design agenda. Planning Policy Guidance note 3 (PPG3) calls upon local planning authorities to “promote design and layouts which are safe and take account of public health, crime prevention and community safety considerations” Safety and security are a fundamental part of the philosophy behind this document (2004:1).
Planning policy has thus enshrined the need to account for safety and security considerations through design (see also Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 1998), and the preoccupation with anti-social behaviour has also provided a policy context for many initiatives in this area.96 At a local level, individual municipalities have been grappling with the challenges of translating these initiatives into local policy and guidance. In some cases they have even been capitalising on the symbolic value (in terms of image making) of security and of this type of accreditation. As Coaffee and Rogers (2008) note, ‘(re)branding is often required as a result of negative publicity often linked to criminality or mismanagement in large post-industrial cities, and necessitates erasing ‘negative’ traits through image improvement’ (2008:206; further discussed in 4.5 below).
The police are openly advertising for their SBD accreditation scheme in this light too, as something conferring a reputational advantage, and this includes accreditation for manufacturers of specific devices (locks, garage doors) or whole buildings and developments. As the SBD website advertises,
[o]nce a product has been successfully tested and certified to the relevant standard, the company may apply for SBD membership (..) Only SBD member companies are entitled to use the Secured by Design logo and promote the term 'Police Preferred Specification' on products which have passed the tests.97
The SBD scheme encourages various stakeholders – primarily architects, developers, local authorities, housing associations or manufacturers - to contact their local Crime Prevention Design Advisors (also known as the Police Architectural Liaison Officers) to receive advice and information.98 It also specifically invites developers to apply for a SBD Developers Award Certificate that confirms that their building is developed in conformity with SBD
96 The ACPO (2004) document refers to both crime and anti-social behaviour. Attempts to address antisocial behaviour have involved (controversial) interventions to the physical environment, such as the ‘mosquito’ antisocial behaviour deterrent, an acoustic noise emission box placed on a pylon or high rise to disperse youth who might assemble in an area – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/the-mosquito-antisocial- behaviour-deterrent/7485.html (accessed 1 June 2014). Chapter 5.4 discusses how SBD is similarly deployed in Manchester city centre to deter ASB. 97 http://www.securedbydesign.com/professionals/membership.aspx (accessed 1 June 2014). 98 http://www.securedbydesign.com/professionals/index.aspx (accessed 1 June 2014).
82 guidelines.99 The certification covers self-build projects too although it is the new build market that is being targeted first and foremost, also with implications of reduced insurance premiums for developments that have accreditation (Cozens 2002:133). Examples of new developments using their security features as a marketing edge also abound (see 5.4 for Manchester city centre accredited flagship developments). These marketing strategies can also be seen to illustrate the widespread commodification of security that the risk society and its discourses of threat and personal uncertainty support (Krahmann 2008).
As mentioned, SBD accreditation remains non-binding (at least for certain private developments), but the principles of CPTED that the scheme enshrines are translated in policy also at local level, and therefore need to be accommodated in one way or another in new developments. In Manchester, an example of this translation into policy is the ‘Guide for Development in Manchester - Supplementary Planning Document and Planning Guidance’ which was adopted in April 2007. Section 8 of this Guidance, entitled ‘Community Safety and Crime Prevention’, reads:
[i]n their Design and Access Statements applicants are expected to demonstrate how crime prevention measures have been considered in the design of the proposal. (DCLG Circular 1/2006). One way of ensuring that these issues are fully dealt with is by using the Secured By Design Accreditation Scheme (Manchester City Council 2007:30). and reiterates the key CPTED principles (Ibid: 30-31). Incorporating CPTED therefore comes to be seen as good practice and desirable on various fronts, despite the lack of undisputed evidence that CPTED (and SBD) works (Cozens et al. 2001;Cozens 2002;Cozens et al. 2005).
One could hypothesise that the political mileage that these principles have (irrespective of an evidence-base) might be due to the appeal they might exercise at both ends of the political spectrum. Newman’s original concept of defensible space had itself been seen as having such an overarching pull. Cozens et al. attribute to Smith this idea, explaining that the concepts are
attractive to those on the ``right'' ``because environmental engineering provides immediate, visible and unambiguous evidence of a commitment to stamp out deviance'' (Smith, 1987,p. 147), and it does not suggest changes in the structure of society. In addition, for politicians on the ``left'', it provides ``a more acceptable scapegoat for today's supposed demise of law and order than the stereotypical vandal,
99 http://www.securedbydesign.com/professionals/sbd_developers_award.aspx (accessed 1 June 2014).
83 the unemployed working-class youth'' (Smith, p. 147). For any political party, such an approach represents visible, tangible and positive action being taken (Cozens et al. 2001:147).100
Another hypothesis, as noted before, is that of the reputational advantage that places can gain as a result of branding themselves as secure. This was evident also during the recent Olympics, in the depiction of how London was getting ready for the associated safety and security challenges. A Home Office publication entitled ‘London 2012. A safe and secure Games for all’ explains that
Standards from the Association of Chief Police Officers’ ‘Secured by Design’ scheme are being applied to the construction of venues in order to minimise crime and security risks (2011b: 7).
As 4.4.3 below discusses, despite a vocabulary still largely centred around ‘crime’ and ‘crime prevention’ a closer look at the implementation of security by design and CPTED also reveals examples of applications closer to the other end of the security continuum, i.e. aimed at designing out terrorism. Moreover, behind a vocabulary of ‘prevention’, the emerging agenda is one of resilience and mitigation in the face of attacks increasingly seen as unavoidable.
4.4.3 Designing out Terrorism and the UK Legacy
At the time of writing (May 2014), the level of terrorist threat in the UK is assessed by the Home Office to be ‘substantial’, which indicates that ‘there is a strong possibility of a terrorist attack, and an attack may occur without warning’.101 In 2009 the Home Office released a consultation document entitled Safer Places: A Counter Terrorism Supplement to
provide practical advice on how to design in counter terrorism measures into the built environment. It supports the Government’s aim to do more to protect people in buildings and places from terrorism from the design stage onwards – in particular to reduce the vulnerability of crowded places to terrorist attack (Home Office 2009, Joint Ministerial Foreword)
100 In the UK, though, embracing these built environment solutions arguably went hand in hand with the targeting of ‘the dysfunctional’ (unemployed and benefit recipients). 101 See (both accessed 1 June 2014) https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/protecting-the-uk-against- terrorism, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/counter-terrorism/current-threat-level/. Before July 2011 the security level was instead rated ‘Severe’.
84 The guide aims at integrating counter terrorism concerns in planning policy (Home Office 2009:2) within England,102 not as an addendum, but as a further specification of the ‘crime concerns’ that are already addressed by existing legislation: ‘[t]he term “crime” also includes terrorism considerations throughout the statute book and therefore counter terrorism considerations are a key consideration in the planning process’ (Ibid:5).
This policy document highlights another interesting trend in securitisation, the tendency towards diffusing responsibilities for policing and for enacting anticipatory and pre-emptive measures (as explained in 6.3.6, where soft-policing is discussed). In doing so the document follows a previously Home-Office-commissioned review, which noted that increasing protective security
was not a job for the Government or the police alone and that more can be achieved by encouraging planners, local partners, businesses and professional bodies to implement counter-terrorist security advice. A key message from the review is the importance of ‘designing in’ counter terrorism measures into new buildings from the outset. (..) It allows professionals to use their skills and imagination to incorporate unobtrusive security measures that blend well with the local environment. (Home Office 2009, Joint Ministerial Foreword).
The guide references several measures, including target hardening, through better anti- blast resistance, improved building facility management and surveillance, and improved traffic management and hostile vehicle mitigation (to reduce the impact of vehicle-born threats). Amongst the many responses to the consultation, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)’s submission warned against the dangers of entrenching in a ‘fortress’ mentality, through overemphasising target hardening, which would alienate the profession, and appear as a disproportionate response to the risk (Royal Institute of British Architects 2009:1). Overemphasising certain types of risks, such as vehicle born threats, above others would also generate further negative outcomes, RIBA rebuked:
we feel there is a disproportionate emphasis on vehicle-born attacks. There should be more or equal weighting of advice on biological, electrical, nuclear threats and their design response principles. There is a danger that by over-emphasising one type of threat and response – the traditional ‘physical’ hardening of buildings and public places – architects and designers believe cities will be ‘fortified’ and reluctant (sic) to engage with the issues. There is also a danger that design teams/clients treat the other non-physical threats as less ‘severe’ (2009:4).
102 Planning systems are developed separately for other parts of the UK.
85 Despite these concerns, plans to design in counter-terror abound. In recent years the UK National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO), often in collaboration with the Home Office, has also produced a large number of publications specifically dealing with preparedness and crisis management in crowded places (from bars, nightclubs and restaurants to places of worship and shopping centres) and major events, including the recent guide on ‘Protecting Crowded Places: Design and Technical Issues’ (Home Office 2012; the security of major event in Manchester city centre is explored in 5.5 and 6.3.5). These highlight that
[t]he UK faces a significant threat from international terrorism (..) The aim of the guide is to equip the reader with a better understanding of the links between the counter- terrorism dimension of crime prevention and the built environment, so that reducing the vulnerability of crowded places to terrorist attack can be tackled in an imaginative and considered way (Home Office 2012:3).
Moreover, the two ends of the security continuum are increasingly framed as pursuing convergent (if not entirely overlapping) aims:
incorporating good counter-terrorism protective security measures is also good crime prevention. Generally, good counter-terrorism protective security measures will support other measures intended to reduce other types of crime (Ibid:11).
Other organisations, such as the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI), have also released their own guidance on security and contingency planning in the event of terrorist attacks to infrastructure. The language of ‘prevention’ still often prevails, even if the action and strategy advocated can more appropriately be defined as aiming at resilience and mitigation. Coaffee and Rogers argue that since the early 1990s in the UK ‘the response to terrorist risk usually poses the question – ‘Are we prepared?’ rather than ‘Can we prevent it?’ (Coaffee 2006). In this context there has been a paradigm shift from protective counter-terrorism towards preparedness and resilience’ (Coaffee and Rogers 2008:212). In the 2010 ‘Protecting against Terrorism’ guide, measures aimed at preventing attacks are integrated with those ensuring business continuity (CPNI 2010:27-28) and steps guaranteeing rapid response and resilience under attack (Ibid: 29-36), are listed amongst the ten top security guidelines (ibid:a2). Similarly, in the Home Office counter-terrorist official strategy,103 subsumed under the heading and slogan of ‘Deter, Detect and Delay’
103 The Home Office latest strategy, CONTEST (July 2011), highlights current threats and sets UK priorities up to 2015. See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97994/contest- summary.pdf; https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97995/strategy-contest.pdf (both accessed 1 June 2014).
86 (Home Office 2009:17), the deterrent element soon gave way to systems and strategies to intercept and identify (i.e. detect) terrorists, and to mitigate (delay) impacts of attacks for instance through anti-blast materials or prompt evacuations and emergency responses. The most recent (July 2011) reframing of this slogan as ‘Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare’ (Home Office 2011a) continues to suggest the shift and to convey a message that underscores the importance of preparedness and resilience.
When considering the spread of measures to design out terrorism or strengthen resilience, paying attention to the specificity of the UK context remains important, despite the fact that similar initiatives are being developed elsewhere too - in the US, for instance, the American Institute of Architects has developed a primer for ‘Building Security Through Design’ (2001) that covers a wide range of security threats, from the risk of blast to that of infiltration of air systems during chemical or biological attacks. The UK experience of designing in anti-terrorist measures precedes the recent attacks and the current UK involvement in the ‘War on Terror’, and has instead been developed in the context of repeated terrorist attacks carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As a consequence, introducing counter terrorism in planning and management of city centre public, semi- public and also private spaces has been a key preoccupation for several decades in London and other large UK cities. Manchester city centre itself was the target of a major IRA bombing in 1996 (as discussed in Chapter 3, where the impact of the bombing in catalysing city centre regeneration was also addressed).104
Coaffee and Rogers (2008) trace the design and environmental counter terrorism measures adopted in UK cities like London, Glasgow and Manchester, and describe the security cordon (also known as the ‘ring of steel’) that was erected in the City of London in response to the IRA bombings of the early 1990s. This security cordon was then followed in the Docklands by the creation of an ‘iron collar’ with similar visibility and also marketed as a ‘ring of confidence’, reassuring residents and professionals that their safety was considered a priority (Ibid:211). Coaffee and Rogers also argue that this type of physical intervention ‘provided a highly visible demonstration that the City was taking the terrorist threat seriously in order to reassure financial industries that they were doing all they could to stop
104 See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/15/newsid_2527000/2527009.stm and images on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing (both accessed 1 June 2014).
87 terrorism and avoid business relocation’ (Ibid:211). In this sense, they theorise a further role for security as part of city branding, as discussed below.
4.5 Branding and the Security Paradox
In their work, which is concerned with preparedness towards the impact of security risks at large (especially terrorist threats), beyond safety issues linked with criminality or antisocial behaviour, Coaffee and Rogers (2008) make the important point that
security is becoming one of many key selling points in the practice of city branding. (..) aspects of security and emergency preparedness are increasingly becoming affiliated with branding practices and utilised by governance regimes to promote and brand particular locales as safe, secure and resilient to attack. (..) security (..) is quickly becoming another tool in the armoury of place branders at local, regional and national levels, and emerges as a factor in the attraction of inward investment and conference- led or ‘meetings’ tourism and in the evolution of post-industrial cities (Ibid: 205).
In the high visibility of the London ring of steel and the iron collar, Coaffee and Rogers (2008) recognise the role that security increasingly plays in image making, and in branding places as secure and hence desirable. The visibility was both a protective move and a semiotic one - a declaration of intent (to protect civilians) and a physical and symbolic projection of the attitude (of zero tolerance) and capabilities of the security services. It was, that is, a PR statement aimed at the City and Docklands workers in these areas, and foremost at their corporate employers, as well as at the citizenry at large, before and above being a message for the next would-be IRA attacker.
However, the visibility presupposed by these uses of security for branding and statement- making carries the inherent paradox that visible target hardening and fortification can produce anxieties or at best ambivalence in those that are exposed to it (for instance, Koskela 2000). Overt target hardening, while sometimes desired (as in the case of gated communities, where residents welcome features like walls and gates), can lead to an increased perception that a space is dangerous and unwelcoming. 105 It may be counterproductive to the image of the site, and can engender a ‘fortress mentality’ (Cozens et at 2005) or accentuate further the ambiguity and sense of unsafeness described by Koskeva (2005). A feeling of insecurity can be engendered by the presence of overt
105 While it might be possible to think in terms of tipping points, it is also likely that different groups of people may be experiencing the same level of physical securitisation in different ways, depending on their status and on other variables and situational factors, such as those that this research explores through the engagement of a wide range of stakeholders.
88 surveillance and even by solutions aimed at offering reassurance (for instance Koskela 2000 who looked at the effects of overt CCTV, but also at the impacts of the presence of public phones for emergency calls only). Kaika (2010; 2011) highlights the alienating consequences of overt target hardening, describing the built environment where it prevails as ‘autistic’ architecture, due to its alleged dis-embedded relationship with the surrounding urban environment, and its impenetrability by members of the public. Following Flusty (2001), I argue that it may be preferable to think of these spaces as offering differential access and focusing on the filtering processes that they engender.106
Coaffee and Rogers (2008) talk of a polarity, highlighting how security design elements can oscillate between being extremely visible and prominent to becoming everyday and invisible as they blend in the background. A similar point is made by Flusty (2001), who warns that over-hardening of a securitised space can, in some contexts, have deleterious effects for the image of the place, and negatively affect its intended uses and users. Beyond the academic literature, policy-makers are also nodding their awareness to the issue, with the point appearing in some of the official design guidelines. The Home Office’s document ‘Protecting Crowded Places: Design and Technical Issues’, for instance, advises planners, architects, developers and other professionals (including the police Architectural Liaison Officers) to ‘avoid an oversensitivity to risk. This can result in bland and standardised places – it is important to retain or insert positive features that attract people to spaces’ (Home Office 2012:9). In doing so, the document guidelines suggest combining so-called standardised components with ‘some invisibly integrated components’, such as structurally enhanced bus shelters and other anti-blast street furniture. It also advocates inserting high visibility but non-security related features, such as public art or locally important features (Ibid: 9), to appeal to the users of these spaces.
When confronted with extreme securitisation Flusty, instead, suggests that to overcome the unease it produces two processes can set in. A process of ‘naturalisation’ can take place (2001:660), whereby these interdictory spaces (spaces that intercept and filter would be users) become so deeply embedded in our daily lives to the point that we fail to notice them (Ibid: 660). This is often argued to be the case with some CCTV use. While ubiquitous and visible (where cameras are on sight and not hidden) it becomes mundane, and thus
106 To better account for their relationship with other sites, for instance at borders (at airports and transport hubs), where these processes of filtering and differential access privileges are even more prominent.
89 ‘invisible’ or non-salient, so that it goes unnoticed by users of a space. At other times, instead ‘forms of surveillant control that are too harsh to fade into the background are symbolically rehabilitated as both unthreatening and even laudatory’ (Ibid: 660). Central to this rehabilitation is the process of ‘quaintification’ of certain aspects of security. The latter is most evident in spaces targeted for the affluent: (..) users demand the reassuringly visible presence of protection from unpredictable and potentially unpleasant encounters with otherness, but (..) balk at living socialising and spending their money in the hostile anti-aesthetics of something resembling an armed camp. In response to the conundrum of rendering security simultaneously apparent and palatable, quaintification becomes a means of rendering interdictory spaces and practices aesthetically pleasing, quaint policing for what Relph has called ‘Quaintspaces’ (Relph 1987:252-8). Such quaint policing dovetails with changing attitudes towards security itself, in which urbanites’ persistent paranoia places ‘safety’ ever higher as a social priority (Flusty 2001:660).
The quaint policing described by Flusty can be exemplified for instance in the increased reliance on concierge teams in private developments, which are becoming more common in the context of Manchester city centre, generally in premium developments, but not only.107 These are more evocative of exclusivity (and marketed as such) rather than of ‘fortress mentality’, whilst still providing formal surveillance and access control functions.108 In this case too, security becomes increasingly marketed and seen as a strongpoint of sale (Flusty 2001) for the affluent, as already observed by Davis in relation to LA’s residential property market in the 90s (Davis 1990, quoted in Coaffe et al 2009:83) and by Flusty in relation to commercial buildings (Flusty 1994, quoted in Coaffe et al 2009:82). The point is easily illustrated with property adverts, such as the one below, where this type of security features prominently amongst the attributes promoted in a flat currently on sale in Beethan Tower
Key features: 25th Floor Studio Apartment Breathtaking Views North Across The City 24/7 Concierge Team
107 In Manchester examples of city centre developments with large concierge teams are Parsonage, N1 Deansgate, The Edge, Great Northern Tower, Beethan Tower. Mid-range developments with a concierge or a smaller concierge team include Vantage Point, Hacienda, Lighthouse, Locks, although mostly such developments rely on structural security solution (locks, fobs, cctv). ‘Older’ developments (the first re- developed as residential properties in the 80s) tend to either have a live-in porter/factotum, as in Bombay House and Orient House, or no personnel on site, as in the Smithfields Building, Regency House, Princess House. 108 The quaintness is thus produced in many ways – from the involvement of people in place of an extra layer of mechanised entrance doors, to their attitude (the concierge personnel generally present themselves as ‘enablers’ rather than gate-keepers, like hotel receptionists welcoming you and ‘assisting you’), or their uniform (reassuring in its ‘everyday-clothes normality’, and unlike the combat-inspired uniforms worn by nightclub bouncers).
90 Central Location Landmark Building Great For Investment or a 1st Time Buyer (Rightmove, 20 Nov 2013).109
In other property search portals security is even used as a search filter, a distinctive feature of certain types of flats in Manchester city centre, that can be selected to refine searches for property for sale (or rental, though to a lesser degree), alongside features such as furnished/unfurnished, with/without balcony or parking, as in the case of the Zoopla property portal.110
4.6 Conclusions
This chapter has set out the context for a discussion of security in Manchester City centre by presenting and appraising competing understandings of risk, and presenting the predominant mobilisation of the discourse of risk, in policy and in the urban domain, and its connections with the process of securitisation. Salient features and trends in securitisation, from the move towards resilience to that towards a security continuum, have also been recovered in policy discourse. They have been appraised, specifically in the way they frame insecurities as distinctively associated with cities - for instance as threats to key infrastructure, crowded places or large events, but also as vulnerabilities in relation to crime. The chapter explored the concept of security reflexively, foregrounding the questions of whose security is being pursued, against whom and to what effects, topics which will be addressed by the following two chapters.
This chapter also focused on the interplay between security and design, not simply because Manchester institutionally promotes and eagerly embraces these forms of securitisation of the built environment in its current building practice (through SDB), public realm landscaping, and event management organisation. Nor was this focus principally motivated by the city centre historical bombing and ensuing physical scarring of its built environment. Rather, this focus was sought because it provides useful insights into salient trends
109 www.rightmove.co.uk and http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-43823381.html for the actual advert (both accessed 1 June 2014). 110 A feature claimed by 135 out of the 568 properties on sale in November 2013, see http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/manchester-city- centre/?q=property%20manchester%20city%20centre (accessed 1 June 2014).
91 characterising the wider process of securitisation.111 At the same time, in this chapter I argued that security by design transcends a simple and simplistic relationship with the built environment. While acknowledging that it has a long history, I reflected on the power dynamics in can engender. This chapter also frequently alluded to the point, which the next chapters will develop more extensively, that security by design also relies on the increasingly sensory nature of the city to realise new, real time and mobile forms of securitisation.
111 Beyond the city centre, other key sites that best allow to track the process of securitisation are airports, centres of strategic infrastructure or energy reserves, stadiums and the sites of mega events (like Olympic parks).
92 Chapter 5 Stakeholders’ Views of City Centre Safety and of Security by Design
This chapter is the second of three dedicated to exploring in depth issues of security and to unpacking their role in shaping the city centre. It progresses the discussion by grounding it in the empirical data collected, anchoring it through an analysis of stakeholders’ first-hand experiences, accounts and views. The latter are at times supplemented by other material – images, questionnaires, leaflets and photographs - collected through the ethnographic work on Manchester city centre.
The chapter offers an analysis of stakeholders’ perceptions and views about safety and security in Manchester city centre. It opens with participants’ views and experiences of the general safety of the city centre, before critically discussing their understanding of risk and vulnerability. The chapter documents the circulation of discourses of risk, including the narrative, promoted by some of the actors, of a mismatch between perceptions of danger and actual incidence of crime. It considers the biopolitical effects of these discourses on participants, how these interact with some of their values and come to shape certain practices. The chapter critically appraises participants’ reported exposure to risk and its variability. It uncovers the perceived timescapes of safety and the geographies of danger that stakeholders identify in the city centre. It then critically maps participants’ main current security concerns in order to highlight areas of convergence and divergence amongst actors.
Finally, the chapter analyses stakeholders’ views and experience of security by design, both in the everyday fabric of the city centre and in the extraordinary (but increasingly frequent) securitisation of temporary events. It reveals the impacts that current measures have on stakeholders and invites a review of current practices.
5.1 Stakeholders’ Views, Values and Experiences of Manchester City Centre’s Safety and Security
Issues of safety and security featured centrally in the interviews and their schedule and prompts (in appendix 4). They were, however, often first introduced by stakeholders themselves, in response to invitations to describe the city centre and reflect on both the aspects they liked most and those they liked less. They also emerged as participants
93 discussed the changes to the city centre that they had experienced over time in the last 10 years.
The opinion shared by almost all participants was that Manchester city centre is a safe place. Only one of the 39 participants accessed expressed concerns about its general safety, although, as we shall see below, there were nuanced takes on the different exposure of specific demographic groups to different risks, and a sense that different times of the day or night, different days of the week, and areas of the city centre, would afford different degrees of risk.
The sense of safety was often stated via comparisons to other places, locally or internationally:
I've worked in Manchester for 20 years, and I have heard of people.. that have been mugged, but I have also heard of people that get mugged in Stockport in Bramhall. I feel very.. I walk home on my own after work at half past twelve at night, one o'clock on the morning, and I have never felt threatened at all (Canal Street bar owner).
Such safety was claimed in contrast to negative imagery about Manchester and its city centre, circulating now or in the past, in the media, or seen as representing public opinion nationally and internationally (see appendix 3):
I think everyone in the South would imagine that it is very dangerous [laughs], it did have a reputation of course of being quite dangerous (..) it's a city, but I think it's a safe one (Arts venue artistic lead).
Even when great strides in the right direction were perceived to have been made, Manchester’s past track record was seen as still lingering and creating an enduring negative impression:
there is a nitty gritty feeling going on in the city (..) I think there is very much that perception, I think we've moved on a pace since the days of Gunchester, because of the work that GMP have done and various other people have done around the gangs but, particularly the work the Council have done in getting gangs out of the city centre (CEO of CityCo, the city centre management company).
In some cases, and even with institutional stakeholders, as illustrated by the example above, there was an acknowledgement that the negative imaginary associated with Manchester in the past was somewhat justified. This view was not shared across the board, though, and others (including other institutional stakeholders) denied that the city centre
94 was ever an unsafe place. This may have been an attempt to brand the city, especially its city centre, as intrinsically secure, now and in the past, given that security increasingly has become a feature of city selling and branding, and a pre-requisite to attract visitors, businesses and investment, as also indicated by the comparisons to other (unnamed) European and world cities:
Manchester's reputation 10 years ago was undeserved, if I'm being honest, because even the statistics did not justify many of the myths and the negative reporting that took place about, you know we were 'Gunchester' because there was, because of two shootings in a year. Well, there's almost two shootings in many other cities a day (..) statistics never lie really, and they've been very very consistent. Crime is going down massively, it's now at levels which are better than most cities in Europe, indeed the world (Sir Bernstein, CEO of Manchester City Council).
Although many stakeholders referred to the city centre’s increased safety when reflecting on the various changes having occurred over the past decade, somewhat confirming that it was less safe in the past, the institutional stakeholders quoted above were not alone in denying this. A business stakeholder (Property Developer Urban Splash, below) also dismissed that image of Manchester city centre as a mere caricature of the past in an account that highlighted instead greater continuity between the city centre now and then, despite the occurrence of much transformation:
I think it always has been [safe and secure]. I mean, you know, we used to operate a bar at the bottom of Deansgate, called Atlas from 1992 to 2000, and rarely encountered any problems. There are isolated instances as there are in any city, but I think generally the repopulation of the city [centre], the fact that it started to exist beyond just 9 to 5, which in the 1980s it really was dead in the evening, I think it's become by virtue of its population a safer place. You know there's lots more people living in the city centre, more now than 15 years ago (Nick Johnson, Deputy CEO, Urban Splash).
The analysis of local policy documents showed that the city centre is in the eyes of local policy makers and city branders a ‘shop window’ for the rest of the city. Its perceived safety impacts on the general view of Manchester. Thus efforts are directed at ensuring it is seen as secure by visitors and investors. One of the difficulties that city leaders and branders encounter when pursuing this aspiration is that the city centre is not a separate operational unit for policing and consequently official crime data is not specific to the city centre:
GMP splits the city into North and South division and the city centre is within the North division, so when it talks about sexual offences it's not just the city centre, it's the city centre and the entirety of the North division. But actually what obviously is picked up by journalists is very much around the city centre so, you know, in terms of then a message that goes out, you are talking about quite a large geographical space, you are talking about various areas of poverty, non-poverty, various mixed areas, you
95 know it's a much more nuanced story, however appalling those circumstances are, than just saying in this quite tiny area there has been a record number of sexual offences, which adds to the perception problem, adds to various other issues (..) you do have very rare but horrible crimes, when there was a rape in the Northern Quarter last year I think, you had that re-tweeted and sent around by blogs, and that became 'ok, how do we manage a culture of fear for what was a single incident?'. So that's created some very, very interesting challenges (CEO of CityCo).
Although research is currently being conducted to assess the weighting of major city centres (such as those of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Cardiff) on some of the suburban crime statistics (GMPA Chair 2012, in interview), there is no indication that the North Division in Manchester might be subdivided, even if the findings were to show distinctly different patterns of crime or policing needs. In this situation, as illustrated by the quote above, city branders may be at pains to dissociate the negative resonance of criminal acts (particularly those involving use of violence) from the city centre itself, and mitigate any type of media-generated amplification.
5.2 Feeling Vulnerable? Stakeholders’ Take on the Disjoint Between Fear and Incidence of Crime
Beyond any branding concerns, a few institutional stakeholders, including the Greater Manchester Police Authority Chair, reported and openly discussed the existence of a disjoint between public perception of crime and recorded incidence of crime. While my research remains qualitative and therefore the focus groups and interviews with residents, as well as the interviews with city centre workers, cannot be taken to offer generalisable findings about public perceptions of crime that might be representative of wider public views of residents and city workers, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the residents and workers accessed did largely think the city centre was safe and secure. This finding therefore stands in contrast to the notion of a significant disjoint between fear of crime (as this was actually generally low amongst participants) and incidence of crime (which is officially reported to be low and consistently falling).
Nonetheless, the premise taken by a number of institutional stakeholders was that such a disconnect existed. This belief was based on the perception survey data publically available for England and Wales, such as that discussed in Chapter 4, or on other marketing research surveys conducted for CityCo or by the police, as discussed below. A security expert
96 specifically referred to the need to move beyond reported perceptions by asking members of the public about the ‘real’ instances of crime they have been a victim of:
there is a key questionnaire that the Greater Manchester Police do on a regular basis, which is to say 'how do you feel the city is? What are your fears? And have you actually been a victim of these types of crimes?' (..) we can then measure perception, reality and solution. So it's a very balanced understanding. (security expert)
While appearing comprehensive, this approach might fall into the trap of asking ‘how rational’ someone’s fear or risk perception is, which Lupton and Tulloch (1999) argue is problematic. By measuring perceptions against something set up as ‘real’ - a victimisation episode, experienced first-hand - this approach implicitly foregrounds as irrational (and potentially unfounded) any other fear or risk perception. It thus individualises risk and simultaneously excludes other forms of contextual knowledge (derived from being exposed collectively to certain practices or discourses),112 grossly oversimplifying the issues. More interesting questions could be asked about the sources of information or experiences people are accessing and including in their risk assessment, or about the aspects they are weighting up and trading against each other, and to what end – asking what vision of security they have in mind.
Diffusely circulating and collectively mobilised discourses of risk contribute to a lay and contextual understanding of risk (not an ill-informed one, but one that filters and integrates inputs from various sources). The police questionnaires themselves – for instance see an excerpt below about policing priorities – are an obvious source of risk discourses, as the listing of certain types of crime (and not others) as possibly occurring in an area might affect a resident perception of such risks in their area:
112 Data on incidence of crime is certainly valuable, and so is distinguishing between the crime that has (officially) occurred and the perception citizens have of the level of crime. Asking whether the perception is ‘rational’ is instead counterproductive. A resident’s perception of the risk of parking in a street where he/she sees cars being regularly broken into will not be affected by the fact that his/her own car (which could be parked elsewhere) has not been broken into - that is by the absence of a first-hand experience of ‘victimisation’ in that street. These surveys thus potentially undermine contextual and lay knowledge in favour of other types of knowledge more amenable to technocratic use, like police crime records.
97
Figure 1 – Excerpt from police questionnaire
Similarly, other sources of risk information are the advertising campaigns launched by the police to advise specific target groups (such as new students at the beginning of each academic year) or the public at large (for instance over Christmas - see example below), inviting them to be vigilant against certain risks, from those posed by pickpockets or car thieves to those raised by predating attackers spiking drinks. These campaigns have the stated objective of affecting (i.e. increasing) public perceptions of these risks:
98
Figure 2 –Police Leaflet Circulated over Christmas 2013
Importantly, while it may remain difficult to accurately measure their efficacy in raising awareness, these campaigns also aim at enrolling the public in certain practices of self- monitoring and risk avoidance - hiding valuables, avoiding leaving their drink unattended, opting for the use of cash machines inside banks, and so on.
These same types of exhortations to acting in anticipatory modes are evident in the data collected. The data also reflects the actuarial practices promoted by prevalent risk discourses and the mechanisms of intervention and self-regulation they invite, as the governmentality school has argued. The police stakeholders interviewed enrolled in promoting discourses of self-management of risk, often speaking of the need of certain
99 individuals and groups to take more responsibility for their own safety and security and referring to official awareness campaigns, and so did a number of other participants too:
young ladies, in the main, become so inebriated that they're out of control, they're unconscious in some cases, and in some cases they don't know they're being attacked (..) they are leaving themselves so vulnerable! (..) you've heard the messages that we've put, you'll know as a student these messages have been out ‘you're vulnerable and there are people with a set agenda going out there, looking for young ladies, particularly young ladies, and also men in some cases, but in the main females, and attacking them. (Chair of GM Police Authority)
This is exactly the advice we give to students (..) It is a safe city but there are certain precautions you have to take. You know, look after you mates, don't leave them on your own, know you limits, you know, people do make themselves very vulnerable to crime. So these are pretty sensible precautions. (..) a lot of criminals (..) they are predatory, they'll predatorily target drunk people, visitors, tourists (police inspector).
As theorised in Chapter 4, this move by institutional stakeholders, is matched by an eagerness by non-institutional actors (especially NGOs and hybrid organisations that now interface and that were not previously tasked with the mitigation of security issues) to respond entrepreneurially. A poignant example is offered by a member of the Village Angels, a programme run by LGF, a foundation that offers advice and support to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in the Gay Village:
[w]e also give information about how to stay safe when you're out, (..) people (..) are probably quite vulnerable in that sense that they are on their own (..) the criminals of this area (..) they take advantage of this, so they will often befriend somebody (..)'huggers muggers' (..) they will hug you, and steal your wallet from you (..) so we advise people you know to just be very wary of their surroundings, very weary of who they're talking to (..) go out with friends, don't take out all of your credit cards and all of your bank cards and all your cash. Just bring out what you're going to need for the evening. Make sure you keep your taxi fare in a different pocket or somewhere else, or in a different section of your bag from your purse, so that if that gets stolen, at least you can get home. You know all these little hints and tips, stay in well lit areas, you know plan your journey home before you go out, tell people where you're going, have a contact number with you, take out a cheap phone that you don't mind loosing, stuff like that. All the little things are to act as a way of stopping crime before it starts (..) I think there's a lot to be said for acting before the event, and being prepared and being, you know, not putting yourself out there to being potential victims of crime, doing everything you can do to stop that. (..) it's quite important to say to people, you know, 'there are things that you can do to prevent yourself becoming a victim of crime' (Community Engagement Coordinator, LGF, my emphasis).
The notion that these areas of behaviour (from the amount of cash one should carry when out, to the pocket one should use to hold one’s taxi fare) need self-management ironically
100 generates more entities outside the self that (like the Village Angels, and undoubtedly with the best intentions) self-task with engaging with safety and security issues.113
The awareness raising materials released by these agencies, together with that circulated by institutional actors tasked with protecting public safety, will interact in complex ways with other sources of knowledge and with the first-hand experiences that city centre residents and users have of this space. This is why more interesting questions (than questions about rational versus irrational fears) can be asked, as also suggested by the GMPA chair, by interrogating the disjoint between incidence of crime and public ‘expectations’ (what this research frames as ‘aspirations’) about safety and security:
I think the perception of ordinary crime in the city centre is not- and the confidence figures are not as high as we would like them to be.. and that's about (..) people's expectations as well. (..) what were your expectations coming to live in the city? What did you expect? Did you expect it to be as peaceful as a small village in, like, Holmfirth? (..) I suspect that the confidence figures that I've just alluded to earlier, they're not as high as they should be because I think expectations are probably - maybe too high, from people who never lived in Rome, never lived in New York, didn't live in the big cities and don't know that Manchester is actually quite a safe place to be (Chair of GM Police Authority, my emphasis).
With the usual caveat about these findings being qualitative, it was interesting to note that the residents and city centre workers accessed did not appear to display high expectations (such as those of next to zero risk tolerance often attributed to lay publics and described by experts as unrealistic). Moreover, instead of displaying high levels of anxiety and a strong focus on risk avoidance, they introduced and discussed the notion of a city as being intrinsically ‘edgy’ and having certain features that set it apart from small-town living, also in terms of the level of risk and safety issues one could reasonably expect to encounter:
you've got to keep your wits about you, because at the end of the day it's a city, so that means you can't predict who's around what corner, but..yeah, fine (bakery owner)
you still have to be (..) just a little bit on your guard and sensible about these things (..) you know I have been out very late at night and in various things, but I mean it's just, it's a city, but I think it's a safe one (arts venue artistic lead)
I generally don't think of danger from.. people. I mean yeah, you've always got to watch yourself, it's a city, but so far no problems (City centre resident 2)
M: sometimes you get lads who've had a bit too much to drink, but you know if you don't rise to it, you just walk away then..
113 This phenomenon dovetails with the spread of ‘soft-policing’ or ‘para-policing’, as discussed in chapter 6 below.
101 B: I think that's the thing, if you have the mentality for living in the city, you only engage with somebody if you know it's ok G: yeah (..) if you're a bit wise, then you know cross the road (..) I feel really safe walking into the city centre. I chose my particular flat because I wanted my girlfriend to feel safe when she's walking home at no matter what time of the day (City centre resident focus group 1).
So while workers and residents consciously embraced some of these strategies of self- regulation, they did not appear to dwell on the discourse of vulnerability that some of the security experts promote, nor did they go to great lengths to enact crime avoidance tactics. Their belief is that a level of risk is simply part and parcel of the city, and they expect to live with it. This approach, while not exactly welcoming risk, normalises it and makes it ‘non- salient’. Instead of fearful talk of victims and vulnerabilities, or of entrenchment in the (pro- active but possibly self-consuming) discourse of armouring up (for instance through picking up all the tactics and advice that organisations keenly distribute), this approach could be best described as the performance of a ‘savy and unperturbed urbanite’ persona. As such, it is best summed up by the phrase used by the resident who referred to it as displaying a city ‘mentality’.
5.3 Stakeholders’ Take on Variability of Risks and Risk Exposure
Alongside the general view of the city centre as safe, participants also anticipated that the city centre would be experienced differently by different groups of people, and in doing so reflected on their own position and those of others in relation to exposure to different risks.
Some of the male respondents anticipated that whilst they did not perceive nor experience risks of personal attacks, they would expect risks to be higher for women,114 and some mentioned accompanying their partners around the city centre at night, or, as in the quote above, even choosing their flat with such concerns in mind. While a small number of women who work and live in the city centre have reported feeling under threat late at night, while waiting for transport, mostly women too have described the centre as safe.
Certain areas were described as to be avoided even in the day time (for instance along the canal network in Piccadilly basin), others were simply seen as problematic for lingering or
114 Statistics often appear to confound this, as noted by one resident too, with men (especially young men) often reported in the criminology literature as underestimating their risk of being attacked vis a vis that of women. Statistics remain inconclusive and opinion divided, though, as attacks against women are said to go unreported more often.
102 ‘hanging out’ but not to walk across (for instance St Parsonage park in the evenings). Others still were viewed as best avoided, but at certain times only (at night St John’s Gardens was for instance perceived by some as to be avoided, others stated they avoided Piccadilly Gardens). The references to specific sites appear to confirm what argued by Sparks, Girling and Loader (Sparks et al. 2001) about the connection ever present between talking of a certain security issue (crime, for Sparks et al) and place-talk. Mostly, though, the variability in the level of safety experienced in the city centre was linked to different ‘timescapes’115 and specifically it was connected to the prevailing night-time economy. Weekend nights were discussed as more risky than week nights, and specific times were marked by some as more problematic or ‘tipping points’, such as the pub closing time and the closing times of the clubs and bars:
on the whole [the city centre] is generally a very safe place to be. I mean the crime records statistics generally say that violent crime and street robbery are coming down. We do have small pockets of places where they are higher than other places, but, and that might be linked to other things, like a lot of bars and restaurants, or bars and pubs, but on the whole we, crime trend is coming down (Head of City Centre Regeneration).
Generally speaking, people who were travelling out of the city centre appeared to perceive it as more risky than those who lived there. The centre was perceived as more risky also by those who were perhaps more likely to become victims of violence and crime themselves, such as the Big Issue vendor who suggested he would deliberately leave the centre in the evenings specifically due to safety concerns, and who otherwise felt exposed at regular intervals – while standing in a given spot on the street – to football hooligans and drunken crowds:
J: [it is] safer during the day. I don't, I don't, I wouldn't trust coming into the city centre anyway [at night], especially with the nightlife that Manchester has got, you know I wouldn't trust it E: (..) what kind of risks? J: risks? Muggings, theft E: so kind of personal attacks and property J: personal attacks, thefts of property, you know people into a bar a restaurant or a discoteque, and your bag is missing, you know, wallets, jackets, you know, your drinks, you know [laughs]. And then, when you are out of it, you're going home, you might get attacked, physically abused, (..) verbally abused (Big Issue vendor).
Some of those (though not all) whose profession brought them in more direct contact with victims of crime were also more concerned with certain risks and voiced the need to address these – for instance rape threats in clubs, theft from vehicle, and ‘hugger-mugging’
115 Studies that take into consideration specific timescapes include that by Timan and Oudshoorn (2012), which highlights how urban ‘nightscapes’ affect people’s changing perceptions of surveillance in public sites.
103 in the Gay Village. The main risks were associated with personal safety in relation to the night-time economy and drunken behaviour, and to acquisitive crime from shops and from passerby (pickpocketing, but also to a lesser extent mugging).
While security professionals tended to identify acquisitive crimes as the main safety issues arising in the city centre, residents and city centre workers often identified violence associated to drunken behaviour as the main risk they were exposed to. Even some of those business stakeholders and city centre branders who did not mention drunken violence as a risk that they felt directly exposed to, consistently saw this as the single most quoted factor affecting (negatively) public opinion on the safety of Manchester city centre, especially on weekends (and at night). As such they considered it to be a deterrent for some visitors116 and occasionally also for their own use and enjoyment of certain parts of the city centre:117
when we do perception surveys of what people's attitudes towards the city are and 'why don't you come in in the evenings?', that's one of the issues. I think in terms of what's happened with the evening and night-time economy, the fact that actually that privileging of drinking culture took a lead (..) so that feeling of, even if you're coming here not to cause trouble, there are drunken lairy people around, that very English thing, which I think is gradually changing, but that perception adds to that unsafe feeling, even if it's not about actual crime, it's about there is a nitty gritty feeling going on in the city (CEO, CityCo).
On the whole, there was considerable disagreement on the degree to which current use of space as shaped by the night-time economy was seen as problematic in terms of security for the city centre and its stakeholders. The divergent stakeholders’ experiences of the impacts of the night-time economy of the city centre, of the insecurity it generates but also of its impacts on incivilities, noise, dirt and waste, alienation of various demographics and so on, directly link to a deep divergence of aspirations and priorities for the future of the city centre.
5.4 Stakeholders’ Views, Values and Experiences of Everyday Security by Design Solutions
As argued, Secured by Design (SBD) has been strongly fostered in Manchester city centre due to the support of the local authorities. At Design for Security, the Manchester-based
116 Although acutely aware of the views and needs of visitors, city branders tended not to reflect or comment on how it might affect residents. 117 Piccadilly Gardens, the Printworks, Dean Locks were the areas often mentioned, and for which improvements were strongly suggested (see chapter 8).
104 police unit that is tasked with advising, evaluating and accrediting sites within the Secure by Design scheme, the consultants interviewed for this research reported that ‘if you looked at all local authorities in England and Wales, (..) Manchester would probably be the best local authority at implementing Secured by Design’. Manchester council’s leadership in this area not only sets it apart from other locales, but also appears to have played a catalyst effect on surrounding councils, which are now forming the Greater Manchester Combined Authority:
[SBD] is becoming a lot more popular. When we started doing Secured By Design, it was only really Manchester Council that were- which was sort of requiring it but now all ten local authorities in Greater Manchester do tend to take our advice on board at different levels. (..) I think the future is quite good, I think, there'll be a lot more buildings that are built to secure standards. (..) especially in areas like the city centre where the council obviously have very high standards (Design For Security consultant).
The same endorsement to SBD was evidenced in the interviews with the CEO of Manchester City Council and the head of City Centre Regeneration at the City Council:
SHB: (..) security is, is about safety, it's about.. PB: perception SHB: perceptions of safety, it is about activity, you know PB: visibility, people being about, you know people being visible SHB: so it's not just about policemen, it needs to be about how the place functions, how you design buildings, how public realm and squ-, and what are the roles of squares, and how do street-based activities front onto the street, how you avoid blank walls, it's all that sort of stuff as much as policemen in my view E: yes, Manchester is particularly on the forefront with the Secured by Design scheme and things like that SHB: yes, exactly! And high quality public realm and lighting! PB: and the use of street furniture, all of that so you create space where people feel safe and there is less opportunity for crime to take place (Sir Howard Bernstein and Pat Bartoli).
The popularity of the scheme is such that an interactive tool has been made available two years ago on the of SBD website,118 allowing developers and other interested parties to take part in a simulation of what elements of design might be creating opportunities for crime to occur and illustrating the type of design features that could be inserted in a building design to make it secure and SBD compliant:
118 The first (2012) version has been superseded by a second version, known as the SBD Interactive Design Guide http://interactive.securedbydesign.com/# (accessed 1 June 2014).
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Figure 3: Screenshot image of the police interactive tool (from http://interactive.securedbydesign.com accessed on 1 June 2014)
Nationwide other schemes have also been introduced, including a scheme on safe car parking and one aimed at increasing security of campus sites (called Secure Environments). Although the Design for Security police unit could be tasked with administering these too, most of those schemes are not implemented in Manchester, and are currently seen as unlikely to take hold in the future, not least because of the associated costs, according to the DFS consultant. By contrast, SBD has become so routinely implemented that some buildings have now received awards for their skilful application of SBD (for instance the Civil Justice Centre, in Spinningfields) and that most, if not all, residential buildings constructed in the last four or five years in the city centre were considered by the consultant to have applied SBD to very good standards. Certain areas of the city centre now cluster more accredited building - either as these neighbourhoods are entirely new or because they count fewer residential and office buildings converted in the 1990s or early 2000s. Spinningfields is described by the SBD expert as one of these SDB intensive clusters:119
P: you've got things, places like Spinningfields. There's lots of buildings there which are designed in a way which is very secure E: offices or? P: offices and the residential. I am trying to think where else in the city centre..[looks at map] ok so you've got some of the new building in the university as well, like.. the big round one (..). You've got the Arthur Lewis Building, very good design. You've got parts of the MRI [Manchester Royal Infirmary], the new part of the MRI, which are designed very well (..) There's the new Student Castle building in Whitworth street, near the train station, which is under construction (..). That's going to be Secured By Design when that's completed (Design For Security consultant).
119 A number of SBD accredited clusters exist outside the city centre too, but are Hospital and University buildings rather than commercial buildings or private residences.
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The empirical data collected shows that the support that the scheme enjoys with (police architectural and other) security experts and institutional stakeholders is at least partially shared by other stakeholders,120 including residents and city centre workers. While views on current use of CCTV and on other forms of surveillance technologies and networked analytics were more mixed and conflicted (these will be discussed in Chapter 6), there was some agreement amongst participants that simple design solutions could make significant improvements to the security of certain parts of the city centre. Amongst these were those designated as worst performing, such as canal walkways, back alleys, and little parks, although the discussion was most often centred around main streets and public squares like Piccadilly Gardens too. First and foremost, lighting was mentioned by a great number of stakeholders as key:
it's actually quite a dark city, there's not a lot of light in the evening (..) it is quite a dark city compared to the other city that I have, I have been in (..) even the main busy promenade I think it's quite, it's still quite.. not as lit up as it should be at night (florist 2)
there's some places like Piccadilly Gardens which, which at night are quite.. probably quite daunting places for most people to walk through. It's not brilliantly lit, and it's not, it's not really well overlooked (Design for Security consultant)
Street lighting, anywhere that's lit up I generally feel a lot safer (Tanya, resident focus group 2)
Library Walk at the moment's a bit of a dark thing but people still go through and there's enough people to make it up to a certain time all right,(..) if that was open and we'd arrange cafes there, lit then that area would feel a lot less, you know, would not, would not be as intimidating as it might be now and if you cut it, if, if you cut it off it's another dark, dark space in the middle of the city (John, resident focus group 2).
As in the examples above, improvements to lighting were often discussed together with the flux generated by activity programming and by some level of mixed use of space. Interesting tensions, however, arose when stakeholders referred to their own interests and saw them as distinct from those of other stakeholders. Businesses and residents appeared to pursue competing visions of security. Many stakeholders, and first amongst them residents and city workers, were concerned about improving personal safety:
when it comes to security measures in relation, in relation to the city centre my main concern is personal security, erm, I'm not really thinking about businesses and their
120 That is to say, residents and workers supported the idea of intervening at the level of design, but did not mention the scheme and were probably unaware of its existence.
107 own security - I mean pretty much everybody's insured anyway, aren't they? Erm, so it's all about, like, personal safety, like Tanya said, you know, well-lit areas (Georgina, resident focus group 2).
The insecurity of the businesses was instead mentioned by the Design for Security consultant, who counted burglary of commercial spaces as one of the main security issues in the city centre, and other security experts mentioned shoplifting (and the efforts and initiatives to coordinate security of businesses against it). The Chamber of Commerce stakeholder lamented:
there is an opinion amongst members that the police don't seem to treat business crime as seriously as they treat personal household crime (..) you know, theft or robbery from businesses, or vandalism of premises. I think there is a view that the police don't seem to think it to be particularly serious (..) a business is seen less as being a victim than an individual, so that's, I mean what we're working on generally, and particularly in advance of the election of directly elected police commissioners in November, which will come for the first time, and see how business can play into, into that sort of political representation there (research manager, Chamber of Commerce).
The same tensions arose in relation to the clustering of shops in certain parts of the city centre (such as Market Street) as outside opening hours these central but deserted sites were described by some as eerie and unsafe. Similarly, the impending evening closure of Cross Street to car traffic was reported by a resident to turn the nearby shopping street into a no-go area for pedestrians at night. Other conflicts between the interests of residents and city centre users on one hand and those of businesses on the other were in relation to the night-time economy. Residents (and professionals too, from the SBD consultant to various police stakeholders) lamented the poor design of bars and clubs establishments - their big size, type of configuration (privileging drinking, rather than other types of entertainment) and clustering together – all seen as problematic and as sources of unsafety. The lively nightlife was often seen as increasing 24 hour flux and the reassuring presence of people in the streets, but equally it was viewed as a source of insecurity and threat (when combined with drunkenness, which also produced other complaints), particularly at given moments: I always used to think there was a tipping point, that tipping point was when all at the weekend, more than anywhere else - when the younger people left the pubs to go in the clubs about 11 o'clock, that was fine-... it began to feel unsafe when they were coming out at 2 o'clock and that time, that's because....I think that that the crowds kept it safe; if anybody in their little group was beginning to get a bit silly they'd point them back, but when you get them on their own ... (John, resident focus group 2)
108 you open my door and it's Princes Street and it's just so, so busy and it can be very, very rowdy and it can be somebody perhaps using my doorstep as a toilet but (..) I don't feel I'm going to be attacked; I don't feel unsafe (Carl, resident focus group 2).
As noted, interventions at the level of design under the initial ‘crime prevention’ remit, soon find a way of extending along the security continuum. While within professional practice designing in anti-terrorism features remains the remit of a separate police unit (one with a different background, not in planning, nor architecture, according to the Design for Security consultant), practitioners can come together. This does not generally occur when planning for events (like the National Party Conferences in Manchester), whose security is arranged by a police Major Events unit, but it can happen when advising on the landscaping of the public realm. An example in Manchester city centre is the current remodelling of St Peter’s square:
[the] reorganisation of St Peter's Square. With the moving of the cenotaph and the tram stop that's something we've advised on. And that's something that counter- terrorism [unit] would be very interested in as well, ‘cause usually, open spaces are usually quite crowded spaces. (..) what you're looking to create is a place that is quite vibrant during the day, but doesn't attract antisocial behaviour during the night..(..) good management policies in place, I mean you want to, for any graffiti to be removed quickly, rubbish to be managed so you, you’ve not got broken bottles and things like that, (..) it can be aided by the police by regular policing over open areas, moving along people who are causing disturbance. Through things like good quality of lighting - cctv can help but isn’t the answer - and then having them sort of, they’re well overlooked, I mean it's quite hard with the cenotaph, because of the area that it is, it's not brilliantly overlooked. But you've got the tram stop nearby which is, operates quite late on a weekend so (..) enough to sort of deter.. (Design for Security consultant).
The example therefore shows the extension of SBD away from individual developments (be it residential, commercial or mixed), which increasingly contain a measure of semi-public (or hybrid) space, towards the public realm tout court. It also illustrates the tendency to adopt security by design no longer, or at least not merely, to deal with ‘crime prevention’ issues. This is not only because, in collaboration with terror experts, the design is developed so as to mitigate against the possibility of terrorism too. SBD also begins to deal with the blurry domain of anti-social behaviours and other non-criminal sets of behaviours. This grey and blurry area might include activities as diverse as photographing,121 loitering or
121 The CEO of CityCo reported the conscious decision to press for members of the public not to be stopped nor arrested for taking photographs of public space and street shots of (private or public) buildings in Manchester city centre. However, he also spoke of the need to be ‘sensible’ and not put a tripod in front of the Magistrate Court, which would trigger rapid police or receptionists’ intervention. Photographing is instead forbidden in many public and hybrid sites in London (as well as on much public transport there, such as on the underground).
109 skateboarding - behaviours which could (for the managers of this space) come to be defined as a ‘disturbance’.122
Finally, a small number of residents when discussing their views on the safety and security of the city centre spoke of their residential buildings. Despite other grievances, those few who spoke of their flats considered them to be secure and not to pose risks to them as residents. This was true even in the case of one resident who lived in a building where common areas had been vandalised by a neighbour (living within the same building). The references are too few to warrant the identification of any common trend, beyond the suggestion that, in these few narratives, CCTV was seen as a tool for potential prosecution (rather than deterrence), it appeared to be sporadically in use (even when installed), and to be employed as one amongst a set of access control solutions:
I don't feel not safe, even though we've had some serious incidents, and we know it was caused by the tenant who got drunk and they came home and smashed all our glass door and everything. But generally, I think maybe because of the layout of the apartment, I don't feel that 'oh, god, this is a terrible place, I should move' (…) we don't [have CCTV], we're trying to get one because we have had-, as I say, we have had lots of incidents where, you know residents vandalise our communal area, so they've been going on about buying and installing one, but there’s some money problems, so I don't know what's happening yet. (interview with resident 1)
E: still focusing on the city centre. I just wondered, as residents of the city centre, how you experience it in terms of safety and security, is it a safe place or not? M: yeah, I think so, I think flats are really safe. We've got a 24h concierge and, and there's- you need a key card to get through the front door, so yeah (Max, resident focus group 1)
B: and I'm glad of the access, you know you need a fob and two lots of security codes to get to my apartment G: mhmh [in agreement] B: and you never get a stranger wandering around where I live E: I discovered it is very difficult to advertise for this [focus group], because of all the security [all laugh](..) G: my flat's very safe, as you say you've got to get through the front door, up the lift, and then in my own corridor, it's got four flats on it, it's got key codes, three of the people are back home E: so when you think of security, you think of, of how your flat is protected? G: yeah, yeah, that's what I think (resident focus group 1)
G: No [we don’t have cameras in my building] M: yeah, I do B: I think we have but they're switched off [others laugh].. but as I say you need to have various things to get in (resident focus group 1).
122 Antisocial Behaviour Orders legislation is at the time of writing (2014) being reviewed and may be extended to capture a wider set of behaviour. The issue is source of much controversy in parliament and amongst campaigners.
110
In conclusion, this section discussed stakeholders’ views of security by design in the city centre more generally, both in terms of built environment solutions and activity programming, it considered public-private developments and the public realm, and very briefly touched on residents’ view of their own flat security. The two sections below will instead appraise participants’ divergent views over the physical securitisation of public spaces for temporary events.
5.5 Stakeholders’ Views of Security by Design for Temporary Events
Another key dimension of security by design as currently practiced in Manchester city centre is recoverable in public spaces during temporary events. These events include those that first accompanied Manchester’s regeneration (e.g. the celebration of Pride) and today continue to enhance the vibrant and ‘cosmopolitan’ image of the city. They are also events like the National Party Conferences, which take place annually, raising further the profile of the city nationally. The ability to successfully hold and securitise such high profile events has become a trademark for the city, particularly its city centre, underlining the role of security as a branding tool, as theorised by Coaffee and Rogers (2008).
The effects of these temporary securitisation efforts are discussed in this section through reference to two interventions – the Ring of Steel erected during the party conferences, and the walls that gate Gay Pride within the Gay Village.123 Images of both are in appendix 5.
5.5.1 Participants’ Views of the Ring of Steel
The Ring of Steel (RoS) inspired very mixed reactions amongst stakeholders who experienced it differently and attributed to it diverse and sometimes conflicting purposes. Some found it intimidating, either because its presence was read as an alarming signifier of impending danger, or because some participants interpreted it as a warning that they were not welcome in the city centre for the duration of the conference:
123 The Ring of Steel and the party security are normally in place for ten to fourteen days, whereas the Gay Pride gating is closed for the five days around the long Pride weekend.
111 it was soooo weird. It felt like we weren't allowed in our own city, and it was so 'what’s so dangerous, really?'. Then it makes you scared that they need that much security for them, but what about us day to day? It's just, it was crazy, it made you feel really-, it was weird to be in town that day (charity shop assistant).
Far from being the impression of residents and workers only, this opinion was also shared by the expert on security by design, whose architectural police unit is not involved in securing this type of temporary events:
I just think it looks completely over-the-top. (..) the city centre is meant to be an area that can be used by everyone and by putting up a big sheet of metal ehm.. just doesn't give any sort of positive impression (..) if you’re walking toward this you’ve got no idea what's on the other side. I mean, fair enough there is police on one side but you don't know what, what's on the other side. It's not making you feel very comfortable, at least bollards still give you a view to the other side. But you can get stuff like green floor, reinforced planting beds and things like that, which look a lot better (Design for Security consultant).
The expert also suggested that the same level of security could have been achieved in a subtler and much more aesthetically pleasing way:
I mean I am not entirely convinced as to what it is actually stopping (..) I presume it's to stop vehicles but vehicle mitigation can be done in much more.. aesthetically pleasing ways, I mean that just looks like something that has been given no thought to as what so ever (Design for Security consultant).
The most common response to the RoS was, however, to see it as a source of disruption. Many residents and city workers saw it as causing considerable inconvenience:
G: well I found it damn inconvenient, I couldn't even walk though my own city centre! And they tie barriers up and all sorts of stuff, you know and the same when they have, you know, big protests in Piccadilly Gardens, they'll lock the way around, you know, yeah I mean, that's ok, once a year or so, whatever, so it's not terrible but.. still pretty inconvenient (George, city centre resident focus group 1)
M: it's a damn nuisance. R: especially if you're running short of time and you've got to get somewhere M: and sometimes if you're on a tram it's terrible, because if there, there are all these, erm, marches and all kinds of things, you know, floats going down Princes Street and the tram was just held there and we can't get off, you know, I can't even walk, I'm just stuck there, there held hostage in a tram (Mimi and Reena, resident focus group 2).
Not all city centre residents felt deeply affected, though, and a handful reported considering the disruption part and parcel of living in the city centre. In this context a resident suggested that commuters would be worst affected and consequently also most vocal against the disruption. By contrast, the chamber of commerce stakeholder thought businesses were the worst affected as they were cut off from their customers and deliveries by the street closures:
112
C: where I worked (..) there were more people complaining and moaning about it that lived out of the city and had to travel into it, that they were upset about it, than I think when you're a resident of the city centre you just get used to it and you just - can be irritating sometimes - but you just kind of get used to it as part of being in the city P: you don't have to drive out you can just walk (Carl and Peter, resident focus group 2)
We know from a lot of our members, from just a business point of view, there's an awful lot of issues around, well, parts of the city are going to be closed, certain roads are going to be closed, trading hours might be affected, can you get deliveries to your shop in and out? And how that affects business as a trading environment (research manager, Chamber of Commerce).
Institutional stakeholders acknowledged some level of disruption, particularly to the running of business premises, but also maintained that the inconvenience to residents and workers’ use of the city centre was contained and limited. This does not appear to match the experiences of the residents and workers accessed. In some of those institutional accounts public transport is said to be functioning (although the ethnography and images collected for this research show that tramlines were affected by the barriers), and road closures well advertised and redirected. As the CEO of CityCo noted, disruptions to visitors regretfully would still occur, and were a concern. Even when acknowledging a level of disruption, certain stakeholders framed the current security adopted as intrinsic to the hosting of the conference – claiming that without this type of solutions the conference would not take place. The inevitability with which the argument was made underlines, once more, the role of security in city branding - for it is by virtue of this scale and configuration of security that conference contracts are won. Ironically, this argument also creates a paradox as these security assemblages are declared to be both the common denominator of events of this type, and at the same time are cherished as a special (unique) skill that Manchester has, that sets it aside from other locales:
where you’ve got a meeting of people of that level, in the environment we have at the moment, then I think you would need that security – and Manchester does it pretty well! (Director of Special Projects, Bruntwood).
Institutional and business stakeholders also pointed to what they saw as the main benefits arising from the conference, which they described as outweighing any disruption. First and foremost, they pointed to the economic benefits of hosting an event of this scale, for the city at large or for the hospitality and conference businesses for instance:
this conference is bringing in between 15 and 17 million pounds as a result of it being hosted here (..) I do think that people who kind of live and work in Manchester
113 appreciate the economic impact that it brings and are willing to put up with some disruption over a short period of time (MD of Visiting Manchester).
The Chamber of Commerce stakeholder, who also praised the economic gains, and valued the buzz produced by the conference being held in central Manchester, nonetheless alluded to the uneven distribution of these benefits, amongst business stakeholders (given that for some, the closures would mean less business opportunities). Similarly, the CEO of CityCo talked of the impact of the RoS in preventing conference delegates from spending money in other parts of the city centre and in the local economy:
(..) because people are behind that ring of steel, as it were, they are not actually coming out and using the shops (..) using the restaurants, and actually bringing much into the local economy, except for the hotels that are behind that barrier. So (..) there is always going to be that level of security, but one of the things we are working on is 'ok, how can we, as much as possible, make sure that those delegates and people are coming out into the city and engaging with the city?' (CEO of CityCo)
For other stakeholders, amongst whom property developer Bruntwood, the inconvenience of the RoS and the security was far surpassed by another benefit, less tangible perhaps but no less valuable - that to the image and profile of the city, given that it would receive extensive coverage on the national media during the conference:
you get the odd few moans about the rerouting of the traffic, but it's a minor inconvenience compared to the benefits (..) that you get from the coverage, not just on the global news, but the benefits that the city gets in terms of being able to articulate the transformation of Manchester, the vision for Manchester, and the investment that that creates to Manchester (Director of Special Projects, Bruntwood).
A few city centre workers, including the hair saloon manager, also weighed up their experiences of the disruption against an acknowledgement of the benefits that may come to the city as a whole in hosting the conference.
Only a handful of participants commented on the economics associated with the security operation, although details of costs were featured, along with other information, in a short newspaper excerpt accompanying the photo prompt (see appendix 4). Those who commented displayed unease and even shock at the costs of security:
It's cost a lot of money, a hell of a lot of tax payer money to do an operation like that, whereas it could have been spent elsewhere, that's my opinion (Big Issue vendor)
[in disbelief] did they really spend four millions on the security?! (florist 1).
114 However, other residents were keen to disentangle the connection between holding the conference and providing this type of security. Despite a small number of people advocating a change of venue (away from the city centre, and away from Manchester), mostly residents were in favour of holding this type of events. They wished the organisation of its security was done differently and their criticism was motivated by dissatisfaction with how the event was being managed:
T: it's got to happen somewhere, hasn't it, it's annoying but J: don't make a mistake: I wasn't criticizing the events; I was criticizing the planning and the consideration for those events (Tanya & John, city centre resident focus group 2)
T: I still don't really understand it - when we have something like, the, all the, all the government coming together and we have this great security - the government come together every day in the Houses of Westminster. I don't see that right round the Houses of Westminster. I don't see the whole of Whitehall and everywhere else, one great area, you can still walk through those areas and yes, you can't go into Downing Street; you can't get...I don't see why they have to take great slabs of the city and cordon them off (..) I understand cordoning off buildings but not great slabs of the city. P: I think if you go to somewhere like Houses of Parliament, and Whitehall, it is more integrated into the fabric (Tom & Peter, city centre resident focus group 2).
Their claim is thus that the security deployed was not fit for purpose, by being ‘over-the- top’ and disproportionate to the situation or level of risk. Unsurprisingly, those tasked with arranging the RoS saw it as a proportionate response to the threat. However, a closer look at the risk being envisaged, reveals that stakeholders held greatly divergent opinions over the type of security threat that the RoS was meant to redress, which further complicates a debate over the proportionality of this measure. As indicated, the Design for Security consultant imagined the RoS to be a (perhaps ineffective, and generally ill-thought) vehicle mitigation device, in the face of terror threats that he however saw as not significantly raised by the conference. Other city centre workers and business stakeholders, along with most residents, also believed the RoS to be in place as an anti-terrorist measure:
the city centre is going to be a target for terrorist any day of the week, just because there is a party conference there it doesn't mean that the risk is so much greater that I think it warrants these sort of measures. But on the other hand I don't think they'd have their conference, if they weren't there, would they? (Design for Security consultant)
I think this is about the global.. problem that we're under with terrorism, and terrorism threats, and if it was anywhere, they’d have that sort of security. With Al Quaeda and what’s going on with terrorism in the world at the moment I think that that is possible, unfortunately a necessary step to take (Canal St bar owner)
115 that is a necessity of hosting party conferences, because of the threat of global terrorism, rather than - that's not to do with social disorder, that is the threat of global terrorism (..) you're going to get that (director of Special Projects, Bruntwood)
whatever they feel they’ve got to put in place (..) unfortunately, society is dictating that, not the police (hair saloon manager)
the barriers around the Conservative Party conference are a result of terrorism measures and not to do with wider criminal issues, so you don’t see that very often (deputy CEO, Urban Splash).
However, the police stakeholders interviewed (with the exception of the Design for Security consultant) revealed that the threat against which the RoS was mitigating was not terrorism (in any of the forms mentioned by the other stakeholders, including car bombings or plots to harm the Prime Minister). Instead it was there against the prospect of public disorder, given that protest and demonstrations were likely to take place:
that’s not a counter-terrorism site barrier, that is a public order barrier, so that would have been put there to prevent a protest group going down that particular route, to keep them on the route that’s been agreed, thereby preventing a breach of peace and keeping public order (..) that’s not a vehicle bloc, no, ‘cause you can just smash a vehicle and go through potentially (police superintendent).
Consequently, as city centre workers mostly did not gauge the real intent behind the erection of the barriers, they either questioned the RoS as a disproportionate response to the perceived terror threat, or bowed to the need to prevent a terrorist attack (at times, advocating a change of venue for future similar events, to avoid both the threat and the RoS).
A handful of residents, though, (together with the institutional stakeholders who, with the police, had been directly involved in the barriers planning) correctly identified protest as the motivator of the high level of securitisation in place. This was due to their personal experiences and recollections of the lesser extent of physical securitisation of the city centre deployed during the previous Labour party conferences. They thus inferred that the RoS securitisation might have been connected to the lack of popularity enjoyed by the Conservatives in a city like Manchester, whose political sympathies have historically been leaning towards (New) Labour. As the party in Government, the Conservatives were seen by this small group of residents as a likely target of protest, also due to their recent and controversial cuts to public spending:
G: when the Labour Government had a conference at GMex about 4 years ago (..) it didn’t have a ring of steel like that around it, it just had a few of them tank things, you
116 know like blocking the roads, the police were in there but certainly didn’t have a big fence around it (..) M: yeah, I think I guess it’s just a precautionary measure, because I think they know that the people would be more hostile, potentially more hostile towards them (..) B: yeah, yeah, I think it’s more against protest (George, Max & Brian, city centre resident focus group 1).
There were however only sporadic references to protest124 amongst those stakeholders that were not involved in arranging the security, and they include one made by a student125 who interpreted the image of the RoS as an attempt to avoid confronting political dissent:
I think there should be a right to demonstrate against it (..) you don’t want to demonstrate in front of a wall, you want to see the other side and shout to them, or, you know, just to have some interaction, so it feels almost inhumane to me, and definitely not the way cities should be (student).
The reference to the RoS as affecting one’s right to protest remained an exception.126 There were, however, other participants who found the RoS indicative of a fortress mentality, signalling politicians’ fear and insecurity, and their sense of detachment (their being out of touch) from citizens. One participant found this signal at odds with politicians’ PR strategy - to be seen to engage with the city and its people via choosing to meet in a city centre location.
Aside from these concerns over transparency and democracy, other city centre residents and workers talked of the RoS as impinging on their right of access to the city, raising interesting questions about this type of securitisation occurring in public space, squares and streets (beyond the conference site and hotels, and other private premises for hire, and in the virtual networks explored in the next chapter). The mutually constitutive nexus between public space and ‘bodies and their micro-movements’ (Watson 2006: 6) is evident in these accounts - the ability to flow through the city centre unhindered enables specific identity claims, while these in turn reinforce claims about what public space ought to be (e.g. that it ought to entail freedom of movement for all). In claiming right of access participants often conveyed a sense of ownership, frequently expressed via possessive pronouns. Referring to ‘their city’, as indicated also in some of the quotes above (e.g.
124 The art venue artistic lead also correctly identified protest as the reason for the RoS. 125 The 2011 Conservative conference also unfolded in the context of protest about student university fees - in London mainly, but also in Manchester. 126 Aside from the RoS barriers, kattling of protesters via lower metal barriers, often criticised by protestors but commonly used at demonstrations (and for sport, carnivals and other events), was deployed on the police agreed route for the union-led demonstration. These barriers already slow, contain and dilute the demonstrating crowds, but allow some visibility (of banners and slogans and onto the other side of the barrier).
117 opening quote of section 5.4.1), they voiced their sense of belonging to Manchester city centre. However, they also spoke about everyone’s right to use and move through the city centre:
I couldn’t go down that road. ‘Why not? I am a British citizen!’. Not just-, anybody, you’ve got the freedom to walk anywhere (John, Big Issue vendor)
For me it isn't the security that upsets me; it's all these people who've - because they've got a lanyard and a pass round their neck - suddenly feel that they own the city (..) everybody's got to get out of their way and I'm trying to go to work (Tom, resident focus group 2)
In conclusion then, while stakeholders had largely supported security by design solutions embedded in everyday fabric of the city centre, their views of the physical securitisation of the city centre achieved through the Ring of Steel produced very mixed reactions.
5.5.2 Participants’ Views of Village Gating during Pride
The views of city centre residents were also elicited in relation to the closure of several smaller streets around the city centre neighbourhood of the Village during the Pride event. These are a grid of three parallel roads, and a small network of roads and alleyways that cut across them. Although all are much used by pedestrians, only some of the roads are open to car traffic, and their closure has a minor impact on the city centre traffic flow. Nonetheless, a great number of residents live in the area (comparable or greater than the number of residents living within the area closed off when the party conference secure zone is created).127 Residents’ access to flats becomes possible only through (free) accreditation by registering their data with the organisers, and picking up a pass in person ahead of the weekend. The event is privately run, but fully supported by local authorities who single it out as one of the great examples of the vibrancy and cosmopolitan outlook of the city. During the five days of the closure, residents’ cars cannot enter nor be parked in the area. Residents cannot introduce guests to their own flats, as anyone not residing in the area would need to pay to gain access to the area.128 They cannot bring into the area (even into their own flat) any food shopping or drinks (as the organisers want to avoid any unauthorised sale of food or drinks within the gated area), and all bags are searched upon
127 This area also includes the 29-apartment bloc in Canal Court managed by Tung Sing Housing Association, which, along with similar properties that the Association manages in Chinatown and in the Village, offers sheltered residential accommodation for elderly citizens. 128 Having a guest is permitted only by pre-authorising the guest via registration of his/her data several days in advance of the event.
118 entry. The gating is therefore pursued for commercial reasons above or along with the need to guarantee certain standards of safety, for instance avoiding overcrowding or the introduction of glass or weapons. Even then, security issues are used as a key justification for the level of security and for the walling of the area, as explained by a local bar owner interviewed, who reported a few serious incidents as the initial reason why the event had started being closed off:
the year before they erected it, in 1999,129 there were seven people stubbed, there were two girls raped, and there was brawling on the streets, so I am all for it. I think it's right, I think it's the proper thing to do.. because like it or not, it’s just like at Glastonsbury, that’s fenced, you can't get there without a ticket. The fest-, all the big festivals- it is now a big festival and before it [the barriers] it was awful (Canal Street bar owner).
The generation of profits through ticketing and the security that the gating creates are often intertwined, as in the account of this city worker, whose employer, an NGO based in the Village, participates in the organisation of the event:
you do feel very safe. You feel like you are in that community and the wrong kind of people aren't gonna get in unless they're going to pay their £20-25 for their wristband, whatever it may be, to get in there - and really, how many criminals would do that? (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
Every year the security operation mounted up for the event is large and very visible, as pointed out by this NGO worker:
Pride is such a huge event (..) we have three, three streets, which is Canal Street, Sackville Street, Bloom Street, and then we have from Richmond Street through onto Princess Street, and it's literally a square bloc, and within that it's all the LGBT130 venues, and services and things like that. So we can put barriers at the sides, and because it's a charged event, it's a ticketed event, not a free event, if you've got your ticket you get in (..) I imagine, it as a huge security operation because it's a four-day event essentially, so yeah, as far as I know it's a huge security operation (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
The way the event has progressed in terms of its security was traced by one of the police stakeholders, who reported working in synergy with the private security contracted by the organisers, mainly to tackle acquisitive crime during the event:
as the event matured, it has become much more safe in terms of street crime. (..) when I first got involved with it (..) in the main it was street crime, it was theft and robbery, theft from the purse and snatches of bags and that kind of issue, people getting assaulted. (..) I think the event organisers have led on that process and you've got a well defined event area, which has got a clearly defined entry and exit points.
129 Gating and fees for entry were actually only introduced in 2003. 130 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.
119 There is great control over people when you're going in with tickets, there's a sort of bag check policy, to avoid glass and weapons getting in there, and then you've got security teams that operate within. So we just are an add-on to support that, should those measures all fail, we still get issues of disorder or we get criminals in there that are pickpockets that we know of, you know, street robbers and something like that, we then go in to deal with it (police superintendent).
The gating put in place by the private contractors is praised by this expert stakeholder for the effectiveness of its stringent access control, and the police and contractors are described as working complementarily towards the security of the events. Indeed, the police themselves are acting as contractors in some respect, when securitising temporary events of this type, as illustrated by the Police Superintendent’s comments on the arrangements, including the trend towards a reduced police involvement over time:
[Pride] is a commercial event (..) we deal with that on the basis that there is a request for special police services for a commercial event. So we end up with a commercial contract where we will deliver our core role to that event, and they, they pay for that service. So very much with Pride (..) we are not the event organisers but we support the event organisers based on the request of special police services, with a view of us doing our core role of preventing crime and disorder, targeting known offenders. So we have quite a small police footprint on that event now compared to where we were perhaps ten years ago (police superintendent).
While some of the residents accessed also mentioned the need to reduce overcrowding, which can be managed by ticketing, their view of the gating was quite different. None of the residents who took part in the focus groups and interviews lived inside the closed off area, although various residents lived immediately outside it and some regularly attended Pride (by purchasing entry). The event itself was valued and praised, but its gating was again perceived as off-putting and inconveniencing residents unduly. Some of those who attended the event reported that the gating had always been controversial even within the gay community since its introduction (which this resident correctly dated as 2003), and others believed it was largely motivated by the sale of tickets:
having the Village gated off during Pride is controversial within – within the gay community: some people love it, a few really hate it (..) yearly there is a debate as to whether it should be that or whether it makes it unique in the fact that it is gated or whether it should be opened up and be free (resident focus group 2)
R: Gay Pride used to be free, you know people - anybody could access to it and stuff, so they're putting boundaries around and you start feeling a bit 'ehl' [in dislike], you know (..) E: so you were saying is more to do with the.. the kind of economics than with security, like that they're putting the gates for? R: yeah, I would think so, yeah. Rather than the safety, to be honest, as the way it goes, it's always become more and more commercial every year, so I would-, the way I see it is that they're putting the place [the barriers] up purely because they don't want
120 anybody in, you have to pay to get in. That's how I see it, that is. But where[as] years ago you didn't have to pay, they didn't have all this sort of things around it, and it was anybody could go in (interview with resident 1).
The official website of the 2013 event also discusses the gating, somewhat recognising its controversial nature. The issue is featured amongst the frequently asked questions under the heading ‘why is the event gated?’. The answer provided by the organisers, whilst appearing to privilege issues of safety and security, again entangles them with commercial concerns:
There are many reasons for Manchester Pride being a gated event. We want to make the event as safe and secure as possible. Due to the alcohol by law which was introduced in 2003, drinking on the streets is prohibited in Manchester and as such, if the event was not gated, we would be unable to allow people to drink alcohol outside the venues or when wandering round the event site. Every year following Pride, we review how we can make the event better and safer for future years. In 2003, it was decided (in consultation with Greater Manchester Police, Manchester City Council and other organisations) that due to the popularity of Pride, systems were required to ensure that it remains safe for visitors. The only way that this could be achieved was by holding it as a gated event.131
All residents accessed for this study were in favour of holding the event and, unlike the party conference, only a couple of them suggested moving its location, while nonetheless acknowledging that the current site was iconic. Not only did residents (along with all other stakeholders) value the fact that the event was held in Manchester, but some of them attended the event, in some instances they had done so repeatedly over the years. According to the latest participation survey available, however, the numbers of residents who attend the event are comparatively low. This survey, based on the 2010 event and conducted by the event organisers, confirms that only 11% of survey respondents (all respondents were accessed as participants of the event) had reported being city centre residents.132 If data from the more recent events was released and replicated the finding, one could hypothesise that the residents who were interviewed and who took part in the focus groups were slightly more engaged and involved with the event than the average city centre resident. Despite being supportive of the event, even these residents reported complaints about having to pay to access streets and venues they normally frequented:
it is a bit of a bummer that you have to pay £25 quids to go and stand on a street that you can stand in for free four days before or whatever (George, resident focus group 1)
131 http://www.manchesterpride.com/info/your-questions/festival (last accessed 20 March 2014). 132 http://www.manchesterpride.com/info/your-questions/surveys/2010/manchester-pride-2010 (last accessed 20 March 2014).
121 when I have been before, they had the streets closed when you have to buy a wrist band to get in, and I used to drink in the Village a lot, so when Pride was on, my friends used to complain that they were getting charged to get into pubs they used to drink in anyway (interview with resident 2).
The discussion therefore often centred not on the event per se, whose value was not in doubt, but on the negative experiences and grievances that residents had about the gating practices and the stringent access control policy. The latter were felt to be inappropriate for city centre residents – both those living inside and outside the gated area itself:
C: I live like I say just right opposite right on the edge of it [the barrier] and for me - I was away in Birmingham for the weekend, came back on the - was it Monday it finished? Yeah, and, it was pouring down with rain; I came out of the station, I just wanted to cut down Canal Street, you know, and I drink on Canal Street, know local pubs – really really annoyed me, carrying a heavy bag and in the pouring rain that they wouldn't let me through about half past eight. They said 'come up a bit later tonight and we'll let you through'. It's, like, I only live there, so it's that kind of inconvenience, I think. M: I had a similar experience, before I came back to live here, I came to visit once and I was staying with someone who lives on Princes Street opposite Asian House, and I was actually on a coach and got off the coach at the coach station, couldn't cut across and I had to walk all the way round again and because I had a bag...so I was not happy. T: They're both the same problem; they're both, it's, it's just is, it's inconvenient for, for people who live here because, you know, your access routes (Carl, Mimi & Tom, resident focus group 2)
E: what do you feel about these closures and the security around it? G: inconvenient B: I don't like it. I don't go to Pride, but where I work we, lots of visitors who go to Pride, and I do drink in the Village occasionally, and then having to walk around with the shopping bags, I think it's no. Obviously people who live in there, and there is a Chinese Housing Association, they must have passes to get in, but the fact that you then pay to get in is.. I don't like it, I think that's an inconvenience too far, and if you got perhaps, I don't know, if you could get a Manchester city badge, a resident badge or something (Brian, resident focus group 1).
Along with the problems experienced in relation to residents’ own access being restricted or to do with costs of tickets, some residents also reported being negatively affected by the restrictions on introducing visitors:
E: as residents how do you experience this space when an event is on? T: It's a massive inconvenience: my auntie's really ill and she'd come up from Surrey for the weekend and I had totally forgot. I was actually volunteering as part of - for an hour or so - as part of the festival for work and I completely forgot and then she couldn't, she couldn't actually drive in and she's quite ill so she couldn't come and see me so I completely missed her, so I was quite annoyed about it but I saw it as my own fault for forgetting and not really checking (Tanya, resident focus group 2)
E: you can't take anyone inside the area if you live in the area? C: no, you couldn't T: that's bad, I think, that's really, really bad. I'd kick off with the policeman and stand there and stomp through if that happened
122 R: I don't understand why should you have to make compromises to live [on?] your own for the event that's, that's happening and in no way, you may be benefitting, you may not be benefitting but, still, why would you have to - if they want to have an event why not have it outside or somewhere - wouldn't trouble the daily life of most of the people in the city... T: they should go and get extra bands for your guests and they should last minute have to add your guests names' to their list and the inconvenience should be to them and then that's fine - it's annoying but at least they're trying (Carl, Tanya, Reena, resident focus group 2).
As evidenced in many of the examples above, the negative experiences shared by the participants were not simply identifying areas for redress, but also resulted in a variety of suggestions for alternative solutions that could potentially be adopted. Moreover, as frequently observed in focus group research, the residents who participated in the focus groups moved smoothly between personal accounts and narratives of first-hand experiences to speaking, as it were, in ‘citizen mode’. The latter refers to the fact that focus group participants can sometimes feel vested with the responsibility of acting as spokesperson for other groups (in this case, other city centre residents, as that was the capacity in which they had been invited to attend):
what we've not mentioned, I think because none of us are car-owners, do you know what I mean, is sometimes the city council closes off the streets of Manchester because it is an important place, and it doesn't obviously irritate us because we don't have cars, but I can imagine some residents that have cars may be irritated by that, during the course, in a kind of, in a similar way to this (Brian, resident focus group 1).
Despite the fact that all participants, including interviewees, were invited to comment in their own capacity and reflect on their own views and experiences, it was interesting to note that not every stakeholder seemed equally endowed with the ability to empathise with the views and experiences of others. In stark contrast to the ‘citizen mode’ empathy referred to above stood for instance the view of one of the business stakeholders. When discussing the possible impacts of the Pride security arrangements on residents of the area, a local bar owner (who as a Canal-Street-based business participates in organising the event), expressed the opinion that anyone moving in the area ought to accept any inconvenience that may arise, or move to the suburbs:
Manchester Pride was here before the residents, they knew what they were moving into, if you don't want to move into a vibrant city, don't go, go live in Chorlton! Get a car! (Canal Street bar owner).
While historically dubious, as both the repopulation of the city centre and the establishment of pride went hand in hand chronologically, the organisation of the event itself has changed over time, as indeed reported by residents, some of whom were familiar
123 with the way it was organised in the past. After discussing the gating and security arrangements, the (anonymised) view expressed by the bar owner was presented to residents to elicit their reactions:
G: I kind of, I understand where it's coming from, you know what I mean. You know if you've got a flat that is in that zone, and you're not happy about that, then it's been happening probably long before you moved into that flat E: how do you feel Brian? B: they have had a problem in this area (..) because residents found - and this doesn't affect me, I live close but I am, the only noise I put up with is trains, so I don't know about this - it's the kind of selfish response that I expect a bar owner to come up with G: yeah, yeah, yeah (resident focus group 1)
M: this is really bad neighbourly isn't it? [several]: absolutely! M: I mean I'm not sure I'll do any business with them any more after I've seen this E: it's just the [opinion of] one person M: me and all my friends... P: it's only been a caged event since 2003 so it's not that - M: that's not true is it? C: yeah, I agree. T/G?: yeah, I think - P: I think, I think that's, that's someone quite arrogant M: and stupid [laughs] (resident focus group 2).
Aside from contesting the truthfulness of the practices associated with Pride preceding the residents, the second example shows that the prompt incensed some of the residents. The bar owner’s position was described as selfish and lacking in neighbourly consideration, and the statement was read as undermining the idea of coexistence in the city centre and of the need to balance the needs of others who share use of the city centre and believe they too ‘belong’ and have a ‘stake’ in it.
Furthermore, while the residents valued the vibrancy and some of them acknowledged being drawn to this location for this reason, there were also mentions of residents moving out because of it:
I guess if you move to that area, you know you are near the village (..) you're prepared to put up with the, the noise and disturbance because you like that kind of buzz, and I, I guess I've known people who live round the middle of it, and then they moved out because it's got too much after a few years [laughs]. And then at the time it's fun, so, I don't know (interview with resident 2)
it just got all so big, and they've got to host it in this sort of location, but for people who live around it, for me, I thought it was inconvenient and very noisy as well, for the whole weekend, and it just got bigger and bigger every year. I mean like even here [interview held in a Sackville St venue], you couldn't even walk on this street here. (interview with resident 1).
124 While the first quote touches on the reported insecurity and transience of tenancy characterising the city centre (discussed in chapter 8), the second highlights a trend towards the event becoming larger every year, a trajectory identified by other stakeholders too besides the residents.
However, vibrancy as a motivator for city centre living, in the Village and more generally, was also contested by some of the residents, who were antagonised by the bar owner’s statement, which did presume vibrancy as the driver. Despite the fact that vibrancy had also been identified as primal motivator by an earlier study of city centre repopulation in the 1990s (Wynne et al. 1998), these residents declared instead that their city centre location was determined by other considerations, such as proximity to transport links and convenience more generally. In that sense, they were not necessarily intent on benefitting from what the Village offered. This might also perhaps indicate a shift over time in the composition and motivators for city living in Manchester which further follow-up research might explore. Importantly, where convenience was the major factor in deciding to live in the city centre, the inconvenience and disruption produced by some temporary event securitisation was all the more resented:
that can be one of the..justifications but at the same time a lot of people came to the city centre not because of that [vibrancy of the Village] either. It could be many other reasons, it could be the access to the train stations, you know for the commuter areas. I mean I think I don't know whether that's the case that people are moving to the city centre because of the vibrant- so they can go party easily as that! When you look at that, most people who can afford to live in the city centre are the professionals really, and there are families you live in the city centre I know of, most of the time it's because of the work place, the convenience, you wanna save time, not necessarily just wanting to, you know, party at the Gay Village (interview with resident 1)
J: but it's, it's again, it's planning, it's consideration for the residents as well, as anything else (..) if you live there you've a right to, and, and that's it, in, in, ok you've been inconvenienced by the band presumably but you've a perfect right to walk to your own, er, front door. C: I think that's what I was saying earlier; for me as a resident living kind of here was that it was a different kind of inconvenience for me - it was very frustrating that a street I walk down all the time, like, I live on and, and spend money on all the time and, and, and socialise on, to not be allowed to walk down that street to, to get home easily, that really really [inaudible]. (John and Carl, resident focus group 2).
While residents often strived for a greater say in city centre issues, such as those related to the security of temporary events, which were affecting them most directly (along with other issues only indirectly connected, such as the damage to the local park resulting from
125 Pride, or the redevelopment plans for the large plot of land in the middle of the Village), they generally felt disempowered and undermined as stakeholders.
5.6 Conclusions
This chapter has mapped out stakeholders’ views of safety and security in Manchester city centre. Participants share the opinion that the city centre is generally safe and secure, particularly when compared to similar urban settings. Participants approached risk relationally and displayed an awareness of their own positionality and an appreciation that others might experience different levels of risk or vulnerability. They constructed risk as contextual also by suggesting that different locales within the city centre and times of the day afforded different degrees of safety.
Although the Home Office bulletins lament the disjuncture between high fear of crime and its actual low incidence, such a mismatch was only referred to by some of the security experts and institutional stakeholders, and mostly to dispel any claim that the city centre was not secure. Other participants did not articulate it. A number of stakeholders portrayed the current safety of the city centre as a positive result of a transformation that occurred over time, whereas some of the key institutional and business stakeholders were at pains to reinforce the current positive image of Manchester by underlining continuity, branding the city centre as intrinsically secure, now as in the past.
Interestingly, those security experts (amongst whom the police and the Village Angels volunteer) who talked of a disconnect at times subverted its polarity, suggesting that members of the public are insufficiently aware of the dangers that they put themselves in, and invite the attention of predator criminals through carelessness. These biopolitical discourses, theorised in the previous chapter as seeking to govern citizens by individualising responsibility for personal safety, and simultaneously tasking a growing number of agencies and experts into facilitating the enrolment of certain groups in self-monitoring and risk- avoidance behaviours, did not gain wide purchase amongst participants working and living in the city centre. Although the latter did engage in certain risk avoidance practices (such as avoiding poorly lit areas), they did not dwell on their vulnerability, and considered risk as a non-salient element of everyday city living.
126 Despite the general safety of the city centre, mapping participants’ views and experiences revealed an important divergence between actors. Security professionals and some of the business stakeholders tended to identify acquisitive crimes (from shoplifting to burglary of business premises) as the main safety issues arising in the city centre, whereas residents and city centre workers identified violence associated with drunken behaviour as the main risk. Consequently actors advocated very different solutions.
This is evident also in the mapping of participants’ views of security by design. While enjoying wide support across the board, when discussed in its everyday implementation into the built environment and involving activity programming, for residents and workers security by design ought to aim at increasing flows of people and visibility. It ought to de- prioritise the current predominant night-time economy, and the clustering of shops and bars, rather than focusing on other crime or even counter-terror prevention and resilience. These tensions, which translate also into divergent priorities for the city centre, are further discussed in chapter 8.
The mapping of actors’ views over applications of security by design in the securitisation of temporary events also demonstrated that these are experienced and viewed very differently. While only some actors felt intimidated, many felt aggravated and inconvenienced by measures such as the Ring of Steel. While institutional stakeholders played up in their account the benefits that would offset such disruption, this view was only partly shared by other stakeholders (and the benefits themselves of the event appeared unevenly shared even in some institutional accounts). Those who did not think the RoS a desirable nor proportionate response to the perceived threat objected by suggesting that the security could be configured differently. They were generally supportive of hosting the event (though not unanimously, as some wished party conferences were held outside the city centre). Institutional stakeholders, by contrast, largely described this configuration of security as appropriate, as a sine qua non to the hosting of these events, and a special expertise of Manchester. Major disagreement emerged as to the aim of this security configuration. While its branding qualities have also been alluded too, the RoS was seen by most residents and workers as aimed at averting terrorist attacks. By contrast, security experts and those institutional stakeholders who were (indirectly) tasked with its organisation declared that it had been erected to mitigate the risk of protest and public disorder. This raises questions over an evident lack of
127 transparency about the security objectives pursued by institutional actors in the city centre. It also denotes lack of democratic accountability and debate over the appropriateness of such uses of security.133 Finally, right of access to the city centre by users, workers and residents was much referred to by these participants, and often seen as having been impinged upon by the type of security deployed. Even in isolation – for instance in the absence of discussion about a right to protest - the interpellation of a right of access underlines the disenfranchisement that these stakeholders experience. It signals their unmet expectations that their right would not be traded off in the securitisation of temporary events, even those of this scale and profile.
Similarly, the lack of consideration experienced by the residents in relation to the securitisation of events like Pride is not retraceable only to petty clashes of interests vis a vis those of the business community (with institutional stakeholders appearing to prioritise the latter), such as those relating to nuisance behaviour, or other effects of the night-time economy. Rather the clash invests other aspirations too – including the fundamental aspirations to belong and count as a ‘neighbour’ and as member of the city centre stakeholder ‘community’. It undermines the desire to shape with others the direction in which the city centre (including the Village) would need to develop to respond to the needs of its residents, as well as to those of its visitors and other users.
133 Given that many thought this security measure was excessive even in relation to threats such as car bombings and potential assassination, it is legitimate to suspect that the same measure would be considered even more inappropriate in relation to its real objective - managing civil protest.
128 Chapter 6 Security and Surveillance in the Sensor City
This chapter furthers the discussion of Manchester city centre securitisation by unpacking the notion of the ‘sensor city’. As argued, a focus on appraising the design and configuration of certain (physical) urban sites and circuits within the city centre ought to be complemented with a critical account of access, mobility and visibility within other dimensions, virtual spaces and networks of security and surveillance. Virtual ‘architectures’ of security might at times elude, or most frequently only partially overlay and intersect with the built environment and with patterns of physical mobility and activity in any urban spaces.
This chapter will first introduce the concept of the ‘sensor city’, and then map its key manifestations in the context of Manchester city centre using the empirical data collected via the ethnography and the interviews and focus groups with stakeholders. The ethnographic component of this research involved attending a variety of events occurring in the city centre, from public meetings to carnivals and street celebrations. The ethnography followed various ad-hoc developments, from the visual deployment across the city centre of the police Shop a Looter campaign to the (re)launch activities supporting the I love MCR marketing campaign. It was also based on first-hand experience and everyday observation of mundane aspects of life in the city centre. It therefore relied on experiencing and observing a variety of sites (ranging from Spinningfields to Afflecks Palace in the Northern Quarter) at various times of the day and the year, as well as on the active collection of various materials, from ethnographic notes to leaflets and police questionnaires, adverts and photographs. Elements of this ethnography were looped, together with selected media materials, into other phases of the fieldwork and used to elicit the views and experiences of stakeholders.
This chapter analyses the views and values of stakeholders in relation to a variety of security measures, many of which rely on networked analytics and a blending of security solutions. Particular attention will be paid to solutions that confound a clear dichotomy between the physicality of the built environment and the virtuality of other surveillance environments. These are enabled by CCTV but also by mash-ups of various datasets, 134
134 For instance, those linking up police databases with vehicle registration databases.
129 resulting for instance both in real time information feeds and real time spatial policing in the city centre.
6.1 ICTs and Visibility in the Sensor City
Towards the end of the 20th century, with the process of globalisation rapidly intensifying, and with the exponential growth of links and mobility across the world (Szerszynski and Urry 2006), it had been predicted that cities, with their large concentrations of people, goods, capital and infrastructure, would lose their importance. With the advent of the internet, virtual market places, and the rapid advances in information and communication technologies, radical changes in living and working patterns were hypothesised, which involved the diffusion of people and worksites away from overcrowded urban spaces and their discontents. Commentators envisaged a ‘loss of physicality and its replacement with new spaces and fora online’ (Crang and Graham 2007: 790). Such forecasts, however, did not quite materialise. As Castells argues,
[w]e were told, for example, that telecommunications allows work at home in ‘electronic cottages’, while the firms become entirely footloose in their location (..) this superseding the need for cities as we have known them until the coming of the information age (..).In fact, none of these prophecies stands up to the most elementary confrontation with actual observation of social trends (1989:1).
While many cities still retain their key socio-economic and political role, and across the world others rise to gain it, it has also been demonstrated that virtual networks are not evenly dispersed, nor entirely ephemeral, and that ‘there is a structure and geography to informational worlds’ too (Crang and Graham 2007: 790). As a consequence, the physicality of traditional conceptions of power as expressed and reinforced through the built environment (for instance the physical space occupied by certain institutions or certain hubs) and the related primacy (and politics) of visibility in the exercise of power need to be reinterpreted.
Crang and Graham (2007), in attempting to reconcile these invisible networks, pervasive ICTs and other technologies (such as geo-tagging or RFID-enabled applications) with the everyday physical spaces we inhabit, evoke the notion of a ‘sentient city’. This is an urban environment in which ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing are recording data, tracking our behaviour (building a ‘memory’ of it) and anticipating and actively organising (through profiling and customising) our next move. The ever-increasing presence of
130 networked devices, such as smart phones, SPIMES and codes, which interact with each other and with users, collect and send information to each other and to databases, track movement, behaviour (generally consumer behaviour) and trajectories, is beginning to give rise to the Internet of Things (Speed 2010).
However, while the ‘dreams of perfect spatial and urban transparency and omniscience’ (also conceivable as nightmares!) remain longstanding, and unrealised (Crang and Graham 2007:812), ubiquitous computing is already beginning to bring about key transformations of space (Ibid: 793-794).135 Some of the commercial applications136 envisaged for consumer location and customisation may appear closer to hype than reality (Ibid:795). Crang and Graham also see limitations in the artistic and activists attempts to re-enchant the urban domain through recourse to the same means of modifying space (especially through locative media), which strike them as ineffective in their resistance (Ibid: 813), due to the low impact and participation they invite. The applications pertaining to ambient intelligence and security instead (from urban warfare to biometric tracking, passport systems and border management) are already more pervasive, and often critiqued as offering a technological fix to larger and more complex issues (ibid).
A central feature of ubiquitous computing, and of the sensor city itself, is the very size of data it produces, leading to the prospect of data deluge.137 A catalyst for the revolutionary promises associated with e-science programmes (Pieri 2009b), the challenge posed by data deluge drives the development of grid- and cloud computing, and motivates the impetus to develop analytics138 to help sieve through the otherwise unmanageable amounts of (raw) data, enabling connections and cross-referencing, profiling, visualisation, simulation, mash- ups and the formulation of predictions. As argued elsewhere (Pieri 2009b), the visualisations, representations and mash-ups produced through these processes are not value-free constructions of reality, nor are the analytics used to justify real-time decision making (Amoore 2011).
135 See ToTeM EPSRC project for interesting UK-based examples of these on www.youtotem.com and www.talesofthings.com (both last accessed 21 March 2014). 136 Though increasingly not those relating to product tracing and object tagging through RFID. 137 Related to both commercial and public collections – see the JISC Briefing paper on http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briefingpapers/2004/pub_datadeluge.aspx or the paper by UK EPSRC e- science core programme directorship http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/257648/1/The_Data_Deluge.pdf for a discussion of the latter (both accessed 1 June 2014). 138 Algorithms enabling data mining techniques.
131 Telhan (2010) explores the ‘sensor narratives’ about the city and their politics. Considering the current interest in sensing and recording information about real-time noise, air, water pollution, energy consumption and, more generally, in any activity visualisation, Telhan argues that
we witness a different cinematography shaped by the data-scopic regimes of representation. The internal dynamics of cities, their relationship with the environment, and the activities of their inhabitants are increasingly quantified, visualised, and archived as datasets. While computational techniques that treat data may not immediately expose their creator’s agenda, the visuals are still a production of style and technique. The procedures that sense, analyse, and represent data implicitly influence the way we will interpret them (2010: 112).
Borrowing the concept of ‘scopic regimes’, Telhan (2010:113) brings to the fore the aesthetic, social, political, cultural, and technical processed implicated in the image construction of the city and in the creation of new norms and values139 about the city (Ibid:106). On one hand the sensor city produces an ‘increasingly data-driven urban culture (..) a new kind of awareness and culture of interaction with the city’ (Ibid:113), but on the other it also obscures the situated origin of these narratives and visualisations and the fact that they come packaged with specific social, political and technical agendas (Ibid:106). Unlike other scopic regimes (for instance photography and painting), whose representational characteristics are today obvious, Telhan argues that
when the image of the city is compiled from a set of data points that consists of carbon monoxide levels associated with a given longitude and latitude within the city (..) the view of the sensed city is still regarded merely as a technical recording that ‘documents’ the city (ibid:112).
A large body of literature theorises the generation of epistemic claims and sees technologies of analysis and visualisation of data as value-laden and situated (Knorr Cetina 1981;Knorr Cetina 1999;Latour and Woolgar 1986), criticising the process of reification of any ensuing findings.140
In the urban environment too, as Telhan argues, narratives and visualisation come packaged with specific social, political and technical agendas (Ibid: 106; see also Yaneva 2012). The expert groups that produce them will not be the only, and perhaps not even the
139 In his paper Telhan discusses the likelihood of urban segregation practices, as well as the potential impetus in citizen-science and in the challenges that inhabitants can mount against official governmental policy. 140 In the medical domain, genomic technologies, and the types of narratives and visualisations that genome mapping produces, are a case in point.
132 main, consumers of some of these visualisations, and while Telhan calls for greater awareness and responsibility in interpreting and presenting these representations of the city, and, before that, in producing and processing sensory information (Telhan 2010: 113), these objectives remain challenging. Using the example of the current air pollution politics and the representational data circulating in the city of Ankara, Telhan hypothesises a variety of outcomes from the ubiquitous use of sensors in urban environments. These range from the extreme possibility of data-facilitated segregation to the stimulation of citizen-science and the creation and mobilisation of grass-root knowledge against institutionally promoted agendas (2010:106). Thinking about the future of sensor cities, he envisages that
[a]s real-time sensory data becomes immediately available to one’s favourite handheld or mobile device, the perception of the city also gets updated in real-time - informing where one should or should not be at a given moment. (..) As the inhabitants of the city increasingly allow themselves to be informed about their potential experiences of the city, they will need to remember the ways information gets narrated through underlying social and political agendas (Ibid: 113).
While Telhan foresees the possibility of a form of voluntary ‘segregation’ of the urban landscape, based on real-time feedback from the sensors within the city, Graham (2009) talks of a process of militarisation of the city, and argues that cities in the Global North are transformed through the collapsing of the conventional military-civilian binaries (2009: 389) and via the ‘normalization of militarized practices of tracking and targeting everyday urban circulation’ (ibid: 384), to the point where
State power centres more and more on efforts to try and separate mobilities and bodies deemed malign and threatening from those deemed valuable and threatened within the everyday spaces of cities (Ibid: 389).
Described as a Foucaultian ‘boomerang effect’ (Graham 2009: 390-391), whereby colonial processes of pacification, militarization and control deployed to regulate outposts and colonial cities have been transferred from the periphery to the centre of the colonial power (as it happened with fingerprinting), this phenomenon also produces an entanglement of private and public operations in the practice of surveillance and policing. As Graham suggests, the security complex and its militarised idea of security has many (often transnational) instigators, ‘fusing military and security companies with technology, surveillance and entertainment ones’ (2009: 393-394).
133 Beyond these powerful drivers, the sensor city is also conceptualised by Graham and Wood (2003) as moving away ‘from free, universal public services and spaces, based on the notion of citizenship, to markets or quasi-markets based on consumerism’ (Ibid:229) and operating on the notion of personalisation and individualisation of services for those able or willing to pay. Thus, the sensor city intrinsically involves the filtering and prioritisation of certain users over others, and foregrounds processes of marginalisation. The marginal, referred to as the ‘electronically excluded or bypassed by automated surveillance’ (ibid:230) become more disadvantaged as further exclusionary practices facilitate the removal of ‘cash-poor/time-rich users’ from congested networks, thus facilitating the mobility and access of services for the ‘cash-rich/time-poor users’ (Ibid: 239).141
In the sensor city citizens too are increasingly sensed, but this process operates in different ways. It individually and uniquely identifies them in some cases, while in others it sorts and allocates them to groups in which they remain anonymous but are attributed certain characteristics. Moreover, as Koskela (2002) argues, there is often an anonymity to the power exercised over individual citizens, derived from the fact that they are monitored and surveyed by many actors, public and private, in different, opaque but also partially overlapping ways:
[a]lthough contemporary surveillance systems are not all-inclusive in gathering knowledge, there are several overlapping registration systems that work from public urban space to cyberspace so that the everyday life of an individual includes more registration than ever before (see Lyon, 1994; Curry, 1997; Hannah, 1997b; Fyfe et al., 1998; Graham, 1998). The control of activity, time and space is intense (ibid: 254).
The sensor city, intimately based on surveillance, even when it purports to inform citizens about pollution levels or traffic congestion,142 is therefore intrinsically engaged in processes of sorting and differentiating. It is thus potentially exclusionary, and in monitoring users it enacts a wide range of practices.
6.2 Theorising Virtual Surveillance
In Discipline and Punish Foucault (1977: 217) states that ‘our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance’. The panopticon of surveillance may therefore be a useful framework
141 City centre congestion charges exemplify this process. 142 As well as the voluntary ‘segregation’ envisaged by Telhan, such measurements can trigger ad-hoc temporary restrictions in accessing certain spaces. In Italy, for example, emissions readings often trigger temporary restrictions on car access to urban city centres, which are administered and policed through registration number plates, and often criticised for favouring dual car households over single car ones.
134 for theorising the city or specific spaces within the city, although a sharp opposition between spectacle (Debord 1977) and surveillance is increasingly unsustainable, not least in view of the ‘spectacular’ role of security in the hosting of Mega Events, as argued by Boyle and Haggerty (2009), or in place branding, as argued by Coaffee and Rogers (2008). As Koskela claims, surveillance is the norm and a key defining feature, even an ordering category of the urban:
[i]n cities, the routine of surveillance makes the exercise of power almost instinctive: people are controlled, categorized, disciplined and normalized without any particular reason. With respect to surveillance, urban space can be conceptualized as ‘power- space’: a space impregnated with disciplinary practices (2000: 251).
However, she also acknowledges there are key differences that make it ‘impossible to consider urban space, simply and directly, as comparable to the panopticon’ (Ibid:251). Access to urban space is (in principle) voluntary, in urban space there is no punishment, nor enforced isolation, but rather the potential of a multiplicity of activities and encounters. The gaze of surveillance and the drive to normalise behaviour appear more slippery and complex than those within a prison, because
[t]he objects and perpetrators of the gaze are not always clear in an urban environment: shops, for example, use cameras to monitor their own personnel as well as customers (Takala, 1998). Furthermore, what is considered to be an appropriate manner in a particular time and place varies according to gender, age, etc. (..) [W]hereas imprisonment as punishment is part of an established legal system (Driver, 1985), the forces that maintain urban discipline are not exclusively extensions of the state. Cameras operated by the private sector outnumber those used by the authorities (ibid:252).
Similarities, she argues, exist instead when considering ‘the significance of visibility’ (2000:252), the unverifiable nature of the gaze (we do not know when we are watched) and its anonymity (we do not know who is watching us, whether it is a public body or a private business), the absence of overt force (except, as we shall see, at times of disorder or, as already argued, during temporary events) given that allegedly there is an internalisation of control, and individuals are self-vigilant and regulate their own behaviour (Koskela 2000: 253-254). Koskela (ibid) also points to the normalisation of behaviour and a culture of permanent documentation, exemplified by the hours of footage collected by CCTV, or of data from other sensors present in the city, as discussed further below.
In contrast, Bauman (Bauman and Lyon 2013;Gane 2011) argues that, to better account for the increased mobility, data tracking and other types of surveillance, including the rise in
135 the use of biodata (such as biometrics at border controls), it is necessary to move beyond the panopticon, as traditionally understood. Bauman theorises the existence of a ‘virtual panopticon’ (Gane 2011) or ‘post-panopticon’ context (Bauman and Lyon 2013) that would transcend the limits of a traditional visual conception of power. The virtual panopticon is no longer a prison architecture, but a new culture of watching and normalisation, achieved also through new social media. Within it surveillance has become routine and trivialised, for instance through the practice of watching each other’s internet presence or Facebook status and updates, the practice of ‘celebrity watching’, and the celebration of the exposure of one’s everyday life, epitomised by reality TV programmes, such as ‘Big Brother’ (Gane 2011). Bauman (Bauman and Lyon 2013) sees a reversal of the logic of the panopticon, because the act of watching is being transformed from an act of coercion to one of seduction - of voyeurism -, as everyone is seduced into watching and fascinated by the idea of being watched.
Bauman argues that technologies themselves – from social media tools, such as Twitter or Facebook, to smart phones - exercise a pull on users, and this renders the surveillance enabled by these technology assemblages both ubiquitous and ‘liquid’ (Bauman and Lyon 2013). ‘Liquid surveillance’ is theorised as permeating the everyday, becoming trivialised and even appealing and lacking a top-down direction. While surveillance scholars widely accept the complex and multiple dimensions of surveillance, including virtual surveillance, the idea of needing a paradigm shift in conceptualising it remains contested. Firstly, not all surveillance is accepted, trivialised, and even sought by members of the public. The virtual panopticon is a realm in which activities continue to be logged, tracked and visualised, for instance through the deployment of RFID technology (as often used in transport systems, like the London Oyster card), or via the use of GPS enabled smart phones applications for mapping and positioning, in ways that even when obvious often remain inaccessible to citizens. As noted elsewhere,
[a]s citizens and consumers we leave daily trails of digital data recording our habits – the transport we use, the food we buy, how we use our mobiles, how we access public and private services – and this information affects our identity (..) it allows various entities in the private and public sector to profile us, marketing or tailoring services to us on the basis of our recorded behaviour (Pieri 2009a: 6) and, while users may be willingly embracing some technologies and applications (such as supermarket loyalty cards), some of the surveillance ramifications stemming from these may continue to remain invisible to them.
136
Furthermore, Bauman and Lyon theorise ‘liquid surveillance’ as a non-rigid, ‘non-vertical’ type of surveillance that increasingly focuses on mobility and flow (2013), and on controlling movement (Gane 2011). But previous theorisations of surveillance within the governmentality school had already highlighted these features of surveillance. Deleuze (1992: 4), noting that mobility also affects power and control, had argued that forms of power, control and surveillance also become ultra-fast, free-floating and without heavy architectures. Foucault’s own notion of governmantality incorporates awareness of light architectures and networks, and the belief that
[i]n the assemblage of networks, authorities, groups, individuals, and institutions were enlisted, brought to identify their own desires and aspirations with those of others, so that they were or could become allies in governing. In particular, such networks made possible what Miller & Rose termed governing at a distance—that is to say, acting from a center of calculation such as a government office or the headquarters of a nongovernmental organization, on the desires and activities of others who were spatially and organizationally distinct (Rose, O’Malley and Valverde 2006: 89).
In other words, instead of a paradigm shift in theorising surveillance, what is needed is a recalibration and greater focus when documenting and critiquing surveillance on the interplays between both dimensions of physical and virtual surveillance.
Bauman’s observation about technology capture, routinisation and user fascination for social media and self-exposure can similarly be framed within the notion of hegemony (Gramsci 1971) and the phenomenon understood through the foucaultian notion of technologies of the self (Rose and Miller 1992) ,143 through which
subjects (..) produce the ends of government by fulfilling themselves rather than being merely obedient, and in Rose’s phrase (Rose 1989) would be obliged to be free in specific ways. Central to this approach was that attention would not only focus on the great technologies such as the Panopticon but would turn to the mundane, little governmental techniques and tools (Rose et al. 2006: 89).
Users may ‘freely’ engage in activities and networks that produce traceability, choose to pay by card, to travel with an Oyster Card, (and to some extent even) to upload their profile
143 Part of the many technologies of government, where government is understood (with a small ‘g’) as referring to the shaping of conduct and the ‘enacting [of] assorted attempts at the calculated administration of diverse aspects of conduct through countless, often competing, local tactics of education, persuasion, inducement, management, incitement, motivation and encouragement’ (Rose and Miller 1992:176). Other technologies of government would be those of domination.
137 on Facebook, but (up to a point at least) they are obliged to be free in specific ways, to be able to function within certain circuits of inclusion and practice (Rose 2003).144
Smart mobile technologies and social media can on one hand provide new visibilities that may be policed (Goldsmith 2010) and surveilled, from one’s Facebook presence to the monitoring of cybercrimes.145 On the other hand, they have also been theorised as tools for turning the focus of surveillance towards the institutions (private and public) that routinely exercise it (Goldsmith 2010). Activist footage of police mishandling of public protest events, or user-generated footage denouncing malpractice in the private sector, abound on the internet and increasingly enter the courtrooms. 146 ICTs and social media’s potential – more promising for some (Doyle 2011;Mann et al. 2003) than for others (Timan and Oudshoorn 2012) – of counteracting surveillance with bottom-up surveillance (what is known as the sousveillance hypothesis)147 is still at the centre of much debate (Pieri 2014b, in appendix 6).
6.3 Configurations of Surveillance in Manchester City Centre
In Manchester, the sensor city is realised in many ways, as discussed in the following sections, which present its key configurations, including through the extensive network of council operated CCTVs, and private ones operated in parallel and sometimes in complementary mode. Some of these cameras have biometric-enabled analytics, as in the case of the CCTV system recently piloted in forty NCP carparks in Greater Manchester, including many parking lots in the city centre. This system allows NCP personnel to check individuals entering their parking lots against a database of car theft suspects that NCP itself has created and owns.148 Other cameras directly or ad-hoc connect to a variety of police or public organisations’ databases (such as those keeping a record of insured
144 An example Rose (2003) gives of a ‘free’ practice turned de facto compulsory is the use of credit/debit cards, without which it has practically become impossible to reserve a hotel room. No one is ‘forcing’ us to have a card, but if we want to book a hotel room we must ‘freely’ choose to have one, despite the fact that unlike cash it makes one traceable. 145 For instance hacking, on-line fraud, or identity theft. 146 E.g. the recent trial following the UK Uncut protest in London http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/05/uk-uncut-protesters-metropolitan-police (accessed 1 June 2014) Goldsmith (2010) instead refers readers to the 2009 Ian Tomlinson case in London and the 2007 Robert Dziekanski case in Vancouver. 147 Surveillance from below. 148 If successful, NCP intends to extend the scheme from Manchester to the rest of its parking lots nationwide, see http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1313243_fury_at_big_brother_car_park_cameras (accessed on 1 June 2014).
138 vehicles or various police databases), as in the case of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition System in use.
Surveillance is, however, also pursued without cameras, for instance though the collection and databasing of personally identifying information on residents (including passport numbers, addresses, car registration numbers) by the police or by private organisers of temporary events. Furthermore, a range of soft-policing and para-policing activities can be regarded as enacting monitoring and multi-directional covert surveillance of members of the public.
The following sections present key configurations of surveillance in Manchester city centre. Some of these were explored ethnographically, while others were investigated (also) via the fieldwork with stakeholders whose views and values have been sought in relation to many applications and instantiations of the sensor city in Manchester city centre.
6.3.1 CCTV in Manchester City Centre: Stakeholders’ Experiences and Views
For the majority of stakeholders use of CCTV per se tended to be relatively unproblematic, even for those participants that are more marginalised and possibly more vulnerable within the city centre (for instance the Big Issue Vendor), although there were a few notable exceptions (the Northern Quarter Artist, for instance, strongly objected to it). The police stakeholders praised their city centre Control Room and extensive network of cameras; other institutional stakeholders also rated it as first class (as another expertise Manchester excelled at) but did not consider it to be in need of further expansion, nor deemed it to be the ultimate answer to the city centre’s security needs; (small) business stakeholders praised its usefulness in defending their commercial premises. Other stakeholders – including city centre workers and residents – largely took the extensive network to be a fact of life, both in Manchester city centre and across the country, though not necessarily a positive or desirable one. Especially those who objected to the ubiquitous presence of cameras tended to see the network in Manchester as indicative of ‘the way things are in Britain’ or as epitomising the ‘Big Brother society we live in’. Only a very small number of participants, including the Big Issue Vendor, reported feeling safer due to the presence of CCTV, and mentioned its deterrent potential, whereas a much larger cross-section of participants saw it as a useful tool for aiding prosecution (after a criminal act had occurred):
139 C: it's necessary I suppose in a in a city like this to, er,erm,... T: why, what do you think it achieves? Because, to, to my mind, you know, the drunk who's going to attack you is gonna-, the drunk is going to attack you if he's on camera or not, ‘cos he's drunk Ta: yeah, but if someone makes an attack then you can make an arrest from that cctv camera (resident focus group 2).
As mentioned, the few references to CCTV in residential settings discussed CCTV as patchy (not always there or not working even when there), mainly used in conjunction with other residential security measures (all generally seen positively by residents) and intended to help prosecution rather than deterrence.
It is very interesting to contrast the view, shared by the majority of participants, that CCTV was not a(n effective) deterrent with their widely shared belief that natural surveillance was. The latter, often discussed as the flow of people in the street, especially late at night, was largely conceived positively149 (as opposed to the ambiguous feeling created by CCTV itself), and solely as a deterrent (i.e. flux was never discussed as helping apprehension and prosecution after a criminal act). Police surveillance in the form of police patrolling, which generated mixed feelings (see Chapter 8) and divided participants on its desirability and effects in making citizens feel safer or under imminent threat, was seen by those that discussed it as desirable as positively affecting both deterrence and apprehension of criminals.
Some participants reported being aware of CCTV cameras, and a handful openly resented their ubiquitous presence, but many others declared themselves unaware, or indicated they saw the visible presence of cameras as unobtrusive:
I know [cameras] are everywhere, and I especially look out for them more because I have got a business in the city centre, but I have had incidents with friends where little things have happened and literally they've been caught on every camera left right and centre. So you know they are everywhere, but they are made to look like they are not there so, they do have a presence (bakery owner).
Only one participant (a charity shop assistant) wished that there were more cameras around, at transport hubs within the city centre.
149 The only exception being when the people in the street were described as drunk and possibly risky themselves (as potential aggressors).
140 6.3.2 Ubiquitous Surveillance
Regardless of attitudes to individual security measures, a dimension of surveillance that participants often referred to was its pervasiveness. Its ubiquitous nature was experienced as resulting from its spatial reach (beyond Manchester and its city centre), its inevitability (surveillance was discussed as impossible to elude) and its networked presence, resulting not simply from the extensive cctv system, but also from other everyday technologies (such as mobile phones) able to trace citizens’ every movements:
I mean you can trace people on their mobile phones and things. Everybody is so trackable and traceable, and it's only going to increase (..) we'll leave a data trail just by walking down the street, which we are already doing! My mobile phone's been on all day, if anyone wants to know where I am within a few met-, tens of meters, trace my phone! (interview with resident 2)
G: I think that's just the way things are going (..) it's becoming very much a Big Brother state, year on year I think in this country, you can hold everything for ages, you know. You can get arrested, they'll take your DNA, they'll keep that forever now rather than destroy it after three years. You know, I think that's just the way the country is going B: I don't think this is specific of the city centre living G: no, that's what I mean, yeah, it's just the way the whole country is going B: yeah (resident focus group 1)
if you look at where we are now, with the internet and Google Earth and Facebook and everything else, I think people accept the fact that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, it's going to get recorded in some form (Director of Special Projects, Bruntwood).
As noted, attitudes to surveillance are complex (Koskela 2000), and objections and uneasiness towards pervasive use of surveillance cannot be reduced to concerns about individual privacy (Armitage 2002;Koskela 2000).150 Nonetheless, even when focusing on the effects of surveillance on citizens’ privacy, it was clear that participants experienced surveillance in different ways, and attributed to it different aims, as discussed below.
6.3.3 Identity Dominance
One of the security experts reported that a key dimension in the current security of the city centre was ‘identity dominance’, i.e. the ability to correctly identify anyone coming into the city centre:151
150 They may also relate to the normalisation of individual and collective behaviours, especially in public and in hybrid spaces (including the ways in which people protest or perform sociabilities or encounters with strangers). 151 The term also denotes an advantage over an opponent, obtained by denying them the possibility of masking their identity or of eluding identification systems.
141
we have a very, very comprehensive intelligence and also data sharing policy (..) it's about reducing crime, and for those individuals that want to continue to come into the city, to reduce their ability to walk around the city - I am going to try and say this word now - 'anonymously'. There we go! Always struggle [jokes]. But we take away that, you know, ability to walk around undetected (security expert).
This statement, highlighting a removal of anonymity for those entering the city centre, was used to probe residents’ views and experiences of their own anonymity within the city centre. Residents largely understood the ‘individually identifying’ potential of surveillance as purely targeting ‘wrong-doers’ and therefore mainly saw it as not diminishing their own anonymity:
I was under the impression that most of the city centre is covered by cctv, um, but I think no one's looking particularly at you and what you're doing; you're there and you're on it, but if nothing happens it, it, so it's there, although it's there, I wouldn't say you're not anonymous even though you feel watch (resident focus group 2)
I am not up to no good, and I think the people who abuse that are those who want to break things and steal things, and attack people (..) they shouldn't be able to walk onto a bus and get off without paying (..) the technology is there to stop people from just getting away with being vile.. and that's broadly a good thing. (..) you know, provided we go into this openly, and we accept that, you know, that we are also in the system (interview with city centre resident 2).
Not everyone, though, subscribed to this argument:
G: I'm not a big fan of the notion that if you're not doing anything wrong then you don't have anything to worry about when it comes to cctv C: I don't really like the idea that I'm being watched all the time (city centre resident focus group 2).
Paradoxically the city, often theorised as the site of intense surveillance (Koskela 2000), was also experienced by this resident as liberating for the degree of anonymity it granted:
I like the city because I can basically vanish in, like you know, you don't see the same people all the time, I like that! (..) there is enough space just to disappear. That the crowds I complained about, you can disappear into, and you're not in a small town, that you are always being seen by the same people, and that's a positive thing for me (interview with city centre resident 2).
Anonymity too was thus experienced relationally, and residents differentiated between their experiences of anonymity vis a vis organised (almost institutionalised, public or private) surveillance, and that vis a vis other citizens. Although some residents (at a different stage within the focus groups) had lamented a lack of sense of community, many
142 also reported not feeling anonymous in relation to their neighbours and neighbourhoods in the city centre, especially with references to the sites where they (food) shopped:
R: we are living in a Big Brother society, aren't we so.. E: as a resident, do you feel that you are identifiable as you are in the city centre or? R: I certainly don't, but I have a friend who does (..) but for me, I guess I am, I can be identified but in the sense of maybe when I go to the local shop, or when you go to say Tesco (..) not that kind of, not well known in the sense that you are known by the police [laughs] (interview with city centre resident 1).
In these contexts, they felt known and recognised (by sight), though mostly not surveilled nor monitored.
6.3.4 Networked and Clustered Surveillance: Public-Private Hybrids
Aside from references to intangible networks of traceability (enabled by technologies like mobiles or the internet), residents did not discuss private surveillance by shops, clubs and venues, nor on the street. By contrast, city centre workers showed greater awareness of that, particularly those owning and managing city centre premises, who presented it as useful and worth paying a premium for:
S: you've got Mulberry and stuff like that but the whole area has got a 24h 7 days a week cctv, plus four (..) security guys that wander the estate everyday all day, 24- ehm 365 days a year (..) that's not because anything bad happens, it's just because, it's quite a premium area. You've got (..) a collection of four of the premium banks within a hundred yards from us. So obviously the security needs to be a little bit higher than it is in Piccadilly (..) E: so you think it’s the actual commerce, the kind of type of businesses that are located here that S: yeah, yeah and plus all the tenants pay a premium to have that security, (..) it’s not the council that’s providing that, that's Spinnningfields management providing that, because we all contribute to it (bakery owner).
It was the institutional stakeholders and security experts, though, who focused on the links between these forms of private security and more traditional (vertical) ones, such as the council-owned CCTV network, operated by the police. Two schemes operate in Manchester city centre, under the coordination of CityCo, and with links to these vertical surveillance systems. StoreNet focuses on linking up shops and is enabled also by radio walkie talkies, as well as by intranet updates. NiteNet similarly connects night-time economy venues, such as bars and clubs, into a network:
P: most of the, the shops are well connected to like a StoreNet system, which is connected to the cctv control room, which I think is quite useful
143 E: inside the shops? The inside of the shops is connected to the central P: yeah, usually yeah, I think they can opt into that, most, most places do. If you go somewhere like Spinningfields, they've got their own private security (Design for Security consultant)
we use a system we call NiteNet radio, and these are walkie-talkie style radios that we on the NiteNet programme, the door staff at the majority of the venues in the Gay Village, and around central Manchester they use it as well, the police use it, you know other public services - like ambulances and things like that - I am fairly sure they use it, and this is all linked into the CCTV. So the control for the NiteNet comes from the CCTV, and you know if there is an issue with anything, crime related or anything at all, you can alert the CCTV who will then position a camera on a particular spot. Say if you are on the corner of Sackville Street and Canal Street and you see two people fighting, you can say to Control 'can I have a camera on the corner of Sackville St and Canal St, there's two people involved in a fray'. They will put a camera on there, then you've already got that evidence (..) NiteNet (..) is just to add extra security, so it's not just cops and robbers, it's not just the police chasing criminals, it's kind of the door staff and the community teams that are out there, and the members of the community as well, working together (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
Both schemes, discussed very positively by the security experts, some of the institutional stakeholders and all those involved in using them, epitomise various trends: the increasing blurring of the divide between private and public security (and surveillance), the clustering and scaling up of various security systems and networks, and the increased reliance on para-policing and soft-policing (6.3.6 below).
6.3.5 Resident Databases
A direct consequence of the linking up of various (public and private) networks of security is the transfer of personal information and images across different agencies and actors. This was discussed only by one of the stakeholders, a security expert, who praised the arrangements in place, and stressed their compliance with data protection legislation:
We have a very very comprehensive intelligence and also data sharing policy with Greater Manchester Police, which is both targeted, compliant with data protection, and that is information that we share on a control basis with a number of organisations within the city. (..) it's not a case of cctv leads the way, it's joined (..) a lot of the time it's ground-up information that goes to cctv. They can then monitor the situation and (..) where possible or where required, Greater Manchester Police are called in to deal with the situations that may be occurring (security expert).
As illustrated above, the role of businesses (such as shops, bars and clubs) in generating ‘on the ground’ intelligence should not be underestimated. Their involvement may, however, be directing police attention and their intervention towards meeting the security needs and priorities that are specific to business stakeholders (such as dealing with shoplifters or
144 acquisitive crime, or perhaps focusing on crimes such as prostitution and drug-dealing near or in clubs)152 rather than issues that may be prioritised by people using these spaces and the city centre at large:
everything links in to everything else. There is certain information that we share with our businesses that is directed and controlled by ourselves here, in this office, because of the data sensitivity and the personal sensitive information of that data. Right, but it is all signed under a compliancy agreement, we're into a compliancy agreement with Greater Manchester Police, and the businesses sign up to a compliance agreement with us. So everything has a measurable, a measurable route. (..) it's been tremendously successful. Up to now we've got a reduction in retail crime for instance (..) you expect crime to rise. I mean it probably would have done if we weren't managing it together with our business community (security expert).
As noted, workers and residents tend to be more concerned, instead, about their personal safety vis a vis drunken aggressive behaviour, rather than worry about acquisitive crime, vandalism or damage to business premises.
Alongside these networked operations, temporary events are also occasions in which public and private bodies directly collect resident information, forcing residents to provide personal details, if they want to gain access to their own premises. Ahead of Pride, the accreditation of residents requires them to provide to contractors, working on behalf of the (private) event organisers, proof of address and identity, and to collect in person a token to go through the gating. The practice proves controversial, not least for the inconvenience it causes. Ahead of party conferences, the police require nearby residents to provide their details and passport or driving licence number, proof of residency and, if applicable, details of vehicle registration. They carry out a door to door visit in the residential buildings surrounding the conference centre as well as periodically stationing personnel near the concierge desks of these buildings to register those residents missed out during the door- to-door visit. This process is documented in the newsletter of the Great Northern Tower building distributed to all residents (below):
152 The GLF stakeholder for instance talked about the widespread practice of clubs and bars in the Gay Village seeking and obtaining restraining orders against people suspected of prostituting to stop them coming in the vicinity of such bars and clubs and making contact with potential clients in the streets outside these premises.
145
Figure 4 – Great Northern Tower Newsletter, June 2010
The measure was discussed with a senior police stakeholders in 2012 who confirmed that the practice was still in place and that the resident database was being stored from previous events and being updated every time:
S: We keep it, but then we refresh (..) E: (..) don't you have this information from the city council, council tax, things like that? S: no, because a lot of the premises are short term lets, weekend lets, there is a range of issues. I mean we can always find out, if you get a name and an address for the premises that's just the person that is paying the community charge for that, it doesn't mean they live there (..) and also (..) we need to know what vehicle they use, which way they need to come in, give them the right permit so they can go though the road closure if there is one, things like that (police superintendent).
146 As this expert stakeholder went on to discuss, residents are not always happy to comply, although he maintained that the police have always been able to confirm those individuals’ identity and that they posed no threat. Amongst the residents interviewed and accessed through the focus groups, no-one lived inside the conference zone or in Great Northern Tower itself. Residents were unaware of the existence of this database. They also regarded it in the same light as they had regarded ubiquitous surveillance – mostly resenting this measure seen as intrusive and objectionable, which however appeared to them as inevitable, a sign of the slippery slope towards Big Brother Society, in the UK more generally:
G: well, I'm not happy with it, but that's the way it is, the way the world is going B: I think it's just an accepted E: so you think it's inevitable, more than desirable M: there's no choice, is there? G: I wouldn't be particularly happy with it, but (..) you've got nothing to hide have you really, at the end of the day. It's still an infringement on you, you can't do much about it, it's what I think E: what do you think? M: well, I suppose that's a standard precautionary measure, isn't it? (..) I don't know what you can do really, I suppose (..) B: if there wasn't the conference, and they came round to everyone saying 'we have to keep a log for.. invent some reason M: that's just mental G: yeah, then that would be off B: that's like 1984 that G: [laughs] yes (resident focus group 1).
While some declared that they would object less, if they knew that the information would not be retained, others were concerned about the length of retain and speculated on what might happen once you moved. Some residents reconciled themselves with the inevitability of the practice, seen as exceptional (and not to be routinised!) and as motivated by the extraordinary nature of the event (as in the example above). The same premise, though, prompted a resident to call for a change of conference location. Another resident saw the exceptional measure as a form of necessary yet tokenistic sign that something was being done: it makes perfect sense because that building overlooks the whole secure zone (..) I don't know whether those, those controls would actually have any impacts on anybody that was out to cause trouble. Like a lot of things, (..) they make everybody feel like they've done something [laughs] (..) it is a little bit of reassurance (..) I can imagine that's the sort of thing you do as part of your security planning, whether it will make any practical difference.. (interview with resident 2).
Others indicated that any resident wishing to move into the building ought to be forewarned so that they could opt out of the data basing (though this would mean
147 choosing a different apartment). Along the same lines, some residents took the practice to indicate the city’s disregard towards its city centre residents, and a tendency towards ‘walling up’ chunks of the city and creating exclusionary spaces:
I think it's kind of like scary I guess, thinking more and more they are, they seem to be putting more and more barriers around the residents, in terms of who lives here and, and does what, and where do they live and that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know, I am finding this a bit odd (interview with resident 1).
As noted when discussing temporary events, the latter is a recurrent theme amongst city centre resident stakeholders.
6.3.6 Para-Policing and Soft-Policing in the Sensor City
Along with the many changes towards community policing and the current movement towards a privatisation of some aspects of policing nationally, successive UK Governments have strongly encouraged an increased reliance on ‘building partnerships’ with various local entities (Home Office 2010b).153 These trends, advertised as a way of creating greater public accountability in policing, have been accompanied by the introduction of an elected police commissioner (in 2012), and are perhaps best illustrated by the diffusion across Police Forces of a model of policing first implemented in London in 2002, involving members of the public in policing their own community as Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).154 In parallel with this development, which remains controversial, a new 101 non-emergency phone number has been established in 2012, dedicated to members of the public reporting suspicious, but non-urgent, issues arising in their community.155
Alongside these changes, various national schemes have been operating to train volunteers (for instance those assisting sporting events), civilians in public-facing jobs (from car park attendants to hotel receptionists, office and residential concierge teams) and private security personnel (from bouncers to temporary contractors) in security and anti-terror response. Most notably these schemes have included two key national initiatives by the
153 See also https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-the-police-fight-crime-more-effectively#bills- and-legislation (accessed 1 June 2014). 154 PCSOs do not enter into Police ranks nor receive standard training (but only a six-week induction). See http://www.metpolicecareers.co.uk/pcso/overview.html (accessed 1 June 2014). 155 https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-the-police-fight-crime-more-effectively/supporting- pages/implementing-101-the-police-non-emergency-number (accessed 1 June 2014).
148 National Counter Terrorism Security Office - Project ARGUS and Project Griffin156 (first implemented in London in 2004).
In parallel, a growing number of hybrid bodies and figures, including volunteer- or NGO- based groups, like the Village Angels in Manchester’s Gay Village, or city hosts groups employed by CityCo and the Tourist Board to welcome visitors, have also began to operate:
we've had both a kind of active police presence but also community ehm.. can't remember what they're called, they're called community guardians or something, kind of you know that work in conjunction with both the police and the local authorities, and we have quite active- you know CityCo has ran a kind of city host programme, which actually has people out in the street talking to people, helping them if they are lost (director of strategic marketing, Marketing Manchester).
This trend, however, went largely unnoticed by most city centre workers and residents, and was seldom mentioned by other stakeholders too, with the exception of security expert stakeholders:
[we have] an officer (..) to go round all the businesses (..) it gives us contact with those premises owners, so if they see something unusual or somebody tries to come in and hire a room for example near to a party conference venue, then we get that message back. So it's some intelligence gathering process, but it also works in respect of us consulting with them (police superintendent)
S: there is a national programme of, it's called operation Griffin (..) delivered to concierge and security staff at key premises throughout all major cities. It's done on an annual basis, and it's around what to look for, you know what might feel suspicious, what isn't suspicious, how to channel information in to the police for action (..) it's project Argus and Griffin (..) [the police] deliver the same to, say, the security team at the Arndale centre or, you know, the Hilton Hotel or their staff will come in for the inputs, might be safety staff at Old Trafford Football Stadium (..) E: is it compulsory for them or do they choose? S: no, no, we just offer it (police superintendent).
The only exceptions were two other stakeholders who referred to these types of para- policing because they either had directly been involved in it (as in the example below), or had received this type of security training (as was the case for one resident who had just volunteered during a Manchester event connected with the Olympics). Although these references were few, they are illuminating (particularly the account below) of the vision that accompanies para-policing, one in which the ‘community’157 acts in unison as the eyes and ears of the police, and engages first-hand in its own security:
156 Details of both on http://www.nactso.gov.uk/our-services (accessed 1 June 2014). 157 Of course who may feel part of, or even be recognised by others to be part of, this ‘community’ remains problematic to establish.
149
when I do the Village Angels project I see so much that I would never have noticed before. (..) if people who work in public, whether that would be road sweepers or whether that'd be, you know, lolly pop ladies or whatever, are given the same opportunities to see, or given the same information of what to look for, and encouraged to flag up these things, and call! I mean there is like 101, which is the number now that's not emergencies, but the call goes through to the police. I've used 101 three or four times since I found out about it, (..) if I see something which doesn't seem right (..) I saw say two people, younger people, running across the motorway, climbing over the fence towards the railway line. So I phoned 101 and reported it and said 'it might be nothing, but it might be that they've just robbed somebody round the corner or they might just have stolen something from a car, and that's their quickest means of escape (..) they might have a CCTV on that that they can see these people, it might be linked to something that they are already investigating over there. But if I don't be proactive to that, if I don't tell the authorities that I've seen something that is out of the ordinary and looked peculiar, they're never going to have enough information. (..) if more people that work in communities look out for these things, that's the most positive way forward. We need to be working tighter as a community together because communities are getting tighter (LGF and member of the Village Angels).
The trends towards fostering a diffuse and proactive approach towards securitisation is therefore characterising current security arrangements in Manchester city centre (and beyond), without most stakeholders being aware of it. It is also a trend the police directly endorse, through their national training schemes, but also through the very operations that the Police conduct in Manchester city centre, as illustrated by policing practices in the aftermath of the 2011 Manchester disturbances, discussed in 6.3.7 and 6.3.8 below.
6.3.7 Shop a Looter
In August 2011, London experienced a wave of sustained unrest. Rapidly termed as riots, and acts of looting, these disturbances which amplified in the media and public opinion, could be seen as a moral panic (Cohen 1972) about ‘out of control’ and ethnicised youth in Britain (Pieri 2014b). The unrest had complex causes and spread across a variety of London boroughs first, reaching other UK cities too in the days that followed, before ceasing altogether four days after inception. While the origin and unfolding of the disturbances
158 which took place in Manchester city centre remain difficult to ascertain, the policing and securitisation that occurred in the aftermath of these events in Manchester have been critically discussed in the article appended as significant and novel developments in securitising the city centre (Pieri 2014b). These practices were observed ethnographically
158 From the evening of 9th August 2011 to the early hours of the following day.
150 and in their unfolding in the media, particularly in reference to two police operations, one of which was also discussed with stakeholders.
The first operation exemplifying emergent practices in city centre securitisation was Shop a Looter. It was launched after the end of the riots as a multimedia and multiplatform operation, and deployed through high visibility strategies on-line and within the material fabric of the city centre. As its poster (below) indicates, this operation aimed at enrolling members of the public in assisting with the intelligence gathering, surveillance and identification of suspects:
Figure 5 – Shop A Looter poster
The operation was conducted by the Greater Manchester Police through extensive use of social media, particularly media enabling the sharing of user-generated content (including Flickr, where web galleries of suspect images were created and rapidly updated, but also via a police website and Facebook account). Traditional means of eliciting public co- operation (such as dedicated and anonymous phone lines) and new ways of using traditional means (including the use of police vans carrying blown-up images of suspects
151 taken from cctv footage around the city centre) were also deployed. The operation was reported as having been widely successful:
Figure 6 – Message displayed on city centre buses for ten months since Summer 2011
Public participation was secured through a combination of coercion159 and enticement160 (Pieri 2014b, in appendix 6). It was facilitated through the circulation by various actors of moral discourses and via an interpellation of fear of disorder, which fed symbiotically and helped justify wider powers of control, allowing exceptionally draconian measures to gain wider legitimisation (Ibid; Hall in Marsh and Melville 2011).
The Shop a Looter operation was unprecedented in Manchester, and within the UK, in its large-scale and generalised involvement of members of the public in social-media-based mass-surveillance. As such, it also provides a sobering view of how social media and user- generated images captured on smart mobile cameras can be marshalled to complement and extend the reach of institutional or vertical surveillance. The potential for sousveillance offered by technologies such as smart phones was relativised vis a vis the much greater potential that these technologies have to be enrolled in far reaching, diffuse and traditional (for instance, police-led) types of surveillance.
159 Citizens were encouraged to hand in their own family members or acquaintances under the threat of eviction from council housing and possible benefit withdrawal for anyone even indirectly associated with a looter. 160 They were enrolled in discourses of moral citizenry and pride of place, via a dedicated marketing campaign and via institutional pronouncements about the duties and modalities of acting like a good citizen and a ‘real’ Mancunian.
152
Equally, the liquid surveillance hypothesis (Bauman and Lyon 2013;Gane 2011) according to which surveillance becomes an innocuous, diffuse and voyeuristic practice would struggle to account for this operation. Widespread public participation in surveillance, in fact, did not take the form of a mundane, diffuse or voyeuristic act of entertainment. Rather, it saw citizens willingly enrolled in much more direct and directed surveillance, leading to real-life identifications and police arrests.
Simultaneously, thousands of hours of CCTV footage were also recovered from cameras belonging to the council, shops, car parks and public services (including fire fighters), as well as from the public. This further exemplifies the trend towards nesting and networking various hybrid circuits of (private and public, agency-led and user-generated) surveillance.
6.3.8 Proactive Policing
As noted elsewhere, security is increasingly relying on proactive measures, aiming at pre- empting or, where possible, preventing the occurrence of future threats. Policing too is increasingly pursued in the same fashion (Stockdale et al. 1999).161 In the days after the August 2011 disturbances had come to a conclusion,162 Manchester city centre was securitised through a proactive operation. This, like operation Shop a Looter, showcased the emerging securitisation trend towards integration between physical and virtual surveillance networks. It created a real-time, city-centre wide exclusion zone. The exclusion zone, however, was not a complete lockdown of the city centre, but rather it instantiated a large interdictory space (Flusty 2001) that filtered individual mobility and access, controlling and restricting the mobility of those perceived as risky, while guaranteeing access to other users. The operation was covered in the local media, and the following excerpt from the press was used as a prompt with stakeholders:
POLICE TURN BACK 50 CARS IN OPERATION TO STOP CRIMINALS ENTERING CITY CENTRE Police used number-plate spotting technology to turn known criminals away from Manchester in the days after the riots. Officers stationed on key routes into the city
161 ‘The terms ‘proactive’ and ‘intelligence-led’ [are] being used interchangeably or in combination to describe practices which frequently contrast starkly with reactive, demand-led policing. Current interpretations of proactivity are wider than they were initially. Also, the term proactive, intelligence-led policing, although superficially simple, masks considerable variability in implementation (..) [and] applies both to a style of policing and to any specific, targeted action’ (Stockdale et al 1999:5). 162 The disturbances lasted only one day in Manchester.
153 have been instantly checking registration plates of vehicles against a string of national databases. Known criminals have been intercepted and ordered to turn around. On Wednesday evening alone, 50 vehicles were turned away from Manchester by officers determined to keep the streets trouble-free. Chief Constable Peter Fahy told the M.E.N: “We were instructing anyone with a previous conviction that they had to leave the city. Quite a number of them had serious previous convictions.” The policy will be repeated if trouble flares again. (Manchester Evening News 13 Aug 2011b, p.4).
The operation relied on use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology. ANPR is most commonly used investigatively, for motoring offences or to chase individual perpetrators, and at times used proactively to conduct intelligence operations, for instance for the tracking of organised crime meetings or the monitoring of selected individuals’ movements. The operation was distinctive, however, in putting in place a real-time and large scale (city-centre wide) exclusion zone, affecting a large number of individuals (who were not under police investigation).
The operation demonstrates the interplay of the physical and virtual networks of control and surveillance, and illustrates the use of networked devices in deploying real-time spatial interventions through the connection of live-feed databases (from motoring and car insurance ones, to police-owned databases of convicted or suspected offenders, or of suspicious vehicles) to a set of discrete and distributed technologies (fixed and mobile number-plate reading cameras, in this case). The operation was proactive because it was not aiming at apprehending any of those involved in the riots (which had by then concluded), but was allegedly aiming at preventing a future instance of disorder.163
The operation, which arguably also demonstrates the nexus between security and city branding, as the need to manage and restore the image of Manchester city centre as a safe locale was paramount in motivating its deployment, was praised by institutional and security stakeholders:
I'm not saying this should be the case all the time, but I think there was probably a time and a place for this [operation] to take place.. you know the city was suffering, and again I am talking professionally now, the city suffered or could have suffered.. semi- permanent, long-term damage in terms of its reputation following the riots.. and there was ehm..it was important for Manchester to respond very very quickly to that (MD, Visiting Manchester)
That doesn’t surprise me, and I think it’s a very sensible approach (director of marketing strategy, Marketing Manchester)
163 In doing so, it profiled a set of people, those with previous criminal conviction, and constructed them as a risk to the city centre which, as discussed in Pieri (2014, in appendix 6) was problematic.
154
I approve of that (..) I certainly think that residents would welcome that initiative, because it means that, you know, if you turn fifty known offenders back through the use of ANPR, the automatic number plate recognition, then I think that’s a very positive message to them. First that we’re determined to deal with you and we’re watching you, but certainly that message goes out to people reading the Evening News and seeing that message, that says that police are very seriously taking car crime and robbery in the city centre (Chair of GM Police Authority).
Other stakeholders, however, were unaware that the operation had taken place, although they mostly declared themselves familiar with more routine uses of ANPR (i.e. to respond to driving-related offences). They mainly reported surprise at this application, with a few stakeholders (mainly business stakeholders) considering it a natural progression of the capabilities already available, and a small number of business stakeholders supporting the measure. However, the majority of participants not involved in implementing this measure raised concerns over its legality, appropriateness and even efficacy:
why? If they are normally travelling people they should have the right to travel on that road (Big Issue vendor)
we don't want to end up with a police state! Because I don't think it's a healthy situation where because somebody has got a previous criminal record for whatever, that the idea is that they're always a criminal 24h of any one day, that's wrong! (..) that's over policing to me (..) they're trying to protect the business, the community (..) they don't want Manchester to have a bad name (..) but (..) I think there has been too much of an over reaction (..) it’s labelling (Northern Quarter artist)
it's quite Draconian, ehm.. but it's difficult really in a situation like the riots. Ehm but a lot of people who were rioting, I presume they didn't come by car [laughs]. (..) I would think it's quite a severe measure to take and, like, depriving people from the opportunity to come into the city centre as well.. it's it's, I am not sure how this would stand in terms of human rights but it does seem a very odd tactic to use, when you're probably targeting people who wouldn't be likely to riot (Design for Security consultant)
it can be other people who are driving the car and they can be blamed for that.. so it's not really effective, is it? Another waste of money! (florist 1).
Even the small number of participants who (whilst not being responsible for the operation) defended it as valid, tended to do so by underlying the extraordinary nature of the circumstances, considering the operation a strictly exceptional measure that ought not to become routinised:
C: on a personal level I find it a little heavy-handed really. Just because you've, just because you have been convicted of a criminal offence in the past, it shouldn't - I think under our laws it shouldn't be interpreted to influence how you are treated in the future particularly so. But having said that there is, this is over- after the riots, is it? E: two days afterwards
155 C: yeah, so I can understand why the police would be.. would be much more..yeah, overt and preventative essentially in trying to stop it. But it seems to me a bit heavy- handed really (research manager, Chamber of Commerce).
Therefore, while securitisation of urban space increasingly operates by controlling mobility and acting both within the physical scale of the city and other virtual and networked circuits of surveillance, through the tracking and the networking of live-feed databases, this type of proactive policing was found to be ongoing without the knowledge of most participants, many of whom found the practice objectionable.
6.3.9 Exclusion Zones
Other types of geographical exclusion zones are used in the securitisation of Manchester city centre. Some result from Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) and sentencing, and others are operated by a partnership of private actors (normally retailers, although they are also used by operators of bars and clubs), or are specific and confined to the running of certain events (for instance football matches). This means that they vary in length, geographical reach and type of ban. As actors form partnerships across the public/private divide, different types of geographical exclusion zones are not always easily distinguishable, and one type of ban may lead to another:
we support the antisocial behaviour process, but we also manage a civil exclusion scheme, to the retail economy. So where people are identified as a persistent risk to the city, it's not the first [sic] you come into the city and you commit a crime, we're going to ban you! It has to be proportionate (..) It's a 24 month period of exclusion from businesses. The businesses are educated by way of imaging, and information (..) about the risks with these people, and there is a reporting system in place, so that if you came back for instance, it would be reported to us that you have been causing further problems. In cases where antisocial behaviour is displayed, we will capture that information (..) put together into a file case, and we present to our antisocial behaviour team in the city centre. It will either be through the Council or Greater Manchester Police. We have two ways of going through ASBOs, antisocial behaviour orders and criminal antisocial behaviour orders. So one's for offending, one's for behaviour. We will not seek antisocial behaviour orders, as a partnership, unless there is extreme circumstances. (security expert)
[there is] a voluntary scheme operated by retailers in the city centre (..) It was decided in the couple of days after the riots that similarly if people were convicted, they would also be under that exclusion, which is not an ASBO but it's a, effectively a scheme, a voluntary scheme that is operated by the retailers (CEO, CityCo).
The geographical exclusion zones and bans are described by CityCo as effective and efficient ways of reducing offending:
156 in circumstances where people have continually had a number of previous convictions (..), there is a very good argument that one of the, one of the more efficient ways, rather than relying purely on a private and voluntary scheme like the exclusion scheme, of ensuring that they are not reoffending in those areas and it's not affecting the businesses, which in turn affects jobs, which in turn affects other stuff, is to use a geographically based ASBO (CEO, CityCo).
However, most stakeholders found geographical bans, very difficult to enforce, questioning their usefulness and the amount of resources devoted to monitoring them. This was either because banned individuals were thought to be able to easily change their appearance, or because policing of their presence in the city centre would not be a priority, unless these individuals drove attention towards themselves by ‘causing trouble’ again:
it's a load of rubbish [laughs] it's silly it's silly (..)The only way you're gonna know he's been in the city centre is if by chance a policeman spots him..ehr.. if you put all his pictures in the pubs.. cause sometimes we have the rule, if someone’s been a nuisance (..) you know fighting in pub, being abusive in pub, what they do is take a photograph of him, and put it through all the public houses. And there is only but a chance that you recognise the person because he can have his hair cut, put some glasses on, grow a moustache or beard, change his clothes (Big Issue vendor).
While similar arguments about lack of enforceability were made by many other stakeholders, some participants were more concerned with these methods not addressing the causes of the problem:
I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable with the kind of standing of an ASBO, (..) probably generally in society there is some discomfort about what are they for, how are they carried out, the geography that they apply to, how they are reviewed. (..) If you ban someone from coming into the city centre, then does that mean that you are- and that person genuinely is, you know, an unfit member of society in some way (..) surely all you're doing is displacing the problem, and wouldn't it be better to deal with the reason why that person is in that frame of mind in the first place? (director of Special Projects, Bruntwood)
if he is banned from everywhere (..) it won't make him learn, or her, learn from [what] she'd done or he's done (florist 2)
if he was likely to commit a crime having that sort of thing put on him is going to make him more likely to commit a crime, because he's gonna have nothing to do and he's going to feel really segregated and angry (charity shop assistant)
I am not sure about ASBOs full stop anyway (..) I am not sure the ASBO system actually works (artistic lead, art venue).
Again, image making (i.e. branding) was identified by at least one stakeholder as the possible motivator behind the adoption of geographical banning as a security solution, which was otherwise generally not perceived to be effective:
157
no-one around the area is going to know what this person looks like (..) presumably the police would not be totally hot on hotfooting to remove one person from the street who wasn't causing any trouble so. I think in terms of a gesture I think there is perhaps something to be said, raising the police profile and looking after-, trying to remove antisocial behaviour, but I am not sure if it actually solves anything. Maybe it comes down to the fact that the police should be looking to dissuade antisocial behaviour more, rather than trying to deal with it afterwards (research manager, Chamber of Commerce).
Banning was instead largely perceived to produce labelling and make reoffending more likely (a point argued at length by the Northern Quarter artist), or to result in geographical displacement of crime, confining repeat offenders to commit crimes elsewhere, and thus forcing other locality to endure their behaviour, instead of tackling the (causes of the) offending behaviour itself. Some participants took the side of the banned and ostracised individual, and others that of the alternative locality that would now be affected by the presence of that individual. Ironically, while the banning scheme privately run in the city centre is focusing on acquisitive crime against businesses (shoplifting, rather than violent and aggressive behaviour), some actions were deemed by some participants to merit the banning of the perpetrator, but these tended to be violence-related offences or hate crimes (for instance around Canal Street). In other circumstances banning tended to be seen as an excessive punishment.
Displacement was instead seen as a matter of degrees by the CEO of CityCo, who suggested that some displacement would always occur, and that the priority was to prevent it from occurring within Manchester’s city centre, the city and its neighbouring locales:
where do you draw a geographic line to be honest on that? (..) there is always going to be that issue, I think one of the most important things is that we don't do that within the city centre, and within a city (..) making sure that if there are any educational or other measures that are dealing with teenage drinking in particular areas, we are not just actually driving them to Salford or driving them to other areas. You've got to take a slightly more holistic view of things, but you've always got a limit to how far you can go with that (CEO, CityCo).
Despite these declared intentions, it is difficult to see how the geographical bans operated by the private sector, often in partnership with CityCo, and which always operated at a city centre level, would not set in motion a dynamic of displacement from the city centre towards the rest of the city (and its neighbouring municipalities). One stakeholder talked openly about his concern that these bans may result in a spatially segregated city centre:
158 the path of something like that is that you end up with an elitist situation where you get groups of people sticking together, and that's not healthy. People should- all people should be mixing in together, which is a much healthier society than having groups and people [who] don't interact, so I'd prefer that they didn't do that (..) I think generally [the city centre]'s fairly safe, because it's a busy city with lots of different types of people. Once you start having an exclusion zone then you will end up with groups of people of a certain type - that might not be such a safe place to go to. That's the long term situation that could arise. So it's better to have everybody in together, and it's better! (Northern Quarter artist).
The use of geographically based bans therefore was generally controversial amongst stakeholders. Some of the business actors and the institutional stakeholders tasked with deploying these bans embraced them as useful, and praised their successfulness. Most other stakeholders found them objectionable on a variety of grounds, from their doubtful effectiveness, to their enforcement cost or their potential to label individuals, displace crime, and even lead to a segregated and exclusionary city centre.
6.4 Conclusions
This chapter introduced the concept of the sensor city and critically reviewed its application within the context of Manchester City Centre and with references to a series of technology assemblages and networked analytics. These have been ethnographically documented, and discussed with the experts who deploy them, with the institutional and business stakeholders who promote them, and with other stakeholders, including city centre workers and residents, who may be directly affected by them as they live and move within the city centre.
The analysis of the empirical findings enabled a reflexive revisit of the security literature, including that on the sensor city. Reflecting on the literature calling for a paradigm shift in studying virtual surveillance, this chapter argued against the need of such a shift and for a recalibration of the study of surveillance to be centred on the interplay between physical and virtual networks of security and surveillance. This is due to the growing interdependence between those dimensions, as demonstrated by the security applications instantiated in Manchester city centre and analysed in this chapter, such as the ANPR- based police operation. Clustered, multi-layered and integrated security solutions, increasingly give rise to real-time spatial intervention, focused on controlling citizens’ mobility, and achieved through the nesting of various multi-agency databases and live feeds.
159
Equally, the type of securitisation analysed in this chapter, especially the Shop a Looter operation, questions the hypothesis of a paradigm shift towards a form of novel, diffuse and innocuous type of surveillance, based on new media and their allure, and allegedly operating for the purpose of entertainment. New forms of diffuse, but still strongly direct and directed surveillance (vertical and police-led) can and were mobilised via these new media.
On the other hand, CCTV-based surveillance has become largely normalised, and for many participants it goes unnoticed. Its deterrence power, theorised within the CPTED literature and contested by Armitage and Cozens et al. in their meta-analyses of CCTV effectiveness studies (Armitage 2002;Armitage 2012;Cozens et al. 2005) was disputed also by many participants, who instead believed CCTV very effective for prosecution. Even then, participants not involved in security (as professionals or indirectly through their workplace security) were largely unaware of the trend towards requesting live redirection of the police-managed CCTVs in public space. These requests, proactively seeking CCTV evidence for prosecution, are made by civilian informants (often security professionals in commercial settings) on their suspicion that an incident is about to unfold.
Moreover, these participants showed no awareness of the trend towards hybridisation, nesting and scaling up of surveillance and security more generally. Surveillance is often multidirectional and exercised in various ways (technological or not) by a multiplicity of actors, some of which are progressively involved in activities which could be described as forms of ‘soft-policing’ or ‘para-policing’. While many stakeholders acknowledged the presence of layered ways of tracking, monitoring and securitising the city centre, they often were unaware of some of the public-private links behind them, and at times unaware of the individual measures that were being deployed. Although they discussed forms of ubiquitous (private) surveillance on line (e.g. via Facebook), via smart phones and locative technologies (e.g. Google Earth), most residents and a number of city centre workers did not reflect nor show awareness of private surveillance in city centre commercial settings (such as within or nearby shops or clubs), nor of the convergence trend between public and private surveillance practices there.
160 This has important implications because the current trend towards hybridisation of security is likely to result in the business community exercising (unduly) a large influence on the security priorities pursued also by public services and the police in the city centre – privileging the deterrence, policing and prosecution of business crimes (such as shoplifting), over crimes that the residents in this study find more urgent to discourage or tackle (such as violent crime, see chapter 8 on stakeholders’ priorities).
While some participants disliked feeling watched and under CCTV surveillance, the ability to correctly identify someone within the city centre was by several participants perceived as only directed towards ‘wrong doers’, and residents generally felt anonymous within their city centre everyday existence and mobility, although they felt recognised in their mundane service encounters in their neighbourhood. Similarly, they were unaware of many applications of securitisation in Manchester city centre, from those affecting and restricting the mobility of individuals constructed as risky (e.g. from certain types of geographical ASBOs and retail-enforced bans to the ANPR-based exclusion zone), to those pertaining to other residents (e.g. the police database collected ahead of temporary events).
Stakeholders presented a complex picture in their attitudes to these individual measures. While the institutional actors tended to promote such security configurations, and eagerly embrace them also for their image making potential, when residents became aware of some of the measures in place, they often found them objectionable and undesirable on various grounds. Even when these measures were experienced by participants as not directed towards themselves, both residents and workers, together with changing constellations of other stakeholders, highlighted important considerations. These included practical concerns (whether the measures were efficient or effective), issues of proportionality (whether they were cost-effective, or their ends justified) and ethical considerations (whether they would transform, or had already transformed, the city centre into an exclusionary, often resident-hostile, segregated space, or exacerbate the marginalisation and displacement of deviant behaviour and citizens perceived as risky).
In conclusion, these findings highlight the contested nature of many of these measures, as well as their relatively low visibility amongst residents and users of the city centre, and document the different views of stakeholders. Not only do they reveal a lack of transparency in the deployment of many of the security measures pursued in partnership
161 by institutional and business stakeholders, but often in their rationale too. As outlined in the methodology, the mapping of views is carried out to promote greater transparency about the security aims and priorities currently pursued in Manchester city centre. By opening them up to greater scrutiny this research aims to engender greater accountability about these priorities, and the trade-offs currently made in their pursuit, and to stimulate more socially robust policy making.
162 Chapter 7 Cosmopolitanism
Chapters 4 to 6 have analysed the process of securitisation, and argued that its trajectory is proceeding in two ways. On the one hand, it advances through overt fortification and ‘spectacularisation’ of security, often implemented by private and institutional actors for the purposes of branding, image-making or -repairing. On the other, it occurs through practices that are not necessarily transparent, not least in their objectives, to those that often experience them or that when obvious remain contested by some stakeholders.
This chapter instead unpacks the argument presented in the introduction and more thoroughly developed in chapter 3, when looking at the recent history of Manchester’s city centre regeneration, about the role of cosmopolitan discourses and aspirations in co- shaping and re-configuring the city centre, in parallel with the already theorised trends towards securitisation.
The chapter opens with an introduction to the notion of cosmopolitanism, currently undergoing an undisputed revival, before accounting for how the concept is engaged by city branders. In doing so it supplements key local policy documents and grey literature,164 by directly eliciting the views of institutional and non-institutional stakeholders.
Participants’ views of cosmopolitanism were explored through invited reflections on Manchester city centre as it is now, their experiences of it, their perceptions of the transformations it went through, their projections and aspirations for its future, as well as through direct probing of the term ‘cosmopolitan’ (in connection with the city centre). Prompting participants’ perceptions on how Manchester and its city centre feature in the media and in public opinion (nationally and internationally) also led them to reflect on cosmopolitanism.165
7.1 The Current Cosmopolitan Turn
A growing body of literature is rapidly accumulating around theories of cosmopolitanism (Rovisco and Nowicka 2011;Vertovec and Cohen 2002;Delanty 2012), and the concept is
164 As explained in chapter 3, where the relationship between this literature and other media messages has also been discussed. 165 Fieldwork schedules are in appendix 4. Stakeholders’ views of Manchester’s media coverage are in appendix 3.
163 currently debated in a number of disciplines, spanning from law to philosophy, geography, sociology, anthropology and politics (Szerszynski and Urry 2006;Latour 2004;Lu 2000;Valentine 2008;Beck 2012;Cheah 2006;Delanty 2006;Yeoh and Lin 2012;Vieten 2012;Nava 2007).
Competing definitions, discourses and agendas around cosmopolitanism are circulating and commentators engaged in explaining the current resurgence of the debate, the so called cosmopolitan moment, promote their own definition of cosmopolitanism. Crucially, they stake claims to its agenda and the extent of its transformational potential. For a critical and more comprehensive account of the current debate and its literature, please see the book chapter in appendix 7 (Pieri 2014a).
In the West these debates originated in antiquity with the thought of the Cynics and the Stoics, and have re-emerged with great intensity at different times (Fine and Cohen 2002), most notably in the Enlightenment period. While it is possible to stress continuity and even re-interpret the work of classical social theorists as engaging with the cosmopolitan debate (Turner 2006), some accounts of cosmopolitanism stress the discrete nature of certain historic cosmopolitan moments (Fine and Cohen 2002) in search of commonalities in their context and concerns and to shed light onto the contemporary cosmopolitan moment. Most commonly, commentators see the current resurgence of cosmopolitanism as linked to various processes connected to globalisation - from transnational migration to increased mobility and urbanisation (Beck and Sznaider 2006;Delanty 2006;Szerszynski and Urry 2006).
While no agreement emerges on the contested and competing definitions of cosmopolitanism, the taxonomy developed by Vertovec and Cohen (2002) remains the best illustration of this variety of thought.166 These authors, reviewing the debate that has been ongoing since the 90s, argue that cosmopolitanism has been variously defined (a) as a socio cultural condition (resulting from the rapid flows of goods and people, changes in transport and communication), (b) as a world view (the citizen-of-the-world philosophy) implying a variety of stances in relation justice, (c) as a political project towards building transnational institutions (ranging from the UN to grass-root environmental movements), (d) as a
166 This classification, subsequently subject to critique and refinement – for instance incorporating feminist and post-colonial critiques (Nava 2007) - remains a reference point (Rovisco and Nowicka 2011).
164 political project that acknowledges individuals’ experience and the performance of a multiplicity of identities, attachments and affiliations, (e) as a dispositional orientation of individual and aesthetic appreciation of diversity, or (f) as a competence or skill for navigating different semiotic systems (Vertovec and Cohen 2002).
Behind the appearance of a unified call for embracing cosmopolitanism, these slippery, only-partially overlapping and often contested definitions indicate the presence of very heterogeneous agendas. Some advocate disciplinary reforms (Beck and Sznaider 2006;Beck 2012) and the study of complex phenomena beyond the confines of the national. Others envisage social responsibilities and normative interventions (Fine and Cohen 2002) to achieve greater social justice (Glick Schiller 2010; see also Soysal 2010), challenge current policy and practice in their narrow understanding of culture, difference and group belonging (Vertovec 2001;Vertovec and Cohen 2002), and in the face of super-diversity (Vertovec 2007). Others still advocate a critical focus on the discursive imaginaries mobilised around cosmopolitanism (Delanty 2006: 419), the cultural modes of mediation at play in this debate, or promote a subaltern cosmopolitanism to be pursued for and by the socially excluded (Santos 2002: 460; see also Vieten 2012).
7.2 A Critique of Cosmopolitanism
Despite the positive connotations associated with the term in common parlance, and to some extent also within the scholarly debate, cosmopolitanism has been subject to much criticism (Lu 2000), both historically and in its more recent reformulations (please see Pieri 2014a, in appendix 7, for a detailed treatment of the issue). One strand of criticism advocates the rejection of cosmopolitanism in favour of the term cosmopolitics (Latour 2004;Cheah 1998;Cheah 2011), which is seen as more attentive to the political and economic dynamics at play within the current debate, and to the constitutive efforts required to move towards a cosmopolitan society.
Cosmopolitanism is seen by some critics as a naive and idealist perspective (Lu 2000) - clashing with the realities of injustice experienced by many - and often its agendas are accused of reproducing simplistic representations of difference (Latour 2004;Lu 2000). The types of contact and sociability described by some as cosmopolitan are seen by others as hopelessly romanticised and sentimentalised (Valentine 2008;Vertovec and Cohen
165 2002;Vertovec 2007). They are seen as presenting an (over)optimistic view of interactions in metropolitan sites (Gilroy 2005;Yeoh and Lin 2012;Valentine 2008). Similarly, the scenario of gradual erosion of cultural difference through interethnic mixture and hybridisation is also argued to be unrealistic (Amin 2002). Diversity in the face of proximity - what Massey calls ‘the implacable spatial fact of shared turf’ (2004: 6) - can result in a variety of outcomes. As Amin notes, ‘contact is a necessary but not sufficient condition for multicultural understanding’ and ‘[h]abitual contact in itself is no guarantor of cultural exchange. It can entrench group animosities and identities’ (2002: 969).167 So while some highlight temporary moments of conviviality (Gilroy 2005), and the forging of new cross- group alliances (such as those resulting from 'superdiversity', and theorised by Vertovec 2007), diversity can lead to other outcomes too. It can result in lack of engagement (as found in Brixton by Butler and Robson 2001;Butler 2003),168 where diversity was sought by some groups (of gentrifiers) as mere ‘social wallpaper’(Butler 2003). In other cases, the appearance of conviviality in public settings can hide long-held views of contempt towards those seen as different (Valentine 2008). Diversity can even result in open resentment and revanchist responses (MacLeod 2002;Wacquant 2007;Wacquant 2008;Smith 1996) towards those perceived as ‘out of place’ or encroaching on the same space used by more powerful and affluent users.
Other postcolonial and feminist critics denigrate the penchant for rationalism, rootlessness and abstraction that some understandings of cosmopolitanism have (for instance that of Hannerz 1990), and advance a situated cosmopolitanism (Appiah 2006), or denounce the gender bias in recent theorisations of cosmopolitanism (Nava 2002;Nava 2007).
One of the most poignant critiques moved against cosmopolitanism remains that of its elitism, which also highlights the centrality of the figure of the cosmopolitan to the controversy, historically and in its most recent renditions (for instance in the work of Waldron 2000;Hannerz 1990), prompting further accusations of Western-centric and class bias (by Werbner 1999;Werbner 2008;see also Kymlicka, as quoted in Waldron 2000;Nava 2007; for a rebuking of the accusations instead see Favell 2003). A related accusation against cosmopolitanism concerns its alleged imperialism, a criticism that Lu and Mignolo
167 The ‘politics of propinquity’ developed by Amin (2002) therefore takes disagreement seriously, focusing on everyday negotiations of difference, instead of relining of an hybridisation of views. 168 Where parallel and non-intersecting lives can be led. Butler and Robson (2001) capture it in their metaphor of tectonic plates, which also evokes the possibility of conflict (should the plates came into contact with each other).
166 explore historically (Lu 2000;Mignolo 2000) but that others relate to the current debate (Latour 2004;Cheah 2011) as well. As mentioned, the debate remains lively and no single interpretation or agenda for cosmopolitanism (nor characterisation of ‘the cosmopolitan’) emerges as dominant.
7.3 Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism
An interesting way of conceptualising cosmopolitanism as a diffuse practice is offered by theories of mobilities, which consider cosmopolitanism as a cultural phenomenon (Szerszynski and Urry 2006). As noted by Vertovec and Cohen, this implies that cosmopolitanism is both a form of aesthetics and that it materialises through specific tastes and consumption practices:
[t]he growth in the number and reach of global connoisseurs, elite or not, (..) is linked to John Urry’s (1995) notion of ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’. Not only elites, but also tourists of all kinds have developed more cosmopolitan or far-reaching aesthetic tastes. This can be directly linked with (as both driving force and outcome of) the enhanced popular trend over the past few decades towards the ‘consumption’ of foreign places. (..) It is a trend arguably based on exoticism, commodification and consumer culture. (..) Aesthetic cosmopolitanism can be found at home, too, through other forms of consumption. (Vertovec and Cohen 2002: 7).
Within this framework cosmopolitanism lacks the attributes of a deep sensitivity and acceptance of the ‘other’ and lacks the normative commitment to social change and social justice, for instance through the creation of transnational networks and institutions. This is an ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ which is often dubbed in the literature – including by those who conceptualise it - as ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (for instance Szerszynski and Urry 2006: 113). Although the cosmopolitan thus conceived displays a level of openness towards the ‘other’ in the form of a curiosity towards (and competence in) navigating semiotic difference (Szerszynski and Urry 2006), as Skinner notes
‘Consumerist cosmopolitanism’ does not equate to a tolerant cosmopolis. It is an ‘easy’ cosmopolitanism then, of items rather than identifications (Skinner 2010:12).
The cosmopolitan comes to be seen as someone who dabbles in various practices (Waldron 2000) – from eating in ‘ethnic’ restaurants to pursuing various types of mobilities. These practices remain the ‘easy faces of cosmopolitanism’(Calhoun 2002:105 in Skinner 2010:12). Rather than tackling inequalities, they maintain existing inequalities and sustains new ones, including the divide between those seen as cosmopolitan and the rest (Szerszynski and Urry 2006, see also appendix 7 ), given that social differentiation is performed also through the
167 exercise of taste (Bourdieu 1984; in particular see Warde et al. 1999 for an account of distinction in eating out and displaying omnivorous tastes in 'ethnic' cuisines).169
7.4 Banal Cosmopolitanism and the Regeneration of Manchester
The same practices and activities associated in the literature with banal cosmopolitanism have been fostered in Manchester by various institutional and corporate stakeholders, as part of the re-imaging of the city centre that accompanied its regeneration and its urban entrepreneurial turn, as already discussed in chapter 3. The enablers sustaining these practices were the expansion of the range of restaurant, entertainment and shopping venues (Bell and Binnie 2005), the spacialisation of dedicated areas of consumption or ‘pleasure’(Osborne and Rose 1999),170 such as Manchester’s Chinatown or its Gay Village (Bell and Binnie 2004;Binnie and Skeggs 2004), the creation of integrated consumption and entertainment complexes, like the Printworks, and of entire neighbourhoods, like Spinningfields. A strong enabler was also the organisation of a calendar of city centre ethnically and culturally diverse events and celebrations throughout the year. The circulation of promotional information and extensive media coverage about these activities and events also contributed, and as seen through the analysis of the MEN coverage, continues to contribute significantly towards reinforcing this ‘cosmopolitan’ image of Manchester and its city centre
The reimaging of Manchester city centre has also been advanced through the re-making, marketing and selling of its property market, within which (banal) cosmopolitanism has been playing a central role in shaping the image of ‘city living’ in Manchester. 171 In their study of Manchester city centre, Young, Diep and Drabble accessed the views of property developers and estate agents, and argued that both the promotional material and the (marketing) discourses mobilised by these professionals featured cosmopolitanism as a recurrent and central theme (Young et al. 2006). The modalities in which these
169 Even where practices become very diffuse (e.g. cheap air travel) and render ultra-mobility routine, the notion that increased contact with diversity (at home or abroad) may automatically engender greater acceptance of ‘otherness’ remains problematic (Vertovec and Cohen 2002, Butler 2003). Equally, the dominant narrative depicting cities as preferential sites of cosmopolitanism is often argued to fail empirical testing (Yeoh and Lin 2012; Valentine 2008). 170 Osborne and Rose describe these as ‘a series of packaged zones of enjoyment’ built around ‘their own microcultures of bohemian, gay, or alternative lifestyles (..) in the name of the unique qualities of pleasure offered by their particular habitat’ (1999: 758). 171 In Manchester ‘city living’ and ‘city centre living’ become interchangeable (see Chapter 3 on the repopulation of the city centre).
168 professionals talked of cosmopolitanism, through references to ‘sophisticated continental style pavement cafes’, ‘cuisine from around the world’, the vibrant night-time economy and music scene, carnivals, street markets and special events (ibid:1699), indicate that they too understood it as ‘aesthetic’ or ‘banal cosmopolitanism’. Within the same qualitative study the views of city centre residents were also sought and often, if not always, residents felt invested in the same rhetoric of loft-living cosmopolitanism, which the authors criticise as reinforcing class-based aesthetics and distinctions (Young et al. 2006: 1711) and as producing marginalisation and the devaluing of certain forms of (social) diversity.172
Even a cursory look at Urban Life, the local weekly magazine dedicated to city living and property listing,173 corroborates these findings, as the images of city centre living circulated there also frame cosmopolitanism as a function of varied entertainment, carnivals and events, and sleek apartment living. Cosmopolitanism continues to be evoked instrumentally to generate a sense of place for individual developments and for (parts of) the city centre.
7.5 Cosmopolitanism in Local Policy and Promotional Discourses
Local policy documents and grey literature also contain references to cosmopolitanism, which is seen as providing an element of continuity with Manchester’s history. The Central Manchester Strategic Regeneration Framework, for instance, launched in 2008, highlights the Council’s priorities for the area over the following 10-15 years and notes:
In moving on from its roots in the industrial city of the 1900s, Central Manchester will be: • Dynamic • Liveable • Connected; • Cosmopolitan and • Economically diverse (Manchester City Council 2008: 31).
The city’s immigration past is selectively alluded to (unsurprisingly, there are no references to the living conditions of the 1900 immigrants, nor to any more recent difficulty), and re- interpreted as one of the City’s strengths, today as in the past:
172 This marginalisation was often framed as fear of ‘various others’ seen as out of place in the city centre – from the homeless and Big Issue vendors to certain ethinic groups, youth cultures (skateboarders), and other socio-demographics (Ibid:1705), a finding which, as we discuss in chapter 8, is also emerging from this research. 173 Sampled for three months along with the Manchester Evening News to explore local media images of the city centre.
169
Central Manchester’s cosmopolitan nature, with its rich cultural and historic fabric are existing strengths which we aim to build on to unlock the area’s full potential as an attractive place to live, work and do business (Ibid:8, my emphasis)
our aim is to build on the diversity of Central Manchester to create distinctive, attractive and safe neighbourhoods (ibid:1).
Mobilising narratives about Manchester’s past and present helps framing the institutional vision for Manchester’s future. A similar document that maps out the policy for the city centre, the Manchester City Centre Strategic Plan for 2004-2006, notes that ‘[t]he wider vision for Manchester is clear (..) to ensure that the city is a major European regional capital, a centre for investment growth’ (Manchester City Council 2003: 6). Even stronger claims appear in the most recent version of this document, A Strategic Plan for Manchester City Centre 2009-2012, where Manchester’s ambition to be amongst the first cities in Europe and the world is spelled out (Manchester City Council 2009b: 7). The beliefs that the city centre will reflect this aspiration, and that perceptions of its quality of life will determine external perceptions of the city at large, and influence global capital investment decisions are also circulated.174
Policy makers are not alone in taking an instrumental view to cosmopolitanism, and property developers approach the issue in a similar fashion, as indicated by Young et al.’s (2006) study and by my interview data. Even when not focusing on the availability of restaurants and events, indicators such as census data on ethnicities and schools can be mobilised to similar effect. Bruntwood’s Director of Special Projects, commenting on research findings reporting the wide number of languages spoken in the city, similarly envisaged that this diversity would be setting Manchester apart from other cities, seen as competing against it for investors’ attention:
there were more languages spoken in Manchester than in any UK city outside of London, more than virtually every European competitor city for business location.
In local policy discourse cosmopolitanism is considered by city makers and branders (as by property developers) as a way of adding vibrancy and appeal to the description of the cityscape. As such cosmopolitanism also appears to be carefully managed and orchestrated,
174 Extensive quotes from these documents appear in 3.2.
170 as the diversity envisaged within such discourse is very much tamed, sanitised and presented in the form of a standardised - if varied –repertoire of consumption places:
The Printworks, Cornerhouse and Great Northern development, and a diverse variety of restaurants, clubs, bars and a cosmopolitan cafe culture boost Manchester’s attractiveness (Manchester City Council 2009b. A strategic plan for Manchester city centre, 2009-2012. p.12, my emphasis)
The [Village’s] award-winning, new-look, larger and higher quality alfresco dining arrangement has added much needed extra capacity to the food offer, drawing in a cosmopolitan range of custom (Ibid:45, my emphasis).
This is particularly evident when discussing the ‘cosmopolitan’ outlook of an area of the city centre that is now known as the Civic Quarter, and includes the Manchester Central Convention Centre (where the party conferences are held) and its surrounding facilities, as well as the Town Hall complex. Cosmopolitanism is here even understood as deriving from mixed use of space itself, as well as from the introduction of facilities (cultural or otherwise) for visitors travelling on business or for leisure:
The planned investment in the framework area will deliver sustainable development and strengthen the already rich mix of civic, business, cultural, tourism and leisure uses. It will create a vibrant cosmopolitan meeting place (Manchester City Council 2009aCivic Quarter - Manchester Central: Regeneration Framework. Executive Summary, my emphasis)
This rich mix of uses will bring great vitality to the area, which will be truly cosmopolitan, and a focal point not only for the City centre but for Manchester City Region (Ibid:19, my emphasis).
In these documents there are no references to diversity in the city (centre) as a creative force, a democratic and enriching trait, a political and cultural civic dimension of life in Manchester, nor suggestions that cosmopolitanism might act as a catalyst for change, although there are instead a few intimations that the city hopes to become a beacon (the term used is often ‘core’) for cosmopolitanism in the whole region (Manchester City Council 2008). Manchester is praised as a welcoming place - which to some extent frames diversity in terms of hospitality, although many references are also made to long established communities, including various BME groups originally migrating from the Indian Subcontinent. While there is a concession that not everything is necessarily idyllic, this only emerges in relation to areas outside of the city centre, where one of the priorities listed is
171 [r]adically changing the poor image suffered by some neighbourhoods, whilst promoting and emphasising the cosmopolitan and international profile that Central Manchester as a whole can offer (2008: 36).
Pending the launch of the latest versions of strategy documents and city centre plans and priorities, it is interesting to speculate on the trajectory that this trend will take. Binnie (2011) noted that the local urban leadership may be slowly dropping the terminology of cosmopolitanism in favour of the more comfortable and vague branding of Manchester (‘the Original Modern’ phrase suggested by Seville, see chapter 8). References to connectivity with the rest of the World continue to abound in the latest strategy for Greater Manchester as a whole (GMCA 2013), and in the promotional material that accompanies the regeneration of various sites outside the city centre, including Ashton- under-Lyne (Binnie 2011). Nonetheless, a recalibration of the trend was also noticeable in the interview conducted with the Marketing Director at Marketing Manchester,175 who when asked if she thought the city centre was cosmopolitan, replied:
I think the word is overused [laughs] but yes, it is a very modern.. destination. We have a good city centre population of workers as well as residents, which is really that demand which drives supply (..) independent cafes (..) bars, restaurants (..) new things opening all the time (..) I don't like to use the word cosmopolitan, because everybody says it and that's.. we are a modern city with all of those facilities in place (..) if you read any city's promotional collateral, it will probably say it's a cosmopolitan city and it's actually 'what do you really mean by that? What does a cosmopolitan city mean?' (..) I just think it's kind of slightly overused term.. it's not to say that, you know, that we are not (director of strategic marketing, Marketing Manchester).
Other institutional stakeholders interviewed felt more at ease using the term, including the Chief Executive of the City Council (SHB below), and the Head of the council’s City Centre Regeneration Team (PB below):
PB: very much so! Very much so SHB: yeah, I don't think there is any doubt about that PB: the number of languages that must be spoken in the city centre! SHB: the quality and diversity of the restaurants, the amenities, you know who enthusiastically affirmed the city centre was a cosmopolitan place.
175 The organisation incorporates Visiting Manchester, the Tourist Board for Greater Manchester.
172 7.6 Mapping Participants’ Views of Cosmopolitanism in Manchester City Centre
Although there was considerable disagreement amongst stakeholders about the actual extent to which Manchester city centre could be claimed to be cosmopolitan, most participants saw it as such. The exceptions to this trend, although few, are nonetheless revealing, as they were advanced by participants who found this space to be less mixed ethnically and less varied in what it offered than other inner city or suburban areas:
there are restaurant in the city centre for different kinds of minorities but when I walk I don't see so many minority groups, I just see, I mainly see white people.. shopping and going round (..) I would think that even Levenshulme is more cosmopolitan, it's in the south and there are many more Pakistani people there (..) (student)
[the city centre] will attract people to work, whether it attracts them to live is another matter. (..) in Moss Side we've got quite a strong Somali community. You wouldn't say that in the city centre (..) I have not seen any evidence of any ethnic shops particularly that you would find in South Manchester. (..) there's a lot of ethnic shops in Longside (..) I don't think you've got that variety in the city centre (police inspector).
Another set of exceptions were offered by stakeholders who had a professional involvement in shaping the city centre, and who were pleased with the current trajectory pursued, but aware that more needed to be done in the future:
If you are comparing it against, I don't know, Milan or Turin, or wherever, then you may argue 'no, it's not [cosmopolitan]' (..) I think what Manchester has become over the last 10-15 years is a city that is much more cosmopolitan than A) used to be, and B) I think, other cities within the UK.. it's always tended to do things a bit earlier than other cities, and so the café culture (..) that mix of kind of the strong brands that will attract national and international visitors against that kind of independent offer (..) we are moving absolutely in the right direction (..) the feedback we get from our visitors is that Manchester is seen as a kind of a vibrant cosmopolitan city (MD, Visiting Manchester)
[It is] not yet [cosmopolitan]. I think it's getting there (..) it's somewhere on a journey because its starting point was very, very far behind everywhere else (..) we still need more people living in the city [centre] (..) ten times more over a period of time would deliver the kind of cosmopolitan experience that we would perhaps seek (Deputy CEO Urban Splash)
it's more cosmopolitan than a lot of places in the UK, but I don't think it is very cosmopolitan. I think it’s becoming more cosmopolitan (Design for Security consultant).
As already apparent from these quotes, cosmopolitanism was seen as a relational attribute, rather than a universal characteristic. It was seen as a feature of how Manchester city centre is now in comparison to what it used to be about 10-15 years ago, or emerging in relation to other geographical sites – such as the rest of Manchester, the Northwest region,
173 other cities nationally, (and primarily London), and internationally. In this respect, its connectivity (the airport links, but also the rapid trains to London) was also praised, together with its ability to make the news ‘in the right way’, by getting media coverage for events and festivals.
The process of reflecting on whether they considered the city centre cosmopolitan prompted many stakeholders to adopt an outsider’s perspective. They spoke through the lenses of their acquaintances and friends (who were living elsewhere) or their customers (tourists and visitors) who upon spending time in the city centre had commented very favourably. Incidentally, these narratives often included mentions of visitors’ surprise at the city centre exceeding their expectations. Visitors were not just called upon as a lens through which to peek at the city centre, but for some participants they also represented a tangible proof that Manchester city centre was cosmopolitan (enough) to attract them in large quantity. Manchester was generally seen by all stakeholders as being a warm and welcoming place for visitors and tourists.
Contrary to what was found by Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst (2005) who looked at Manchester’s suburbs, my participants’ references to cosmopolitanism were not found to be extensions of any ‘form of diaspora identity of the white English’ (Ibid: 182) nor did the stakeholders ‘embrace broader global contacts, which are strongly oriented to former British imperial colonies’ (Ibid: 188). Rather the references to cosmopolitanism in my data signal identifications with circuits of mobility and travel across Europe and beyond, as well as performing social distinction.
As noted by Savage at al in their study (Ibid: 205), maintaining a strict dichotomy that juxtaposes the ‘local’ and ‘the cosmopolitan’ is problematic and often unsupported empirically, and the same proved to be the case in this research, although arguably not for the same reasons found by Savage et al in the suburban areas they looked at. A cosmopolitan identity was perceived as a positive characteristic, one generally ascribed to the city centre, and implicitly claimed by participants for themselves too. Contrary to what was found for the suburbs by Savage at al, though, at least half of the participants accessed in my study mentioned being from Manchester or Greater Manchester (even if in some cases they had temporarily lived elsewhere in the UK before coming back to Manchester). Some of them referred to themselves as Mancunians, and at other times chose to define
174 themselves as Northerners. Either way, even as they embraced a (Mancunian or Northerner) local identity, they did so in open defiance of what they saw as traditional stereotypes that were still circulating around the North-South divide (see appendix 3). Their ‘Northern’ identity espoused the elements of ‘cool Manchester’, for instance the music and clubs scenes and other spheres where Manchester was thought to have excelled or still excel, as discussed in chapter 3. This allowed them to connect with other locales and international circuits, effectively globalising their reach abroad, instead of closing into a quaint and sentimentalised description of ‘the local’.176
7.6.1 Diversity versus Cosmopolitanism
However, the analysis also shows that the terminology of cosmopolitanism itself functioned as a trigger177 prompting in many of the stakeholders a (regressive) conceptualisations of diversity (evoking affluent cappuccino drinkers, to the exclusion of others seen as out of place). When explicitly commenting on cosmopolitanism, many participants, including residents, framed it just as it is framed in much local policy discourse, grey literature and promotional material. They equated it with aesthetic and banal cosmopolitanism, with vibrancy measured through the number and variety of entertainment venues and activities on offer, the range of tastes catered for:
yes [it is cosmopolitan]! (..) in the summer you come outside Canal Street and there's tables, there's chairs, you get waiter's service, there's umbrellas (..) it doesn't matter the colour of your skin, your sexual orientation.. you can have a latte, you can have a glass of wine, you can have a champagne, you can drink till midnight (Canal Street bar owner)
it is very cosmopolitan (..) it's all linked (..) all the trains; the bars are updated. Everything, it's European, it's Asian, it's everything, everything you want. If you want something you can find it in Manchester (Big Issue vendor).
it is a definitely - a vibrant, multicultural city - a lot different from when I first saw it as a youngster just after the war (..) it is a centre of differences. It is business during the day (..) but then Saturday and Sunday in the evenings it's, it's, it's different (..) different areas have different, ehr, different sort of lifestyles (..) within a very ...very compact area (resident focus group 2).
176 The ethnography also revealed instances of a sudden precipitation towards a more bounded local identity - ironically, prompted by some of the very stakeholders (e.g. the tourist board marketing unit) that otherwise strongly promote a (banal) cosmopolitan identity for Manchester and its citizens. This was the case in the aftermath of the August 2011 unrest, when appeals to the citizenry as ‘true Mancunians’ started to circulate even through institutional channels through the I love MCR campaign (see Pieri 2014, appendix 6). 177 The term was introduced at a late stage, often after participants had already introduced it themselves - when describing Manchester city centre as they saw it today, or in their views and experiences of how it had changed over time (see appendix 4).
175
Although interesting allusions are made to multiculturalism, ethnicity, and diversity of sexual preferences, these are celebrated as generally representing different tastes and lifestyles as far as consumption patterns are concerned, and not as evoking differences of values for instance.
Most notable in this context was, however, the response of the Chair of Greater Manchester Police Authority, also a City Councillor. While praising the city centre as cosmopolitan, the Chair raised concerns about the challenges faced outside its confines, where extreme right-wing sentiments and racism pose considerable threats:
I think there is a big challenge in Europe at the moment (..) the extreme Right (..) the rise of the EDL, it hits places like Manchester and Greater Manchester regularly. I think we've got a major challenge there. I think intellectually we all need to actually address that as well, socially. (..) the more eclectic we are in the city [centre], but what we need is spread this out in the suburbs, and there are perhaps some suburbs that are predominantly white, working class suburbs, they've got to learn that it is a small world. With air travel, we could be across the Atlantic in six hours. You could be on another continent that quickly. But people just are intolerant of other people, different race or colour or creed, or religion (GMPA chair).
This was the only stakeholder who referred to the need to tackle racism and the hostility that can exist towards diversity. Although there were a few other sporadic references (discussed in 7.6.3) to the issues of intolerance and violence, they were only made to state a participant’s own lack of personal experience of that,178 or that such occurrences were still rare when compared to other localities.
Most participants stressed instead the variety and constant turnover of new entertainment and venues praising their heterogeneity and ability to co-exist in parallel. Some argued for the need to offer something for all in order to be able to attract different socio- demographics. However, there were also participants who associated the cosmopolitan character of the city centre only with specific (middle class-inflected) activities. These included going to the theatre or drinking in independent gastro pubs and eating in restaurants, rather than engaging in other pursuits, such as frequenting large drinking establishments or clubs:
178 As a white and middle-class woman, a participant hasted to add that she was not best placed to appreciate the experiences other socio-demographics may have. The stakeholders accessed were varied in their socio- demographics, see appendix 1.
176 it’s becoming more cosmopolitan, with places like the Northern Quarter where you've got things like bars and restaurants, independent cinemas and art-houses and things like that. (..) people's attitude towards going out is changing as well (Design for Security consultant)
E: and what kind of things do you associate with the city being cosmopolitan, or a space being cosmopolitan? F: to be honest, like nightlife and going to expensive places, restaurants, dining (..) the shopping and lunching and daytime things like that, so where Selfridges is, you know that kind of area, I would say is [cosmopolitan], (..) I would say going cocktails, going restaurants, going drinks and things, and then lunchtime out of the office and things, that kind of things (florist 2).
7.6.2 Cosmopolitan Built Environment and Practices
With the property market contributing to shaping and diffusing ideas of (banal) cosmopolitanism, associating it with loft living and urban (high) life, it is perhaps not surprising that along with the prioritisation of certain activities over others as cosmopolitan, certain designs and housing styles were also defined by one participant as ‘cosmopolitan’:
I moved up into a new-built flat, it's really smart and really cosmopolitan-feeling, really classy (..) there's no denying that there is some places that it is a cobbled street, and it is terraced houses, and it is quite dilapidated. You know that's what happens in diverse cultures, you have people from all types of background (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
Ironically, the quote acknowledges the co-existence of diversity (symbolised by the presence of different housing types and living conditions, and the reference to backgrounds) but implicitly suggests that only some types of diversity (enacted through living in the type of stylish new flat above) could count as cosmopolitan. Along with housing and design, architecture was also perceived as adding to the city centre’s cosmopolitan character. On the one hand new architecture was seen by another participant as symbolic of Manchester’s claim to distinction, guaranteeing its positioning internationally:
certainly architecture has definitely improved a lot. And I think steps have been made to make Manchester a more (..) international city now, over the last ten years it's developed a lot. It's not just a Northern town anymore, it's an international city (NQ artist).
On the other, well defined themed areas, such as the Gay Village and Chinatown, were heralded by some stakeholders as visible proof (inscribed in the urban physical fabric of the city centre) of its cosmopolitanism. As well as warranting a cosmopolitan look by virtue of their built environment (for instance the canal pavements covered in tables for outdoors dining and drinking, or the ethnic architecture of the Chinese Arch) these spaces function
177 as prime locations for a series of events that contribute to the cosmopolitan identity- making process (see also Yeoh 2005). These events were discussed by stakeholders across the board as significant in representing and enhancing the international standing of Manchester, and a number of stakeholders openly associated them to the cosmopolitan profile of the city and its city centre:
oh yeah [the city centre is cosmopolitan], absolutely, definitely. I mean, it's such a small city in comparison to London, but you've got every- I mean every type of thing going on to cover everyone's religion (..) when it's Chinese New Year the whole Town Hall gets kitted out in oriental, you know. Manchester takes into account like every single festival, holiday, stuff like that (bakery owner).
The events discussed were not only those representing a specific ethnic or cultural tradition, but also events like national party conferences or the International Festival and their value was also in circulating the cosmopolitan image of Manchester within the national media. This image in turn was considered instrumental in attracting further investment or visitor spending, as well as augmenting internal cohesion:
it's important in terms of, I think, national and international profile (..) the Chinese community (..) is the largest Chinese community in Europe, (..) the Gay community (..) it just raises the international profile, so that's a tourist destination, some place where you might want to bring your business from abroad. You see, it’s actually - now that you've got a more diverse population, their wider needs - easy to market (research manager, Chamber of Commerce)
celebrating St George's Day or Chinese New Year or Indian whatever it is, it's all an important part of the City's calendar because it gives different communities the opportunity to celebrate their own identity within Manchester. And Manchester has always been a cohesive successful city largely because of its commitment and the way it embraces multiculturalism. So we don't apologise for that, that's an important part of how we move forward (..) [most events] we do because of the economic impacts on the city (..) when we do Christmas markets, it's because you're drawing in 2 million visitors, who come in to the city and spend money in our shops and in our businesses (CEO Manchester City Council)
on the rise of events like Gay Pride, like Chinatown (..) you really get to see and to strengthen that kind of wider cosmopolitan image of the city (..) one thing it all comes back to I suppose, there is some selfishness there from the city corporation, actually we can raise the profile and therefore get a better profile for the city, but if both parties are willing, I'm not sure there is any problem with that (research manager, Chamber of Commerce).
The growth and improvement in hotel range and availability was also mentioned by some stakeholders as demonstrating the internationalisation of the city centre that they associated with cosmopolitanism, enabling the influx of tourism and visitors.
178 The universities were also mentioned as generating a cosmopolitan feel by bringing in a stream of visitors and students from different countries.179 However, while big corporations were seen by some business stakeholders as bringing in an international workforce (for instance in reference to the relocation of certain large financial institutions in the newly built offices in Spinningfields, as discussed by the Chamber of Commerce stakeholder), other stakeholders did not think of them as increasing cosmopolitanism. Other (generally non institutional) stakeholders made more references instead to independent shopping outlets, cafés and other venues, which were much valued as offering the variety and bohemian allure they tended to associate with a cosmopolitan place. So, in this respect, contradictory claims were being made about the type of (consumption) practices that would count as cosmopolitan, with some equating it with more capital intensive practices (more expensive practices and or requiring the mobilisation of more cultural capital), and others equating it to fringe, low cost and independent activities or venues.
Geographically, within the boundaries of the city centre, the same contradictory claims were made. While many identified affluent areas as cosmopolitan, others found cosmopolitanism in different formats and areas across the city centre:
obviously Oxford Road is very like students, so you get a real mix of everyone there ehm.. Piccadilly and all around the Northern Quarter is very independent businesses, so again you get a good mix. (..) Down here [Spinningfields] it's obviously got a little bit more money because of all the businesses that are around here but it doesn't mean that, you know, it's less cosmopolitan than anywhere else, yeah? (bakery owner)
the Northern Quarter, that's quite a cosmopolitan area, with all the boho bars and stuff. Spinningfields is getting quite like that now. There's bits and bobs in between, there's obviously a lot more cafes and sort, that sort of style. Probably the area that isn't, is going more towards Piccadilly Gardens area. It seems to be quite like a communal area where a lot of people.. hang out really, rather than actually be sat drinking a cup of coffee in a premise that is sort of set in an open space (hair saloon manager).
The quote above pushes banal cosmopolitanism to its logical conclusion - not only those not engaging in certain consumption practices do not qualify as cosmopolitan, but the whole area is supposedly (negatively) affected – a logic that can then result in revanchist interventions (MacLeod 2002) and further marginalisation of specific groups (Atkinson 2003).
179 The same claim appears also in local policy, for instance within the Central Manchester Strategic Regeneration Framework (2008:59)
179 7.6.3 Cosmopolitanism, Danger and Security
While discussing cosmopolitanism, a small number of participants connected it (directly or indirectly) with issues of safety. As mentioned, this was done explicitly by the GMPA Chair, who talked of the rise of the Far Right and the incidence of racism and violence (although this was seen as external to the city centre). Other stakeholders did it implicitly, either declaring not to have experienced any intolerance, or that Manchester itself was a safe place in relation to racism:
E: can you give me some examples of some aspects, or some things you think are cosmopolitan? A: (..) racism is still an issue, and I know it's an issue, and I know it's a problem to some people. But I think generally people of Manchester are fairly open-minded.. ehm.. about people who may have different colour skin, or whatever. It’s not such a big issue in Manchester (..) Manchester, the surrounding immediate areas, I think, are probably quite good for people, and quite safe (NQ artist)
Manchester was probably a little bit rougher than it is now. It probably feels more cosmopolitan and safer now (director of special projects, Bruntwood)
different minority and ethnic communities can.. can have their own space in Manchester and not be too.. targeted, you know, or segmented. (..) and they are allowed to exist harmoniously with each other (..) sometimes people get bad press because, you know, racism rows hit the headlines or you know LGBT people will hit the headline for one thing or another, but actually that's again a very minoritised thing. I think if you look at the 95% of the population, people, they are happy just let people get on with whatever they get on with, as long as it's not forced upon them (..) with Manchester a lot of people come and study from abroad, from all different countries. You know there's a whole different people from different walks of life that come to Manchester, and I genuinely think that the people of this city are welcoming (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
In these narratives spaces branded as cosmopolitan are also safe locales. Vice versa those not identified as cosmopolitan also appear to perform poorly in relation to their safety, as was the case for Piccadilly Gardens. Paradoxically, the latter is one of the most socially (and possibly ethnically) mixed spaces of the city centre, perhaps due to its bus and tram hubs (and the proximity of the train station) acting as the main entry point into the city centre. This is an area of great flux, and with a range of shops (low cost, like saver and betting shops, and middle-range, like M&S). This area is also generally perceived by most stakeholders as failing, and by many as being unsafe at night. The correlation between security and banal cosmopolitanism is evident. Instead of one causing the other, though, it is more fruitful to think of theirs as a symbiotic relationship, as observed in the securitisation of mega events too, during the party conferences and Pride event.
180 7.7 Conclusions
This chapter reviewed the current cosmopolitanism debate and argued that this is characterised by contrasting interpretations and contested agendas rather than by a unified set of concerns and visions. While cosmopolitanism can be thought of as a cultural condition, hence overcoming some of the limitations of other characterisations (including their elitism), it may be criticised for lacking any normative strength and desire to redress global injustices, or develop a better understanding and deep appreciation of those which one constructs as ‘other’ or ‘different’. This banal cosmopolitanism has been argued to prevail also in place branding and marketing - an hypothesis which was confirmed through the analysis of the recent mainstream local policy and grey literature on Manchester’s city centre. In these documents discourses of cosmopolitanism are circulated to sustain the city-makers and branders’ aspiration for Manchester. They reinforce its image and ability to compete with other cities in attracting investment, although such references might perhaps become less pronounced in the future.
Reviewing these data sources, I argued that the mobilisation of cosmopolitanism in policy is pursued both as a narrative tapping onto Manchester’s roots and history as a city of immigration, and, more poignantly, as a framing that sustains the city-makers and branders’ aspiration for its identity in the future. This aspiration relates to Manchester’s position on the international stage, its ability to successfully attract inward investment to the city, as well as an influx of visitors, residents and workers.
Institutional stakeholders are not alone in endorsing this understanding of cosmopolitanism. Most stakeholders and residents also interpret cosmopolitanism as a feature of place making. They narrowly and instrumentally conceive of it as necessary to adding vibrancy and character to what on offer in the city centre – the wide choice of restaurants, shopping venues and events enabling the city centre to compare favourably to other lively large cities in the UK and in Europe. This is not to say that stakeholders did not engage in more complex discussions over diversity. As the next chapter will argue, in abandoning the language of cosmopolitanism and sharing their views and aspirations for the future of the city centre, participants mobilised more complex accounts. They displayed a much deeper and extensive global reflexivity. They related, compared and contrasted
181 Manchester city centre with other sites, and raised pressing concerns over social justice and inclusivity in the city centre.
Finally, mapping stakeholders’ views of the geographies of banal cosmopolitanism, the spaces, built environments and practices to which a banal cosmopolitan status is granted, revealed another important finding: the symbiotic role of security and cosmopolitanism in city branding.
182 Chapter 8 Stakeholders’ Priorities and the Future(s) of Manchester City Centre
Previous chapters mapped out stakeholders’ views of city centre use and design today, and contrasted participants’ different experiences and opinions about its transformations over the last ten years or more. Divergences and convergences in their views were also explored in relation to the official images that are mobilised by institutional players and city branders in policy discourse, in grey literature and promotional material, as well as in the main local (printed) media.
This chapter completes this mapping by exploring participants’ visions of the future and their stated priorities for the future of the city centre. Such priorities were elicited towards the end of the interviews and during focus groups. As participants were invited to reflect and share their priorities, great care was taken to allow stakeholders to frame their accounts of these futures. Thus the latter were framed by them as things or activities that they would want to see happening generally, courses of actions they wished to (be able to) take themselves to shape the city centre, or practices and policies that they would want to see being privileged by specific actors in the city centre, including its institutional stakeholders.
As argued when presenting the methodology, the analysis teases out emerging areas of convergence and divergence in these competing visions and desired futures, and reveals some of the main values and preferences underling these. The future priorities recovered have been grouped under the headings of (1) security, (2) public space, (3) resident population, property development and housing, (4) hospitality, leisure and activity planning, (5) partnership and ‘community’ (6) borders, mobility and diversity.
8.1 Future Priorities and Security
Stakeholders expressed very different views about the current deployment of security measures in the city centre, with references to safety and security emerging spontaneously (before being prompted). Almost all participants agreed that Manchester city centre is a safe place. Light environmental design solutions were suggested as priorities for security and safety in the future, and generally endorsed across the board. Only one reference was made to the need to implement anti-terror designs (in building facilities to host major events - a suggestion made by a police superintendent). The light design solutions included
183 features such as better use of lighting and, for some, the opportunity of more natural (passer-by) surveillance and flux in the streets, achievable through a greater mix of pedestrian and car traffic at night for instance:
I would definitely like to see more lighting (..) because I think that the places I walk around in the evening don't feel safe because of the lighting (florist 2)
I would definitely prioritise environmental and social methods (..) getting the surrounding looking as good as possible always helps people treat it with more respect (..) the sort of social architecture and places that people naturally want to hang out in (..) lighting - and dark streets always feel less safe (..) it’s about the cultural and social offering as well (artistic lead, art venue)
T: keeping the space nice and light and bright and busy (..) I’ve already talked of the initiative of opening the roads at night, and I think it makes a huge difference J: I agree on traffic and pedestrian mix (resident focus group 2).
Some of the institutional stakeholders also proposed these priorities for the city centre. These measures were mostly seen as having to be accompanied by some level of activity planning, which tended to be seen as even more important:
better design (..) a move away from the uses and night pubs that encourage binge drinking. A move towards becoming more of a cultural place where there’s a high level of footfall during the evening, as there is during the day (..) you wouldn’t want to see more cctv, you’d want to see more opportunities for things like natural surveillance and guardianship of areas (Design for Security Police consultant)
it is about regeneration (..), making it more family friendly, because I don't think Manchester is a particularly family friendly destination. Now again I think the city recognises that. (..) it's probably about lighting to an extent (..) but I think predominantly it’s around regenerating the kind of open spaces in Manchester, and just making it more accessible, and creating a more vibrant culture (MD, Visiting Manchester).
A tension, however, was identified around the extent to which the current use of space and night-time economy are seen as problematic for the security for the city centre and its stakeholders, and consequently the extent to which a change to the status quo would be desired, and the best means to pursue it. This divergence of aspirations also discloses a wide divergence in the experiences stakeholders have of the city centre as it is now – which goes beyond issues of security.
For the tourist board the city is already engaged in striking a difficult balance between aspiring to attract different visitors and residents to the city centre and maintaining the (financially lucrative) market of stag and hen parties there, and a night-time economy principally based on drinking establishments. The balance thus appears to only require a
184 subtle re-calibration, and no references are made to current city centre residents’ negative experiences. In this account any concerns about security are ascribed to a UK-wide phenomenon, the dominant drinking culture prevalent in many other UK cities. They are seen as addressable mainly in terms of wide cultural shifts towards other activities, and through a subtle and indirect re-balancing of the cultural offering:
the difficulty we’ve got in Manchester, like any other city, is that on a Friday and Saturday night, you know, we do tend to get a lot of hen and stag party coming in. That doesn't create a very family friendly atmosphere, but that's a national culture rather than something that's just unique to Manchester, (..) there’s a balancing act, because again equally we don't want to turn those people away, because they are visiting the city and they are spending money in the city. But equally it's about striking a balance (MD, Visiting Manchester).
Similarly, the CEO of CityCo suggested their aspiration is to render the city centre a more varied place, in terms of age groups and demographic mix, and one that is more attractive to families. One of CityCo’s priorities is to achieve this through subtle and fine tuning via planning and offering more activities for different target groups:
I definitely would not say it's gone too far, in terms of that sort of bar culture, drink culture - but I think there needs to be very much a balancing in terms of other stuff that, summer evenings and family activity, that other stuff that's happening in the streets, that actually changes the demographics (..) that's about rebalancing more than anything else (CEO, CityCo).
Some other institutional stakeholders talked of their unease and dissatisfaction about the way the city centre was currently being used by the prevalent night-time economy only on personal terms (as expressing personal preferences rather than professional opinions, and indicating areas that they were avoiding on safety grounds).180 Residents and city centre workers, by contrast, were more vociferous in highlighting changes to the current night- time economy as their priority. They identified culprits in the large entertainment and drinking complexes such as the Printworks and Deansgate Locks, which they saw as facilitating criminal and or antisocial behaviour:
they shouldn't really have places where they can congregate so much, like the Printworks where there's so many bars, all linking together, there's one way in and there's one way out. So there is always going to be trouble there. They need to be a bit more spaced out really (Hair Saloon Manager).
180 The Chamber of Commerce research manager, for instance, reported avoiding Piccadilly Gardens and Market Street at night, as did some other participants.
185 For this subset of participants, prevention was the solution in the form of changes to the entertainment on offer, rather than through tighter policing or other security measures such as surveillance:
the drunk is going to attack you if he's on camera or not, (..) we want to build an atmosphere where people aren't sort of binge drinking and rolling around the streets and shouting. It's, it's, it's changing the, the atmosphere in the first place so you don't have to tackle that, that end problem (resident focus group 2).
Among the institutional stakeholders, only the Design for Security police consultant named the issue amongst his key priorities for the future of the city centre:
there needs to be a move away from creating places like the Printworks, (..) high density of drinking establishments, which create quite.. quite an atmosphere where people want to go and get drunk, and as a by-product of that there’s violence (..) if you look at where, where the violence occurs in these places like the Printswork, Deansgate Locks, where you've got places, a high density of bars, selling alcohol very cheaply, letting in very high numbers of people. When you've got nightclubs and bars with capacities of one or two thousands people, and you're selling alcohol cheaply, it's a recipe for disaster really.
A notable exception was the chair of the Greater Manchester Police Authority (also a City Councillor), who, whilst not naming the issue as one of his priorities, highlighted the clash of interests at play, and the need to place more responsibility on the venues themselves, without glossing over the complexity of the situation:
the challenge for us is (..) the weekend trade that we receive in the city centre. It's clearly a very lucrative area for businesses to evolve, but they have a responsibility themselves to ensure that the city centre is seen to be safe and secure, and that will mean that they need properly accredited door staff. We need staff that say 'I'm sorry but you had too much to drink already, and I'm not, I'm refusing to serve you'. There needs to be a real responsibility (..) when you say to them ' then close early', they say 'it's costing us money'. 'I see so it's only you who can make money, and then the National Health Service, the city council have to clean up the debris, they have to loose money'. It's really, it's only all one way. We really have to challenge that thinking (GMPA chair).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the very extensive cctv network that Manchester city centre already has, use of cctv was very rarely mentioned by stakeholders in the context of their priorities for the future. Although attitudes to cctv varied greatly, further introduction of cctv cameras was a priority mentioned by one participant only (advocating more visible cctv cameras at a transport hub). An expansion of the existing system was not seen as a priority by CityCo, the member organisation that manages the city centre, and the networked security of shops and various other premises. Other mentions of cctv in the
186 context of future priorities, some of which touched on the forecast of cuts and austerity measures, were merely highlighting the need (expressed by a police stakeholder) to maintain existing systems:
what I wouldn't like to see with the austerity measures kicking in everywhere is the cctv system falling into disrepair (..) we've got to maintain investment in that kind of network. It does work, I know there are academics out there who say, who challenge whether the cctv works. It works, let me tell you that! We've put hundreds of people away in prison based on the evidence on cctv (police superintendent) or proposing a more efficient and responsible use of the network, both in terms of privileging higher quality technical equipment (quality over quantity of cameras) and a more controlled use:
I don't want to see too many more cctvs (..) if you have some, have some with high quality.. and I am not relaxed on that, have proper procedure and policies in place (university academic staff).
Although, identity dominance, the ability to establish the identity of anyone entering or circulating in the city centre, was the aspiration of one of the security experts (see chapter
181 6.3.3) perhaps the tools and mechanisms for this are already largely in place.
A second area of major divergence amongst participants’ priorities for security in the city centre was identified around issues of police patrolling in the city centre. Views were divided amongst residents and people working in the city centre:
maybe (..) more police out and about, especially at the bus stops, at the main bus stops by Piccadilly Gardens. There's so much trouble round there all the time (..) that’d be more of a deterrent than CCTV (charity shop assistant)
the biggest thing [priority] probably is more police to be back out on the street again (..) all time, not just for events or when there's been some sort of uproar (..) no matter how many security people – like private security people – you have, it’s only police that can enforce the law (hair saloon manager)
maybe more police around because I usually only see police when there is something going on, you don't really see any police when it's just a normal day (florist 1)
more police on the streets can make it feel more frightening because you're thinking 'why do we have all these police on the street? What is - what is going on? What is - what's wrong with this city?' and I don't particularly want to see a city where it's being patrolled by, by police (resident focus group 2)
181 Moreover, identity dominance may rely on other technologies and intelligence, or be cctv-enabled without being cctv-led.
187
when it comes to the question of police presence (..) it's an issue which you can argue both sides (..) every time I've seen police (..) it's always been because there's been something going on that they're trying to suggest, well, it's almost like they're trying to imply that they've got a hold on it rather than they actually have (residents focus group 2).
The same tension also existed among other participants, from institutional stakeholders to property developers and even within the police force, when talking of their priorities for police presence on the streets:
for me you can't get enough, or you can't have enough physical sort of manifestations of authority on the street (..) if you are going shopping on the Saturday afternoon, my expectation would be that you should within your two hours of shopping see at least one police officer. You know, I don't think that's an unreasonable request or expectation. Sometimes we can't always deliver that, but then perhaps you should be able to see a parking warden or a street warden or a cctv camera or a security guard or, you know. There's millions of people who disagree with me on that, but that's my own personal view (police superintendent)
people need to feel secure that police are around, but we don't want police marching up and down with a truncheon (..) thankfully that's no longer a part of Manchester's culture. It used to be 10 years ago, which some people would argue helped to create some of the problems (CEO, Manchester City Council)
I think that there is a general low-key presence of deterrence, which is police officers on the beat now (..) that makes you feel more comfortable and less threatened, if you're not aware that there's an issue. So I think [my priorities are] the measures that you can see less than more of (Deputy CEO, Urban Splash)
the police level is probably about right (Design for Security consultant).
As argued, forms of para-policing and ‘soft’ policing are becoming more frequent (see Chapter 6.3.6). While the superintendent’s quote above references it (via wardens and security guards), this phenomenon received only two mentions amongst stakeholders’ priorities. The first, in passim, as a city centre worker compared private policing unfavourably with official policing (see hair saloon manager’s quote above); the second, by a member of the Village Angels, advocating a much expanded role for these forms of para- and soft policing in securing the city centre in the future:
people that are in public facing jobs - like receptionists in large buildings, like bar managers, like door staff, like, even people like sweepers, street cleaners, people who see the community and work in the community and deal with community - need better knowledge of public safety, and need to be more aware of signs that they've to look out for, things that they see, act on their instinct more, and be more proactive (Community Engagement Coordinator, LGF).182
182 Extended quote in 6.3.6.
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So as well as experiencing the city centre securitisation differently, participants also highlighted different aspirations about its future trajectories.
8.2 Public Space
One of the most recurrent and shared priorities reported by participants was the need to open up more public and green space in the city centre in the future. Despite the city centre being generally seen as of manageable size and relatively easy to navigate, it was also almost unanimously perceived as lacking in breathing space and parks of sizable dimensions. In fact, only one of the 39 participants thought there already was enough public space available:
public space, I think they have enough! I think it already exists, I think it's underexploited, and I think that public space is always.. enlivened by the uses that surround that public space, rather than just the space itself (Deputy CEO, Urban Splash).
While one participant, a resident, advocated the creation of new green spaces through an expansion of the city centre towards Salford, most participants agreed that in the future better use had to be made of the canals and waterways, and the paths around their embankments. Institutional stakeholders confirmed that work was already on the way to redevelop and render more secure and accessible such spaces, and that this task remained a priority:
we're moving in the right direction, but I still think there's still quite a bit of work to be done (..) the Rochedale canal runs all the way from here down to, down to Castlefield. That actually is a really nice walk, but there are elements of that you wouldn't go near, even during the day, because they would just not feel safe (MD, Visiting Manchester).
Some of the residents had already noticed these efforts, but highlighted more remained to be done:
I agree with [name]'s point before about ehm.. there's not enough open green spaces. I mean they have opened behind Ancoats, like a canal basin, only recently (..) the first new open space for a long, long time I think, that's considerable space (..) they'll need to improve the places they've got and try and make a bit more out of this sort of things (resident focus group 1).
Existing public space was not just thought to be scarce or under developed, but also to be poorly designed and managed (an opinion shared by some of the experts), with much
189 criticism focusing around Piccadilly Gardens, an area by many seen as requiring urgent redevelopment:
it would be nicer if there was more open space, and the open space that there is, like Piccadilly Gardens, was managed a lot better (..) it's something that's used probably.. a couple of weekends a year by people.. when the weather is nice (..) you could have I don't know, like, sports facilities or something, a basketball court or a football five-side court, for people to use, or something like that, so that it gets used all year round and in the evening, and at night (Design for Security consultant).
One of the key areas of divergence instead appeared to be around the desired and imagined users of such future spaces. Many wished for more sizable outdoor areas with seating, with trees and greenery, restful spaces to read or walk dogs. But there were also references to these places being populated by ‘the right kind of people’ and references (by property developers) to activities (such as open air cinemas and concerts) that are currently being held in privatised public space, in the Spinningfields development:
all big cities should have like a big park space (..) just an open green spaces, not to the size of Heaton park but as in something kind of similar, maintained well, and somewhere that will attract people on summer days, I think, because it will attract the right type of people (florist 2)
wherever there is an opportunity to create open space for, you know, people to gather at lunch time, or for open-air cinema or for a night concert, wherever you can create public open space in the core I think it's a good thing (..) attempts (..) have begun along the Irwell to open up the River Irwell, create walkways along that, it's been a good thing. There is some open space in Spinningfields although it may get developed in the future. I think NOMA, the Coop development, they are planning a big open space, but the more of that the better (director of Special Projects, Bruntwood).
The reference participants made to Spinningfields were very polarised, with some (mainly, the institutional stakeholders, and those working in premises in the area) considering the place a success, and many others considering it a sterile and soulless area. Regardless of the divide in perceptions, its current users are generally seen to be a more affluent crowd of professionals, office workers, and residents than those currently circulating in other upmarket areas of the city centre. Moreover, references to these ‘public’ spaces also often triggered reflections on their transience, not just as their configuration and footprints change continuously, but because they are ultimately to be replaced by new buildings in the next phase of construction.
When imagining uses and users for future public spaces, the very activities envisaged by some actors as enlivening (for instance, by property developer Urban Splash) can be read
190 as inimical by other participants (i.e. citizens on low income), and as potentially excluding certain users from enjoying these spaces:
public space? There's not many, is there, if you know what I mean. You've only got Piccadilly Gardens, you've got the cathedral spaces.. I suppose, yeah, you need a couple more I think. But with more entertainment, whereas these are too commercialised with cafes and burger houses. You know you can't sit outside a burger house and have a coffee and have a chat. Like this place here [royal exchange theatre] this is really nice (..). It's nice to have places outside, where you can sit outside (Big Issue vendor)
I don't think that there is a lack of quality public space. I think it needs uses around it to enliven it, and that's part of that wider picture then, the more bars and restaurants.. (Deputy CEO, Urban Splash).
This disjoint is revealing of the different ways in which the city centre is read and experienced today by various stakeholders, and of the different interests and needs that currently get prioritised. An advocacy for a city centre for all can be seen as conflicting with the aspiration to create sites that work as destinations for affluent shoppers, workers and residents as spaces of active consumption (as advocated by Urban Splash above). Not only these spaces can be argued to exclude or discourage by design users with different or no income, but they also contrast with the aspirations of other participants to keep these spaces as sites of relaxation, where they might rest without necessarily buying food or drinks:
the city centre has, has very very little green space where people can just sit, where there're trees. (..) every space that we do have does tend to get built on. So I hope we don't lose any spaces that we do have, because I think that's important, that people got somewhere to go and sit, and have their lunch or sit and read or whatever (NQ artist).
While property developers, and the property market more generally, are seen by the some of the city centre residents and workers as driving the financial maximisation of land use and development to the detriment of existing (let alone future) public or open space, some of the stakeholders advocated a greater role for local authorities in counteracting this trend, and more generally, in producing and managing good quality public space:
the council want to encourage trade into the city and make it a vibrant successful city but they've got to be quite brave and turn round to developers and say, of that landholding lock you can only build on 50% of it, and you're going to have to have the other 50% of it open (residents focus group 2)
it feels like we are sort of slowly just reaping every bit of open (..) we are a crammed city (..) but there is no real kind of big vision on open spaces. I'd like to see more on that (research manager, Chamber of Commerce)
191 there's been a lot of missed opportunities (..) opening up, you know, walkways and opening up some kind of space, erm, rather than cramming as much as you can into, into what they have (..) that is something that needs to be to be looked at, I think, to make the city a, you know, more pleasant place to live and attract people in (resident focus group 2).
Issues of cleanliness also recurred amongst the priorities of various stakeholders. Although residents were the most vocal in pointing to improvements that could be introduced (like more bins and recycling facilities) and in complaining about the incivilities they had to put up with on a regular basis (such as broken glass and takeaway leftovers, urine and vomit on their doorsteps), businesses in the city centre also made references to good maintenance and cleanliness:
E: what kind of city centre would you like to see in the next 10-15 years? M: one without chewing gum (..) just keep it clean. It needs to be kept clean (..) all the places in the outskirts, (..) people come to Manchester because they wanna come somewhere clean (independent cafe/eatery manager)
I kind of think along the line 'they need to clean up the city centre a bit' because seriously it's, it's, it can get quite disgusting sometimes (Interview with resident 1)
we should probably keep it a little bit, on a regular basis, a little bit cleaner and tidy as well (director of marketing strategy, Marketing Manchester).
While some of the priorities on cleanliness and maintenance appeared to be related to the night-time economy and desired changes to cultural norms, others were seen more as indicators of structural neglect or poor planning. Amongst the latter were road maintenance. Many lamented what they saw as perennial road works in the city centre and the allegedly ill-planned or executed diversions, and resulting congestion. Poorly maintained street furniture (such as bus stops) was also discussed, along with the neglect of specific areas within the city centre (like Chinatown, whose sprucing up one of the participants mentioned amongst her priorities).
8.3 Resident Population, Property Development and Housing
Most actors saw the city centre population as continuing to rise in the future and shared an understanding of its current composition - largely young professionals on medium to high incomes, including couples without children, and supplemented by a rising (but still limited) number of students. Stakeholders often identified changes to the resident population composition as a key priority for the future development of the city centre, so this was an area of convergence.
192
While stakeholders tended to agree around the need to bring in more families, the modalities of doing so and the socio-demographics targeted via this move varied greatly. Institutional stakeholders believed this could be achieved through prioritising an expansion of the property stock, and through the creation of ‘sense of place’ and the projection of distinct identities for different neighbourhoods:
there is demand for at least another 1,000 apartments a year I think, to be delivered in the city centre over the next kind of five year or so. So I think we'll see an increase in the rise of city centre residents, and the city is looking at how it better facilitates offer for kind of families as well. (..) we're trying to create (..) better sense of place, through different neighbourhoods, through different areas and different places that people identify (director of marketing strategy, Marketing Manchester)
what we need is high value aspirational family housing, and the market currently is not geared up to provide that because in places like Manchester, not withstanding our economic success this last ten years or so, the equity value is still not as high to compensate for the cost of buying and remediating land for development (CEO, Manchester City Council).
Visiting Manchester (the tourist board) and CityCo also auspicated a more family friendly environment in the city centre – although, importantly, what they envisaged was perhaps more oriented towards (families as) visitors rather than (families as) city centre residents. They considered this achievable through a relatively small scale rebalancing of the events on offer.
Other stakeholders, instead, prioritised changes in activity programming beyond a simple extension of the kind of activities on offer, and towards partially reducing some of the existing night-time economy which they saw as in direct competition with the one they were promoting:
what I would like to see (..) would be fewer bars and pubs and all these (..) places that would encourage drunken behaviour (..) more, you know, one of you said, you know, street-side cafes, that type of things - more, more sort of civilized [laughs] and, and family-friendly, um, you, you also need to create the environment where families feel they can, you know, bring the children out and actually have their dinner out and then, and maybe even wander round town for a little bit on a nice summer night, and that you don't bump into these drunken people on the streets (resident focus group 2).
More importantly perhaps, residents noted that in order to attract families to the city centre a number of key services will need to be provided, such as schools or doctor surgeries, as well as the opening of more spaces like parks and canal embankments, as already discussed:
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B: services, definitely that has been needing to be improved recently. They built a lot of apartments, as you [G]'ve said the population is growing, but your prescription-, you know where's a dentist? G: yeah, dentists, doctors, you know, there, there are no schools, that's why, as you [B] said before, families that have children, when they get to 3 or 4 they kind of have to move out. (..) they're talking about building a school in.. New Islington (..) a good step forward if they can get that built, because then, this, you know, it's the next step really, that's what needs to happen (residents focus group 1)
in the long term you'd want a mixture of people to live in the city centre, you'd want schools and facilities, and doctors and everything in town. (..) in other parts of the UK people live in-, more families move into the city centre, that's great! That's got to be the future (interview with resident 2).
While many of these interventions were seen as necessary conditions to attract families, and prioritised as such, the discussions that ensued were revealing of the shortcomings that current residents experience in the city centre today. Furthermore, while attracting new residents may require certain facilities, retaining them, as pointed out by current residents, would also require improvements to the current living conditions – by reducing certain types of noise pollution, and better maintaining and cleaning the space and streets, as already noted. In the words of a resident, this would require prioritising
liveability so that you don't then get.. a night club opening next door to you, that it can mean that you can't sleep, or that you get lots of problems with.. I mean you know, there will be noise from people coming home from clubs and there will be areas where it's louder than others (..) someone's living there and then things change and it gets louder, and less pleasant to live there. You know that shouldn't happen! So I think people will leave, when you get that sort of anti-social.. change (interview with resident 2).
The transience of the resident population was a recurrent issue brought up by a variety of stakeholders and particularly by current residents themselves. Transience is not seen as simply linked to life stages (professionals starting a family in the suburbs, older citizen moving to leafy areas to retire, and students leaving after completing university), but also connected by various participants to issues of affordability (from the inflated costs of food shopping in ‘Local’ and ‘Metro’ branches of supermarkets aimed at visitors or office worker to the high costs of city centre accommodation):
I know for a fact that a fair amount of people couldn't afford to live in the city centre now. Rents are higher (..) that's a hard one to manage but it's hoping that the rents stay at a certain level so that, you know, I know people who maybe don't earn a fortune but share, and then that keeps the price down. You don't want to create a community of just one kind of people in the city centre (artistic lead, art venue)
the rental market is up through the roof, and it's really, well it's getting ridiculous (resident focus group 1)
194 J: more accessible accommodation for people. Affordable accommodation, that's one good thing [priority], affordable accommodation.. it's sky high (..) E: so do you think that the accommodation in the city centre is J: too expensive (..) it's targeted for the wealthy, the very rich (Big Issue vendor)
B: you might get in lots, you know, food tourists, you get the bars and restaurants and what have you, which we all like to go to from time to time, but that's not necessarily, what they call the sustainable way of living for residents, and you know, the choice of supermarkets is limited M: yeah B: to Metro stores effectively in the city centre G: yeah M: they cost more the small B: pardon? M: they cost more the small ones, don't they G: they do actually, yeah. (resident focus group 1) .
While some stakeholders expressed the aspiration that the future rental market is at least kept somewhat stable, these priorities highlight a view of the current city centre property market as exclusionary and targeted towards the affluent, the young, the childless, disclosing current concerns over social justice that would need redressing in order to create a city centre for all. Some of them saw the introduction of (a measure) of affordable homes and social housing as a priority:
think the city needs to.. think of providing stuff for everybody. You know I probably like to see a bit more social housing in the city centre as well, to be honest. They have difficulty forcing developers to put in a proportion (resident focus group 1).
The institutional position, however, is one of absolute opposition to increasing the social housing stock in the city centre, epitomised in the following statement by the Council CEO, who claimed that
we need more social housing in Manchester like we need a hole in our head, what we need is high value aspirational family housing (CEO, Manchester City Council).
Surprisingly, given the current recession in residential sales, and the booming rental market, when discussing their priority for increasing the size of the city centre population, the Council and the property developers were still envisaging building property to sell, and no references were made to improvements to the rental market. This was in contrast with the current concerns of many other stakeholders about rents, and the explicit references amongst the priority of a current resident about security of tenancy.
At the same time, the increased presence of students, which many considered on a trajectory to be forming a greater ratio of the city centre population in the future, was also
195 seen by current residents as unlikely to stimulate the demand for the services that they currently needed, and which most of the future population was also likely to need:
B: I think some of it [whether there would be more doctors and services over the next 10-20 years] might depend on the permanency of the city centre residents M: yeah! B: if it becomes a transit for finishing uni, young professionals, and then if they move to have families let's say.. ehm, the pressure, it might not be maintained to improve the services M: I think, yeah, from a student point of view, (..), they give you a sort of induction sheet saying 'oh register with a GP' (..) everyone of my friends from home never bothered with that, and if there's something wrong, they'd be home and they'd be seeing their normal GP. (..) and I just kept the same dentist from home as well (..) G: but you know, if you're going to attract people from various distances in the country, and from beyond that, they're gonna have to start having facilities like that (resident focus group 1).
So there appears to be various challenges to be addressed to begin to positively affect the transience of the resident population today and in the future. In turn, the effects of transience were also perceived as disempowering and limiting one’s ability to participate in decision making about one’s environment:
I'm very attracted to the development because it's been there a long time, and I know some people who lived there for over 30 years, and it's probably a bit unique (..) there are older people there, and long established residents, so then they are not all transitory.. you need short term, as new people need to move in and out (..) but you also need a cohort of people who are there for the long run, because then they get involved in the community and they, they turn up for meetings and they talk to the councillors and they feel like (..) they 'have' got an investment, they have got a long term view (interview with resident 2).
This vicious circle appears to go unnoticed by institutional stakeholders, as they congratulate themselves on the current presence of a resident population and anticipate its growth in the future. It is conceivable that tensions might escalate if these challenges continue to be redressed only through the property market, and the mere provision of new and aspirational apartments for families.
Furthermore, while there was convergence over the priority to change the future composition of the resident population, the actual desired composition of the city centre resident population emerged as an area of great divergence among stakeholders. Even if successful, the institutional response (new aspirational family homes) will only be very marginally extending the demographic mix of the resident population along one dimension - that of the age range, bringing in children, together with their parents to the city centre - but not the socio-economic composition of the current city centre population, nor the age
196 mix more widely understood. As such it is unlikely to meet the aspirations of the residents and other stakeholders accessed. The latter were adamant that the city centre needed to embrace greater diversity and variety and cater for all. Moreover, some of the older residents indicated that they would like more mature residents to come and live in the city centre, or highlighted some of the positive implications of having a more varied age range base, when discussing their priorities:
as a person with grey hair, I'd like to see one or two more grey haired people taking advantage of the life. (..) I like the fact that it's a youthful city centre (..) there's a vibrancy that's thrown in there, and it's nice to have that on the door step (..), I'd just like to see a few more people, mature people, with a bit of life in them wanting to settle in the city centre (resident focus group 1)
M: there's not really an older crowd, (..) if there were things to encourage it (..) it's something that could work.. you know if it was an area.. I'm sure students would avoid it! [Jokes, all laugh] B: you've got the Green Quarter, why not the Grey Quarter? (resident focus group 1)
I’d like to see more people living in town, and and in a mixed community with families and older people, but people having facilities near them, and walking and cycling, and getting the bus t (..) you still want it to be a city, but a liveable city (interview with resident 2)
E: What would be your priority for the city centre do you think? T: Er, well, I think there's a lot of people who complain about rowdiness; they complain about drunkenness; they complain about litter; they complain about, erm, things of that nature and I think if you change the, the age range of the people living in the city I think a lot of those problems will sort of sort themselves out. I think you'll see a different dynamic (resident focus group 2).
Another recurrent theme amongst participants’ priorities was property development itself. The general agreement was that the city centre over the last few decades had been transformed significantly also through construction, and that a great deal of construction work was still taking place and scheduled to take place, despite the recession. Some envisaged having to build more vertically in the future, given the compact size of the city centre. Others pointed to the current redevelopment of NOMA near Victoria station, First Street, and the forthcoming re-development of the Granada site as signs that the property construction was going to expand the size of the city centre, and that construction would also extend towards the Corridor, the River Irwell rim and central Salford. Participants priorities over property development, particularly housing, diverged quite significantly, on
197 the issue of whether new property (residential and commercial) ought to be built or not, and the kind of features and aesthetics that would be desirable.183
Institutional stakeholders counted amongst their priorities for the city centre the constructions of several thousands of new flats over the next few years, although property developer Bruntwood suggested assessing the current stock and demand with a view to continue to build in a targeted way. Some of the other participants, instead, highlighted the need to pause altogether and take stock of the buildings already available to avoid exacerbating what they saw as existing problems caused by property development in the city centre:
no more building for some time, you know I think we've done enough. I think we need to step back and see where we are at. (..), we've got enough accommodation, we've got empty buildings.. let's just get rid of all the cranes and see where we are up to (Canal Street bar owner)
there's still a lot of empty buildings (..) still jotted around the city centre. If you look up, you think 'that looks empty' (..) the Council could.. ehm bring in some sort [interruption] no, I mean, they should bring in some sort of.. encouragement to try and, instead of you building new buildings, convert the ones that are already there. There's some spectacular warehouse conversions within Manchester (..) and still loads that can be converted and I think they can change.. you know to make it better for-, easier for the developers to-, or encourage them somehow, you know, with, you know, tax breaks or whatever scheme, to encourage instead of building more apartments try and completely do up the ones that are already there. That would be my priority (resident focus group 1).
This was both with a view to prevent wasteful construction of empty or half-finished buildings – similar comments were made about the vast amount of currently empty office space – and also to encourage the conversion of certain types of historic or industrial buildings over construction of new build. In one of the resident focus group these comments led to a discussions over the advantages of warehouse conversion apartments over the newer flats, which were seen as of inferior quality (with thinner walls, poorer insulation also against street noise), of smaller sizes (with less storage and rooms) and of poorer aesthetics. A resident interviewed separately also highlighted the link between the quality of the new build apartments (which he too criticised) to the problem of high tenancy turnover. Pointing to the present deficiencies in building and managing many
183 Some advocating a balance between old and new buildings, others strongly campaigning against the construction of glass-clad blocs of flats. The views expressed (though not by institutional stakeholders, nor by property developers) were often opposing perceived trends in construction, architecture and property development in Manchester.
198 newly built blocs, the resident suggested as one his priorities that in the future these trends should be inverted to avoid
storing up trouble for ourselves (..) people don't really like living in them, and don't look after them, and then they'll start to crumble (interview with resident 2).
The need to encourage (or even force) developers to include greater proportions of three- bedroom housing was also featuring amongst participant’s priorities, but other priorities transcended individual buildings and spoke to the need to produce better public and open space around them, and create a sense of place. This was done through a critique of existing spaces, such as Spinningfields that were seen as ‘soulless’ or, that may be praised for their unintentional features (that are transient):
we are always under pressure to use every scrap of land (..) Spinningfields is (..) a pleasant place to walk through in a strange kind of corporate way, because it's very well looked after. But it's, it's, at the moment it's nothing like they imagined it to be, because they haven't built on every plot they could have done, because of the financial crash. If they built on every plot of land they had there, it'd just be a horrible wind-swept canyon of a place that would, that you'd flee from. It's, it's the accidents where two, two or three of the major building plots have been left as grass or have had cafes put on them that have made it actually ok (interview with resident 2).
The sense of place that is advocated therefore clashes with the officially orchestrated efforts to generate it:
I hope it is not called NOMA and someone's gone and got rid of the silly New York acronyms for areas of city. That's the first rule: it doesn't work! And also you can't over-name areas, sometimes they just have to develop. You know things like the Gay Village, Chinatown was never officially named. It just stuck and then people call it that, which I think it's great. But we are not having any NOMA, SOHO, anything like that please! (artistic lead, art venue).
Other issues of liveability were brought to the fore as some predicted that the city centre was bound to develop more vertically in the future. The need to ensure that planning applications were publicised more widely, that buildings of historical value were listed and protected, and that new buildings were not erected ‘as walls’ in front of existing ones was noted:
it's important to have buildings that are nationally listed that you can't alter (..) it's important to have really stringent planning (..) because sometimes you want that view, or you want that area in front of your building (..) it's your life and you live here and you work (..) move forward, but really sensitively (..) make sure it's what people want, because sometimes it's kind of ‘the Council made a decision and we'll just do this’ (..) how much communication is there with people? (community engagement coordinator, LGF).
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Current poor property development, with the discussion sometimes turning to ‘failed’ developments or sites left unfinished, emerged from some participants’ pleas about ensuring that in the future ‘people’ have their say in what gets constructed, highlighting dissatisfaction with the current democratic engagement in the planning process. Examples included the half-started construction site in the Gay Village (Princess St), where the building of a glass luxury hotel and mixed use development was only halted mid-way by the recession, after a very vocal resident opposition had been ignored. Other areas came under attack too, including the building currently under way in front of the Central Library, or larger areas such as Spinningfields, and Piccadilly Gardens.
8.4 Hospitality, Leisure and Activity Planning
All participants but one believed the city centre to be a very vibrant place, full of bars, pubs, clubs, music venues and other entertainment opportunities. The only priorities mentioned in relation to this offering were therefore about not opening more new bars, but rather about saving from closure some of the older pubs (a plea made by residents):
E: what would your priorities be for Manchester city centre? B: I, I don't think we need any more bars M: we've got quite a lot! B: we get them, and they come and go, so it's new ones every week G: they change every month B: yeah, we're into [name of place] 3 and stuff like this (..) that's too much (..) I'm not saying I want Manchester to stop people having a good time (..) I walk around Canal Street on a Saturday night, you know around 11 o'clock when I finish work, (..) it's not my cup of tea but, you know, I like the fact that that place exists and it's there. It's a facet of the rest of the city and I quite like it. But I just like, I know there are some brewers around the place, a few, although they knocked one down for NOMA, the [name of pub], my regular basically (resident focus group 1).
Changes to existing bars and clubs were prioritised by a wide range of actors who agreed on the need to make venues smaller and not all grouped together. There was instead a convergence of aspiration and priorities about opening more cafes, restaurants (although the current restaurant offering is considered to be extensive by most participants, with only one participant mentioning the need to prioritise more independent restaurants over chain ones). Restaurants and cafes were seen by some as one of the (soft and more indirect) ways of changing the user/resident composition of the city centre. Others, though, noted that simply offering more choice alongside the existing and prevalent night-time economy was not enough to discourage or de-prioritise it, and that more needed to be done.
200 However, these aspirations at times alluded to the need to bring in the ‘right’ kind of people, or discourage others from coming into the city centre, which can itself be problematic. As noted by the Big Issue vendor interviewed for instance, the creation of more cafes and restaurant – the very spaces that some participants have described as ‘civilised’ and ‘attracting the right kind of crowds’ - risks generating more spaces of exclusion.184 These same venues already try hard to discourage some users from becoming customers:
J: maybe I stick up, I'm going to get a different class of person (..) I wish it would change in that respect, where you can go, where you can't go. Because it doesn't matter- you 'can' walk in there with jeans, but you, you don't - they will make sure you're uncomfortable.. you know what I mean? E: yes, yes J: they make sure you're uncomfortable 'you drink your coffee quick', you've got- they'll give you lukewarm coffee, you know.. (Big Issue vendor).
Furthermore, affordability was a priority brought up by many participants in their aspiration to create a city centre for all. It was evoked within the context of accommodation, food shopping and cost of living in the city centre (for current and future residents) and mainly brought up by current residents and people working in the city centre. Awareness of the different socio-economic constraints and barriers that certain citizens face sometimes emerged also in relation to venues such restaurants and cafes, or to promoting other entertainment and cultural events:
it's really important to have some things that can be accessed for free, and so our galleries have always been free (..) often the barrier to art or sort of visiting cultural centres isn't really the money (..) I don't think money is the whole barrier, but I think it's still great to have things that are free (artistic lead, art venue).
The current offering in terms of art and festivals was widely appreciated by participants. As also in the case of events, the general feeling was that many entertainment options (theatre, cinema, art and galleries, sport and matches, music and gigs, festivals and parades) were already available, so that the only priority expressed concerned the need to sustain
185 rather than increase their number, particularly in a climate of recession. The cultural sector participants believed these to be essential to the future wellbeing of the city as a whole, and mentioned them as part of their priorities. While the artistic lead believed them
184 This is not to suggest that the current night-time economy is any more inclusive. 185 Similarly, shopping facilities were generally liked and considered extensive and varied enough by most participants, although a small number of residents did not find them distinctive nor independent enough. By contrast, food shops were criticised for being expensive and targeted at the visitors and the office workers.
201 to be part of a wider ‘packet’ of events to be offered (including sporting events), she also stressed the need not to over-plan:
the council is really supportive of the arts (..) having real, a joined- up policy on it, but one that is not too top-heavy and it's flexible, and sometimes these things are going to happen despite what we do, or in spite of what we do, never mind what you're actually trying to encourage (..) so it's making sure that there is still that diversity across the board and people have ways in (artistic lead, art venue).
Both cultural sector participants, when making the case for continuing the same level of support for the arts, focused on the economic impact of the cultural sector.186 Other participants discussed the arts (even when they did not feature amongst their priorities) as beneficial to the vibrancy and their enjoyment of city. They referenced their effects (particularly that of the International Festival) in raising the city’s profile nationally, and sometimes internationally. Again the images and arguments articulated in the branding of Manchester city centre around events and arts, and circulated through local policy and media coverage, were embraced by various non-institutional stakeholders too.
Similarly, it was generally felt that the city council offered a varied and ample calendar of events, which ought to continue, and which would raise the city’s profile further. The current (negative) experiences and inconveniences that residents and city centre workers reported often contrasted with the views of institutional stakeholders, branders and other actors (from the Bruntwood to the Chamber of Commerce participant). They were articulated as constructive criticisms, as pleas to run these events differently, in less disruptive and more considerate ways for city centre workers and residents. This was especially the case when events involved prolonged closures of public streets, restricted access to own premises, road diversions and traffic congestions:
M: people live there and people walk through it and it's, you know, to bloc it off is causing hindrance to more people,(..) it's not like it's a farm [festival] in the middle of no-where (..) B: or they could, or they could manage the whole thing in a different way so you don't have to cord it off (residents focus group 1).
There were only a handful of references to party conferences amongst the priorities for the future of the city centre, and these were a suggestion that they ought to take place in a
186 This might have been an instrumental move (in a climate of recession), regardless to any commitments they might have held towards any less tangible benefit of cultural activities and the arts.
202 different location out of town or elsewhere, to both reduce costs and inconvenience (this was a priority expressed by the artist), or that they ought to take place in the evenings or after working hours, so as not to interfere with traffic of workers, tourists and passerby (a suggestion made by the Big Issue vendor), or that they take place in venues specifically designed with anti-terrorist features in mind (a suggestion made by a police superintendant). A series of constructive solutions for the future were also suggested - such as different access options for residents and their guests to their premises, alternative parking arrangements, fewer closures and traffic diversion, better communication and adequate notice of forthcoming events. More importantly discussions over future priorities brought into focus tensions between the competing interests of different stakeholders, and highlighted the interests currently being prioritised:
J: there is a problem with the control of events in the city. I mean, I don't know whether you do, but we get it every time there's, er, an, an event, it's nearly always along Deansgate M: yeah that's right J: so Deansgate's closed it's safe to say. And 'therefore this will be closed that will be closed; if you're in that road then you should move your car [all laugh].. overnight [more laughter]..If you want to go to work first thing the next day!' [laughter] Well, that is not, you know, I mean, you're not going to move your car and put it into, er, over into Salford, in a side street, are you? (..) it's having a concern for the city residents by saying 'on that day if you're going to go out, we've taken that car park up and you can - and providing you can prove that you're in that ring - you get your car parking free and it'll be secure', and during June and May it was every - every Sunday wasn't it? T & M: yeah, it was (resident focus group 2).
The leisure infrastructure was also generally seen as good, whilst only appearing amongst the priorities of one participant. The threats of cuts affecting libraries, pools and other services nationwide were mentioned sporadically, but the only priorities (proposed by residents) were those suggesting setting up schools and (more) medical services.
8.5 Partnership and ‘Community’
The often reiterated claim that Manchester is a city that works in partnership has prompted many critical remarks amongst scholars and commentators over the years, including the accusations that this has promoted elite decision-making and networks of privatised governance (Peck and Ward 2002: 3). A parallel has often been drawn with the Victorian ‘Manchester Men’ (Cochrane et al. 2002), who led by supposedly drawing no ‘distinction between the interests of business and those of the city’ (Ibid: 98), to describe
203 the way in which contemporary city leaders have been involved since the early 90s in joint governance. The analogy does not merely draw attention to the boosterist and entrepreneurial style of governance in Manchester, which while not unique (Peck and Ward 2002) is often held up as a model to be imitated by other UK cities. It also highlights a clique that has come to decide so much about the development of the city and continues to exercise a large influence on the local processes that shape the city centre. At various times during the regeneration process of the last 20 years, business interests within the various private-public partnerships were even somewhat jokingly referred to as a self- styled ‘Manchester Mafia’ (Ibid:5), given their ubiquitous presence in various partnership configurations. As Cochrane et al (2002) have argued about the early 90s partnerships, despite the limited space available for manoeuvre that each partners (private and public) might have had, the prevailing narrative has been one of city council leadership and steering of the process.
Ethnographically, the claims of close knit ties between industry (first and foremost property developers, but also financial and investment companies) and local government are easily traceable on the directorship and advisory boards of many organisations, from CityCo,187 to Visiting Manchester (tourist board) and Marketing Manchester, 188 to site specific partnerships (like the Piccadilly Partnership, or that developing Spinningfields). Within the interviews with stakeholders, if not in the focus groups with residents, the notion of governing through partnership and ‘in the Manchester tradition’ often emerged as a dominant script and an uncontested frame to explain the (positive) changes and the regeneration of the city centre. However, while the business interests appear well represented, those of the current resident population are somewhat displaced or mediated indirectly, we must assume, through the presence of city councillors. A look at the qualitative data collected also reveals that the term ‘community’ in the city centre remains synonymous with the business community within much stakeholders’ discourse, particularly within discussions about the planning of temporary events. The point argued
187 chaired by senior councillors and representatives of Bruntwood, its board includes councillors, business law firms, retail (from Selfridges to the Arndale), financial and insurance service provider Argent, retail developer Milligan (the Triangle shopping centre, Manchester Airport), property investment and development company TCS, and real estate fund manager company PruPIM. 188 Visiting Manchester, the tourist board, is a sub-division of Marketing Manchester. The latter is chaired by the Deputy Director of Urban Splash property developers (until resigning in 2013). Board members include the Chamber of Commerce, a number of councillors, the police and other business interests (from the Airport Group, to ITV Plc), and the director of the Manchester International Festival.
204 here is that behind inclusionary vocabulary of ‘partnership’ and ‘community’, the resident population’s role as a stakeholder in the current use and future development of the city centre is often undermined.
In terms of explicit participants’ priorities, the only direct plea for these partnerships to continue in the future came from Manchester City Council CEO, and from the Head of the City Centre Regeneration Team:
SHB: it's more important than ever. I think we were one of the first public agencies in this country that understood the real nature of partnership, and we must have 20-30 different joint venture arrangements with different private sector land owners or developers in and around the city centre alone, and almost nothing goes on within the city centre without us being.. PB: having a role.. in driving that, and we've been very lucky because we've had very strong partnerships for fifteen years, with a lot of the private sector so we've been able to build on that to drive the change that you see now across the city centre (..) E: as a City Council do you feel that you are the driver of the partnership or PB: very much so, very much so. It's interesting because they, what we found with our partners is that they share a lot of the aspirations that we do for the city. You know we all want to create more jobs, we all want to see new investment, the growth and development of the city and regeneration, and they share a lot of those aspirations. When we look at joint venture arrangements, partnerships around frameworks or new investment, they are very much in the same place we are, very much want to do the kind, the same sort of thing that we want to do (Sir Bernstein and Ms Pat Bartoli).
Not only is the Council portrayed as having a leading role, but, most importantly perhaps, the interests of all concerned are depicted as neatly mapping onto each other harmoniously, as everyone strives towards identical end goals. The same narrative was presented by the director of marketing strategy at Marketing Manchester, as she described the ongoing work to create sense of place in the city centre:
Peter Saville (..) supported us in the development of our brand aspiration (..) 'The Original Modern' (..) a goal, I kind of road map going forward (..) he's worked with us to try and make sure that those new developments that are coming on stream kind of align with that ultimate vision, so that, you know, as a city collectively we are (..) always doing things to the best of our ability and creating things that have genuinely global impact (..) we kind of work with different stakeholders (..) collectively everyone is happy to come behind the shared vision and the and the shared approach, the positive campaign activity that actually is beneficial to everybody (..) the public sector and the private sector work very well together in terms of, you know, doing things that are of benefit to the economic development of the city.
It was the director of Special Projects at Bruntwood, who offered a different take on both the usefulness and limits of these partnerships. While discussing his priorities for developing the Corridor area along Oxford Road, he also noted:
205 for me that [the Corridor] is the easy bet (..) that is the place to be, that is the future.. growth of the economy. But there are other parts which are still in great need of regeneration, and that's why you need a strong public sector vision, why you need that public-private sector partnership really, because there are other bits that would get left behind if you didn't focus on those.
Still validating the role of the public sector as steering industry towards committing to regeneration and development in areas that would otherwise not be prioritised at this stage, his comment acknowledges the presence of different interests pulling in opposite directions. Furthermore, while the Council could in theory be seen as guarantor of certain principles (e.g. the even development of the city centre),189 it is also apparent that there are limits to what it can hope to achieve in leading other (private) partners, when the push is not going in the direction that the markets would favour, as illustrated in the quote below. Reflecting on the reasons why certain types of flat (one and two bedroom ones) are largely prevalent in the city centre today, the Bruntwood participant noted:
there's always been a public-private sector partnership in Manchester, and as much as the public sector has encouraged the private sector to do things, you can't force it to do things. (..) if the City Council had said 15 years ago to a group of developers ' go and build a mix of flat and family homes (..) build a wide mix of accommodation’, they'd say 'no, there's no demand for it'. I think once you reach a certain critical mass, in the residential side, you probably create the demand, and I think (..) things are moving in that direction (director of Special Projects, Bruntwood).
Other allusions to partnerships in discussing priorities for the future of the city centre were mobilised to encourage light interventions (by the artistic lead talking of art sector organisations partnering up with the council) or to mitigate cuts in public spending by supplementing them with private investment (as suggested by the police inspector about investment in leisure infrastructure). The GMPA chair, instead, appealed to partnership as an attempt to raise the accountability of private actors. He exhorted the leisure industry (bars, clubs, cinemas, music venues, but also parking lots) to manage themselves differently to reduce the security and safety risks associated with the night-time economy or with their trade more generally, and reduce pressure on the already stretched public services (from police, NHS and other emergency services, to the council’s waste management and cleaning services). Again, rather than a belief in a unanimous set of aims, the different and competing interests represented by different actors take centre stage –
189 This intent cannot be taken for granted, as several actors complained about areas being neglected (e.g. Chinatown and the Northern Quarter), while others were being heavily subsidised (e.g. Spinningfield and St Peter’s Square). Similarly, the Council CEO and some residents talked of the uneven development of the regeneration in Salford, suggesting that a city council partnership beyond the confines of the city centre may struggle to achieve results in unison.
206 together with the opportunistic approach often taken by the private sector in pursuing a lucrative trade, without necessarily wanting to share responsibility for managing any of the associated consequences or economic costs. Nonetheless, the disagreement over the extent to which partnerships are seen to operate with shared aims and visions remained largely inarticulated.
8.6 Boundaries, Mobility and Diversity
Participants were mostly aware of current construction work at the edges of the city centre (in NOMA, Salford, along the Irwell, in the First Street, near the Granada site, and along the Corridor).190 While compactness was seen as a virtue, and priorities were focused on better use of current space, references were made by a resident (amongst his priorities) to expansion towards Salford. Other participants simply regarded an outwards expansion as a de facto trajectory, but prioritised other ways of ‘extending’ the city centre – in its demographics, but also through transport links, improving mobility from other parts of the city. The rapid links (train links to London, the airport, the frequent bus routes via the corridor, the Metrolink, and also the free city centre buses) were praised by some. It was only through a priority identified by the GMPA chair, though, that they were related to wider issues of social justice and the spreading of wealth and (job) opportunities beyond the city centre:
what we've got to do is make these places [outside the city centre] desirable places to live (..). Regeneration is only.. a sticking plaster, it needs major surgery, and I think that means jobs to build confidence in those areas (..) you create wealth in the city centre, you know, only it's like a vortex, and the wealth of the conurbation, the majority of it, it lies within the vortex. What I'd like to do is spread the vortex out, do you understand that? (GMPA chair).
Aside from some areas for improvement (greater safety at night via lighting, better maintenance, smart or integrated ticketing), most participants considered transport connections to be optimal, although many also reported high levels of traffic and congestion, complained about road maintenance, diversions, and new parking restrictions and charges. While some of the business stakeholders were concerned about custom fleeing from the centre, residents welcomed, and in some case even prioritised, greater pedestrianisation.
190 Maps of the city centre borders rapidly changed, even during this research.
207 The issue of diversity certainly emerged as a recurrent priority for many stakeholders, particularly in the type of demographic mix advocated for the city centre - via greater affordability of housing and social housing; services and facilities (doctors, food shops, traditional pubs); a wider range of events, including free ones; open spaces and sites not prevalently dedicated to active consumption; and greater integration of age groups, including older citizens. These very narrowly and partially overlapped with institutional stakeholders’ priorities, with the exception of the GMPA priority to address wider inequalities (not within the city centre but between city centre and less affluent areas of Manchester). While no mentions of cosmopolitanism were made within participants priorities (beyond the wish that a varied calendar of events be sustained), issues of diversity were therefore addressed under the resident population mix plea. Concerns over issues of intolerance towards diversity and in relation to people with extreme right wing views were only identified by the GMPA chair amongst his priorities:
my other desire is to actually have people gel together, speak together, understand each other, celebrate each other's difference, celebrate difference! And make sure that people don't impose their will on others, (..) Because you'll know, you'll know from Rome, you'll know that there are extreme right wing people in Rome, white supremists. It's a challenge for us, you know, we need to worry about it, we need to worry about it.. that's what I'd like to say (GMPA chair).
As discussed in chapter 7, these concerns were identified as external to the city centre, but nonetheless in need of being acknowledged and prioritised.
8.7 Conclusions
The mapping of stakeholders’ priorities identified many areas of divergence, along with some areas of convergence. Looking at the trajectory of securitisation, there was great convergence around implementing changes in activity planning and light environmental design solution, but great divergence around the extent to which certain entertainment and leisure uses of the city centre would need to be actively de-prioritised in relation to others in the future (and the means to do so). This revealed tensions principally between residents (and city centre workers to some extent) and the leisure industry. Institutional players appeared to align with the latter, sometimes with reticence, other times fully endorsing their interests. The appropriate level of patrolling in the city centre was also an area of contention, whereas the trend towards soft policing appeared not to have been detected by most stakeholders.
208
There was apparent convergence over the need to create better and greener public spaces (better maintained too). But closer analysis of participants’ visions for the future revealed disagreement about intended uses and users of these spaces. Envisioned spaces differed in their inclusiveness. Similarly, the aspirations about increasing the residential mix in the city centre were superficially endorsed by all players. However, there was only very limited overlap over the desire to bring in families and young children. Residents’ priority of introducing much greater demographic mix (not simply across a wider age range, but also through a much more radical socio-economic transformation) was certainly not endorsed by institutional and business participants. The very means to bring about residential transformation were widely divergent. Property developers and institutional players and branders favoured aspirational homes (as well as activity planning). Residents called for affordable accommodation (including a measure of social housing, improvements to the rental market and retrofitting of historic building) and strongly advocated basic service provision and a resident-friendly economy (e.g. food shops) not principally geared towards the needs of visitors and commuters.
There was widespread agreement instead about the calendar of city centre events, being varied and being sustained in the future. All stakeholders endorsed the claim, circulated in institutional accounts, promotional literature, local policy and media discourse, that it enhanced the city’s profile and positively contributed to its global positioning vis a vis other cities - as well as cementing its banal cosmopolitanism. However, important tensions arose about key current arrangements in place (for instance their gating practices), seen by residents as unacceptable and inimical to them and to city centre workers and commuters. There was a divide between institutional players, security experts and business stakeholders (whose priorities were currently seen as being upheld) on one hand, and residents and city centre workers (whose priorities were currently traded off).
Throughout this research the discourse of partnership emerged as a dominant narrative embedded in stakeholders’ accounts and rarely troubled, as well as resulting in configurations easily observable ethnographically. By prompting reflexivity over aspirations and futures, drawing out their implications, embedded values and inherent trade-offs, some contradictions emerged. Institutional players and branders keenly portray all actors as sustaining a unified vision for the future of Manchester. Many accounts, however, have
209 opened up scrutiny over the tensions between public and private objectives. They revealed limitations in the extent to which partnerships are believed to be operating with shared aims and interests. They cast doubts on the ability and willingness of private partners to take up roles that otherwise (traditionally or simply by default) fall onto the public sector. In the absence of such willingness, or in the absence of market demand, another issue raised was that the public sector, despite its perceived leadership, may be unable to secure private partners’ commitment to certain courses of actions. It may also struggle to catalyse action in partnership that extend beyond its institutional borders. Aspirations towards achieving greater social justice beyond the city centre confines, explicitly supported by the GMPA chair, who also wanted to tackle racism, were not priorities for other stakeholders, except for those residents prioritising a different resident composition.
210 Chapter 9 Conclusions
In this thesis I focused on Manchester and critically investigated contested visions of securitisation and cosmopolitanism in the city centre. In the introduction, I asked how the process of securitisation is reconfiguring Manchester city centre. In formulating this research question, I asked what views and priorities different stakeholders might have about the security deployed and about the future(s) of the city centre more widely, probing what convergences and divergences might exist amongst stakeholders’ views and priorities. I raised the question of the relationship between stakeholder’s priorities and the images of Manchester mobilised in the media. I also asked how these priorities might relate to the aspirations towards cosmopolitanism circulated by various stakeholders. In the following chapters I interrogated the role that these aspirations play in reconfiguring the city centre. After introducing my methodology in Chapter 2, I traced the recent transformation of Manchester city centre in chapter 3. I presented its current characteristics and analysed local media coverage. In Chapters 4 to 6, I analysed the discourses of insecurity and risk, their relationship to the urban, the built environment and virtual circuits of security operating within the ‘sensor city’. Focusing attention on the interplay between material and virtual dimensions of security, I empirically traced and analysed its current deployment. I tested its rationale and endorsement by stakeholders, drawing out its implications and biopolitical effects. In chapter 7 I tracked the aspirations towards cosmopolitanism present in local policy, then analysed those articulated by a range of stakeholders. I then discussed the relationship between these aspirations and those theorised by the academic debate on cosmopolitanism. I also explored the relationship between security and the cosmopolitan aspirations expressed by stakeholders. In Chapter 8 I analysed stakeholders’ future priorities in relation to security but also more widely. Highlighting overlaps and divergences, I emphasised the coalitions of interest that emerge. I identified whose priorities are currently being pursued and the implications for other stakeholders.
My investigation of security has been enabled by integrating insights from different, albeit partially convergent, theoretical traditions. This has delivered the benefits that were initially envisaged, in that it has allowed me to approach security reflexively, to expand the range of actors and entities that I was able to recognise as entangled in the security assemblages emerging in Manchester city centre, and to systematically focus on them. These actors and entities included the built environment, socio-technological and other artefacts (such as those recovered through the ethnography), dominant discourses and
211 framings, especially in policy documents and media coverage but also beyond those, and a wide range of stakeholders. It is only through the combination and complementarity offered by these approaches that I was able to look at these actors and entities and consider them from different angles and entry points, and as actants in the deployment of securitisation. In some cases without this integrated approach the findings would not have achieved the same level of texture and richness (for example in the study of discourse, which results from the theoretical influence of FA and CDA). For the thesis delivers more than an approach based solely on one of these theoretical strands would have achieved. Through recourse to scholarship in STS I have been able to more deeply consider the positionality of different actors, and through mobilising scholarship in governmentality I was able to study the differential impacts and biopolitical effects resulting from that positionality vis a vis the security arrangements deployed. So I was able to uncover both the biopolitical outcomes resulting from current practices (for instance, the diffusion of policing practices or the individualisation of risk and risk avoidance behaviour), and discover who is affected by such trends and in which manner. This sheds light onto those who are instead unaffected or experience such outcomes as non-salient. Through the recourse to surveillance studies I was able to counterbalance the attention that urban studies of security often ascribe to the fortification of the built environment. Similarly, the tendency of governmentality studies to read the urban as a physical panopticon was tempered by the attention to the virtual and sensory nature of security, by including in my framework and methodology the input of surveillance studies. Through the combined design, I was able to challenge some of the assumptions of recent work in surveillance studies that contends that virtual surveillance is diffuse and non-vertical, mundane and akin to entertainment. The combined design directly led to uncovering other valuable findings – including the interplay between physical and virtual security as a crucial site for security studies, and the connections between empirically recoverable configurations of security in Manchester city centre and wider developments of security as a doctrine. These connections were revealed through a CDA- and FA-informed analysis of key policy documents and guidelines at international, national and local level, as well as resulting from my investigation of practices and everyday instantiations of these guidelines. Last but not least, the very aspiration that these findings may result in greater (local) accountability, and challenge current practices and priorities, could not have been pursued by merely invoking a governmentality framework, but is strengthened by an STS approach, and
212 indeed extends the latter beyond its remit within the domain of innovation governance and towards the urban. These findings and their significance are unpacked below.
The city is increasingly a scale at which contemporary challenges and solutions are framed, making debates over urban futures extremely topical. Such debates are only likely to intensify due to current and projected levels of urbanisation. Yet little attention is devoted to investigating the extent to which visions of the future are shared by a wider set of actors beyond the narrow spectrum of players who mobilise them – generally policy makers, city branders, planners and developers. Even less attention is devoted to uncovering the values embedded in such futures and their effects on shaping cities today. By contrast, in my thesis I sought to track and elicit such debates in Manchester and place them under close scrutiny, so that my findings could stimulate debate on the role of mobilising futures in UK cities, if not beyond.
Amongst the urban futures that are circulating globally, visions of insecurity feature very prominently. Discourses of pervasive risks and scenarios of imminent threat are used to justify ever increasing levels of securitisation in the urban domain. In my thesis I addressed a set of interconnected concerns stemming from security, not least its expanding reach, but also its biopolitical effects in sorting citizens, identifying risky individuals, governing at a distance via a plethora of agencies and diffusing security responsibilities through soft- policing. My findings are relevant to a range of scholarly debates on security, but also generate policy and practice implications, at least at local level in relation to the governance of Manchester city centre. By highlighting the effects of issues of security and aspirations to cosmopolitanism on the city centre, I identified weaknesses in current practices, such as the securitising of temporary events, and indicated areas for reappraisal. I argued that multi-stakeholder engagement needs to be pursued to enhance the social robustness of the governance of the city centre.
The findings confirmed that mapping stakeholders’ views and priorities would reveal contested knowledges and aspirations about the city centre, its present and future trajectories. The mapping uncovered variance amongst stakeholders’ values and preferences about future trajectories and the associated trade-offs in the present.
213 This is significant in that it contradicts the narrative promoted by Manchester’s city makers and branders about harmony of interests and vision across stakeholders. The analysis of the empirical data shows recurrent alliances between a specific but limited set of actors. Generally, a coalition of interests emerges amongst city branders, city councillors and the private sector (for instance property developers, but also business stakeholders who work in the leisure industry). However, the visions of residents, and sometimes those of other city centre workers, were often at odds with those promoted by the dominant coalition. The priorities of the coalition, upheld in current partnership governance, resulted in practices that negatively affect residents and militate against their permanence in the city centre. These included the prioritisation of aspirational homes over the creation of schools, dental and GP practices. They included the strong prioritisation of a type of night-time economy appealing to visitors rather than activities catering for a variety of age groups and tastes or servicing residents, for instance through supermarkets and food retailers. They also involved the intensive development of plots, prioritised over the retrofitting of empty historical buildings and over the creation of parks and other public spaces.
As noted, academic debates read the regeneration of the city centre as connected to Manchester’s wider trajectory towards urban entrepreneurialism (Quilley 2002;Savage et al. 2003), which inflected many micro-scale events, as well as Manchester’s changing relationship with other locales regionally, nationally and internationally. The 1996 IRA bombing, rather than being the catalyst for the transformation of the city centre, was a significant accelerator of this already ongoing process (Peck and Ward 2002). The ensuing mode of governance, enacted by partnership and engaging the City in various forms of competition with other localities, was predicted by some (Harvey 1989) to progressively result in a political economy privileging the needs of external investors and visitors. It was seen as potentially enrolling the city in the all-consuming pursuit of place branding (Philo and Kearns 1993; for a theorisation of current practices of ranking and comparing cities, see McCann et al. 2013). The extensive regeneration of the city centre, officially hailed as a success, was problematised in the literature for its past tendency to foster elite decision making, and for its reliance on a ‘trickle-down effect’, whereby the wealth generated would eventually be beneficial for all. While doubts over such benefits materialising had already been cast (Peck and Ward 2002), I showed that governance by partnership as practiced today is further reinforcing the marginalisation of certain socio-demographic categories of people from the city centre. I also argued that the current mode of governance fosters
214 revanchist institutional responses to any perceived threat – big or small – to the smooth progress of the officially endorsed trajectory for the city centre.
I illustrated this point also through a discussion of the response to the 2011 Manchester riots. I showed that institutional visions and aspirations for the future of the city centre appearing in policy documents and other grey literature are echoed in the local media too. The city centre is seen as showcasing the transformation, aspirations and trajectory projected for Manchester at large. I argued that this role for the city centre results in attempts to actively ‘police’ its image. I have expressed my concern over these attempts, arguing that they are problematic, for instance prompting illiberal and knee-jerk political reactions to the August 2011 disturbances. City makers, branders and the media took a zero tolerance approach to the unrest, strongly condemning those taking part and calling for the harshest punishments to be imposed.
Moreover, local media coverage sustains and circulates city leaders and branders’ efforts to position Manchester nationally and globally. It corroborates institutional upbeat representations of the city’s successful ranking, depicting its city centre as vibrant and on an ascending trajectory. It substantiates institutional and corporate (i.e. partnership governance’s) narratives about trickle down effects. This is evidenced in the depiction of events (from party conferences to cultural events) as income generators, which benefit the local economy. Temporary events are also promoted for their symbolic value in attributing a cosmopolitan outlook to the city centre. Moreover, I argued that media coverage does not simply diffuse a dominant (i.e. institutionally endorsed) vision for Manchester city centre. It also actively seeks to align citizens’ own interests and priorities with those of corporate and institutional stakeholders. The image of the city centre projected in the media was clearly defined and deeply apolitical - or even post-political. The dominant framing depicted the interests of stakeholders as harmonious and convergent. It depoliticised the image of the city centre through selective recourse to its history and radical past, and the framing and sporadic coverage of current protests and contestations.
By contrast, consideration of a multiplicity of voices, views and knowledges about Manchester city centre disclosed competing and at times contested aspirations for its future. Approaching futures as a heuristic, I was able to question their alleged widespread endorsement and reveal the divergence in the visions held by participants. I highlighted the
215 current practices and trade-offs generated by dominant and institutionally endorsed visions. Current partnerships insufficiently acknowledge the priorities of the city centre users and residents. Implications for policy include the need to achieve greater transparency and accountability on the priorities currently favoured in Manchester, and to test their endorsement more widely. My findings also contribute to STS debates on opening up multi- stakeholder engagement, on contested epistemologies and sociology of expectation and futuring. Through them I demonstrated that the STS-inspired multi-stakeholder engagement, often advocated in scientific governance, can usefully be applied to the urban domain, and beyond the field of emergent technologies. This is significant because the few current attempts at importing STS theories, concepts and perspectives into the urban domain often prefer to focus on applications of Actor-Network Theory on specific assemblages (from the transport network to a comparatively discrete ‘social-architectural event’, like the construction or re-development of a building or neighbourhood). My approach, like those importing STS into the study of the urban, posits the urban as multiple and complex, as differentially known, experienced and imagined. It offers a thick description of complex and emergent phenomena, from multiple entry points, which are captured by acknowledging the positionality and relationality of actors and various materialities. It also exposes emergent trajectories and opens them up to greater scrutiny. Inviting the exploration of competing values and contested priorities, it assists a more socially robust shaping of such trajectories.
Great care was taken in identifying and involving key institutional and corporate stakeholders who are currently (and often have also been historically) active within the system of public-private governance described. Nonetheless, the city centre residents and workers’ views cannot be claimed to represent the majority views of residents and city workers in Manchester at present. Great effort was put in the theoretical sampling of these participants, but the type and ethos of this research design, based as it is on multi- stakeholder participatory engagement, advocates that such an involvement does not result in a self-contained, one-off exercise – taking stock of given issues at one time. It would be desirable, instead, to engage in a recursive and ongoing process of multi-stakeholder upstream engagement. Such engagement focuses on aspirations and on co-shaping trajectories in the making – with a view to opening up debate, rendering the governance more accountable and the policy making more socially robust. Within the scope of this PhD research, this iteration and continuity of engagement has been achieved through various
216 processes of looping. This was looping of data recovered from policy, media coverage, the ethnography, and the views expressed by various stakeholders. It was performed to prompt further stakeholder reflexivity. It has also been pursued through the usual feedback channels of presenting the interim findings to various external audiences, including for instance a panel whose respondent was a police expert on the Secured by Design scheme.
Focusing on the process of securitisation, I argued that security is increasingly deployed by stealth and with little democratic overview. Security solutions are often characterised by a low visibility and a lack of transparency over their objectives. By contrast, when deployed very visibility, security was often found to be pursued for branding and image making purposes, rather than for the protection of citizens or certain target groups. This is as much for city branding, as first theorised by Coaffee and Rogers (2008), but also for image- making and -repairing by specific actors (as illustrated by the ANPR operation). Security thus becomes spectacular, bearing little relation to the level of physical danger envisaged and to the objectives that non-experts attribute to it.
Securitisation for branding purposes indicates the symbiotic relationship between security and banal cosmopolitanism. The mobilisation of cosmopolitanism in local policy involves a narrative tapping into Manchester’s roots and history as a city of immigration. More poignantly, it is also a framing that sustains the city-makers and branders’ aspiration for its identity in the future. This aspiration relates to Manchester’s position on the international stage. It concerns its ability to successfully attract inward investment to the city, as well as an influx of visitors, residents and workers. The attractiveness of the city to investors and visitors is predicated also on a range of spaces, like Chinatown and the Gay Village, and events, like Gay Pride or large conferences, seen as granting the city vibrancy. At the same time, security experts and institutional stakeholders consider the display of high-level security know-how and infrastructure, like the Ring of Steel during party conferences, a sine qua non for attracting a lucrative market of high profile events. Seen as a unique trademark of Manchester and its excellence as a destination, the security deployed during temporary events is treated by city makers, branders and security experts as an integral component of the pursuit of event tourism opportunities. Furthermore, through the example of Pride I argued that security concerns are also invoked by corporate stakeholders to mask commercial concerns and assist with the process of ticketing and regulating access at a fee to private events held in public streets.
217 It is in this sense that aspirations towards cosmopolitanism co-shaped the city centre in Manchester. While cosmopolitanism is enjoying a revival in scholarly debates and policy settings, the interpretations that are circulating are widely contrasting. Through an analysis of the recent mainstream local policy and grey literature on Manchester’s city centre I revealed that banal cosmopolitanism prevailed in this literature. Banal cosmopolitanism is understood as a diffuse aspiration lacking in normative strength or desire to redress global injustices. It does not entail a deep understanding and appreciation of those whom one constructs as ‘different’. Banal cosmopolitanism was invoked in place branding and marketing. These findings support those of a previous study on city living in Manchester (Young et al. 2006) but also extend their claim beyond the realm of property development and marketing. With very few notable exceptions, most stakeholders, including residents and city centre workers, interpret cosmopolitanism as a feature of place making. They narrowly and instrumentally conceive it as necessary to adding vibrancy and character to what is on offer in the city centre, as far as the choice of restaurants, shopping venues and events are concerned. As such stakeholders view it as enabling the city centre to compare favourably to other lively large cities in the UK and in Europe. An implication of these findings is that much of the cosmopolitan scholarly debate appears over-optimistic and hopelessly out of step with the dominant understanding of cosmopolitanism circulating in a UK city like Manchester.
Furthermore, spaces that were affluent and highly securitised were also generally perceived by stakeholders to be more cosmopolitan. By contrast, spaces perceived as risky and less prosperous, where greater socio-demographic mix and flux of people was actually occurring, tended not to be designated by participants as cosmopolitan. The key implication for the study of urban sociability is that these cosmopolitan places, rather than being characterised by the spontaneity of unpredictable encounters, or even conviviality amongst strangers, are instead likely to be spaces of intensive consumption. They are likely to be characterised by homogeneity, intensive surveillance and predictable interactions.
This is not to say that diversity was not an important dimension, even a priority for some stakeholders. While not directly discussing cosmopolitanism, participants invoked more complex accounts about the future of the city centre, and displayed a much deeper and extensive global reflexivity. They constantly and intelligently related, compared and contrasted Manchester city centre with other sites nationally and internationally. They
218 raised pressing concerns over diversity and social justice in the city centre, questioning its inclusiveness. Although there was apparent convergence over the aspiration of increasing the residential mix in the city centre, superficially endorsed by all players, there was only very limited convergence over the desire to bring in families and young children. Residents’ priority was introducing much greater demographic mix (not simply across a wider age range, but also through a much more radical socio-economic transformation). This priority was not endorsed by institutional and business participants, and the means to bring about residential transformation were also widely divergent, as already noted. A key implication of these findings is that in order to explore participants’ attitude of global reflexivity and towards difference more widely, it may be preferable to steer away from the vocabulary of cosmopolitanism. Paradoxically, framing public debate around the terminology of cosmopolitanism runs the risk of reducing the scope of public reflection from issues of diversity, social justice and inclusion to mere issues of city branding and place making.
My findings contextualise complex and emergent security assemblages in the city centre within wider trends in securitisation. They strengthen the theorisation of security and contribute to the study of its empirical manifestations in the urban. The existence of a continuum between internal and external security, revealed in policy at various levels and in planning practice, was a key finding. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design principles become enshrined in planning legislation and ascribed onto the built environment through the adoption of the Secured by Design scheme. The scheme was found to increasingly blend with other practices aimed at designing out terror or deterring anti-social behaviours, particularly in the (re)landscaping of public spaces. Simultaneously, it was evident that in building guidance and other guidelines (e.g. for managing crowded spaces) mitigation and the designing-in of resilience were prioritised over issues of prevention. This occurred despite the prevalence of a vocabulary of prevention and risk avoidance. The significance of these findings is manifold. They support critical debates on fortification of space, but they also progress them by pointing to the public endorsement that some measures of security by design enjoy from all actors – namely activity planning, lighting and natural surveillance. For residents and workers this type of everyday security ought to aim at increasing flux and visibility, but also discourage the clustering of shops and bars, rather than focusing on other crime (such as acquisitive crime) or even counter-terror prevention and resilience. Applications of security by design at temporary events were experienced and viewed very differently by different stakeholders. There was widespread
219 consensus that the calendar of city centre events was to be sustained in the future, and alignment with the view circulated in institutional accounts, promotional literature, local policy and media discourse, that these events enhanced the city’s profile. However, important tensions arose about key current security arrangements, which residents reported as negatively impacting on them and on city centre workers and commuters. Residents felt disenfranchised as members of the city centre stakeholder ‘community’.
Similarly, and despite general consensus over the current level of safety of the city centre, mapping participants’ views and experiences revealed an important divergence between actors. Security professionals and some of the business stakeholders tended to identify acquisitive crimes (from shoplifting to burglary of business premises) as the main safety issue arising in the city centre, whereas residents and city centre workers identified violence associated to drunken behaviour as the main risk they were exposed to. Consequently actors advocated very different solutions. When considering the future trajectory of security there was great disagreement amongst actors around the need to reduce the current predominance of leisure uses of the city centre to be able to encourage other uses in the future, and the modalities for doing so. On one hand these findings disclose clashes of interests principally between residents (and city centre workers to some extent) and the leisure industry, with whom institutional players appear to align, sometimes with reticence, sometimes unreservedly. But more importantly, they substantiate my argument about a reflexive theorisation of security - one that questions not just what security is being pursued but also whose security is currently being pursued, and to what effects, particularly onto those whose priorities are traded off.
Through my analysis I argued that the prevalent circulation of discourses of risk and imminent threat generate biopolitical effects, such as actuarial logics that sort individuals into risk categories and justify pre-emptive action to minimise the threat allegedly posed by these groups. That these processes are at play in Manchester is exemplified by the proactive police operation launched in the aftermath of the 2011 riots and enabled by ANPR, which created a temporary city centre-wide exclusion zone, filtering out those configured as ‘risky’. Another key biopolitical effect resulting from the process of securitisation was the trend towards diffusing policing practices. This is fostered by current assemblages involving nesting, clustering, and scaling up of private and public security hybrids. Within Manchester city centre this trend manifests in the emergence of non-
220 governmental agencies that self-task with para-policing (such as the Village Angels) and of public-facing professionals (from receptionists to parking attendants) who are increasingly enrolled in forms of soft-policing, often through nation-wide police initiatives and training. Furthermore, the police themselves have begun to embrace large scale involvement of members of the public in shared policing, as exemplified by the Shop a Looter operation, the first to adopt large scale citizen-supported surveillance for the identification of suspects after the 2011 unrest. Such measures, perceived by most stakeholders as motivated by exceptional circumstances, are indicative of a lack of democratic oversight. They result from appeals to states of emergency, and they are likely to become routinised, particularly in proactive policing practices.
Conversely, other biopolitical effects of the process of securitisation and of the prevailing risk paradigm often theorised in the literature were not in evidence. The tendency to individualise responsibility for personal security and engage in a series of risk avoidance behaviours was only partially realised in Manchester city centre. This trend was supported by security experts, first and foremost by the police, who launched various awareness raising campaigns and diffused various advice (such as leaflets and posters) on risk avoidance behaviour. Residents and city centre workers, though, indicated that they did not fully embrace discourses of personal vulnerability. Instead, they considered a level of risk an unavoidable but non-salient aspect of city living. Whilst believing the safety of their accommodation to be of importance (having thus invested, in terms of finances or energy, in finding a secure flat),191 they did not desire further investment in ‘hard-core’ or high-tech security measures (such as CCTV-enabled analytics) in the city centre public (and progressively hybrid) spaces. Beyond an increase in street lighting at night and similar low- key and very light design interventions, they principally advocated activity planning, by de- prioritising the type of night-time economy currently prevalent. Such measures are envisaged as steps that institutional players ought to take, rather than denoting an individualisation of vulnerability or a propensity to privatise solutions and individual responsibility for personal safety. They also do not indicate a tendency towards armouring up the built environment nor towards engaging in a fortress mentality.
191 Despite the widespread use of mechanised access control, the use of security as a selling point in residential property remains arguably more linked to perceptions of exclusivity rather than of risks.
221 A further notable finding was the growing tendency towards the spatialising of security in the city centre via the interplay of physical and virtual securitisation. This resulted in the creation of exclusion zones and geographical bans. These ranged from the geographical ASBOs already enshrined in legislation and administered by the authorities to individual offenders, or those voluntarily administered by the retail sector often through partnerships across the city centre, to the city centre-wide ANPR-enabled exclusion zone. The latter filtered out individuals constructed as risky, on an ad-hoc basis and without their previous knowledge. Such practices denote a tendency to securitise the city centre by controlling mobility within it and by restricting access to it. In my analysis I extend the theorisation of security beyond a conceptualisation of the hardening of the built environment, often favoured in urban studies of security. I also pushed my theorisation of security beyond a description of virtual surveillance, networked databases and social media, often privileged by recent studies of surveillance. Instead, I refocused attention on theorising the interplay between physical and virtual security.
The intense circulation of discourses of risk and threat grants a self-justifying logic to the process of securitisation, allowing it to subsume under its mentality the management of ever wider sets of issues. In the urban domain, these discourses are increasingly affecting public and crowded places, though they are not confined to those. They progressively warrant a(n ever less democratic) justification for acting pre-emptively, with little scrutiny and political debate (Graham 2004;Agamben 2001). I highlighted the contested nature of many individual security measures, as well as their relatively low visibility amongst residents and users of the city centre. These measures were often viewed by participants as directed towards others. City makers, branders and security experts promoted the security deployed. However, when residents became aware of some of the measures in place (for instance some of the geographical bans), they often found them objectionable and undesirable on various grounds. Residents, workers and a small set of other stakeholders, varying according to the individual measure discussed, saw current security measures as raising issues of effectiveness. They also questioned the commensurability of current security measures to their stated objectives, the level of threat and the associated costs. These participants also raised ethical issues, probing the effects of these measures on the city centre, on displacing deviant behaviour and citizens perceived as risky, on rendering the centre more exclusionary and segregated. The analysis also revealed a lack of transparency over the objectives of security measures deployed during temporary events,
222 such as the Ring of Steel or the database of resident data collected by the police, and the pressing need for open debate over their desirability, proportionality and deployment. Most residents and some city centre workers seemed unaware of private surveillance in city centre commercial settings (in or nearby shops or clubs for instance). This is despite the comments they volunteered on forms of ubiquitous (private) surveillance on-line (e.g. via Facebook), via smart phones and locative technologies (e.g. Google Earth). Nor did they show awareness of the trend towards hybridising public and private surveillance in such settings. This has important implications because hybridisation of security may result in the business community unduly exercising leverage on the security priorities pursued also by public services and the police in the city centre. It could lead to privileging the deterrence, policing and prosecution of business crimes (such as shoplifting), over violent crimes, which were more pressing for residents.
Ultimately, through the findings on the securitisation of the city centre I suggest the need for greater accountability. Unlike other dimensions of city centre politics, however, the process of securitisation is very resistant to questioning, due to the dynamics that sustain it – first and foremost the constant recourse to discourses of risk and states of exception. This only makes its open scrutiny and democratic oversight all the more urgent.
9.1 Future Research
One innovative feature and the key analytical strength of this research was its design and execution, combining theoretical inputs from science and technology studies, theories of governmentality and surveillance, and deploying critical discourse and frame analysis. Attention to discourse and framing, in particular, allowed me to recover micro-level linguistic and discursive features and connect them to macro-level symbolic meanings and narratives. The complementarity and integration of these different but cognitively consonant approaches generated a multiplicity of insights and views (elicited from different stakeholders, recovered through the ethnographic observation, tracked through the media coverage, and investigated within policy and grey literature), permitting a multi-layered thick description of securitisation in the city centre.
As I reflect back on the work done, I recognise dimensions that were not developed in this research and which could constitute directions for future exploration. Further research
223 could follow more closely the crystallisation of city makers and branders’ aspirations for Manchester within international circuits. These include international events like the MIPIM real estate fair, within which Manchester regularly presents and displays its vision for the future (instead of presenting selected buildings as most other participant cities do), or the international press (including travel literature and promotional material developed for the international market). Within the UK, it would be interesting to explore more thoroughly the type of photographs and images currently mobilised in the national media in relation to Manchester. Turning one’s attention towards local media coverage instead, it would be interesting to explore the imagery circulated on local TV or web news coverage, as well as to examine other artefacts. Some of the latter have been collected through the ethnography – for instance a plastic carrier bag released by the tourist information office with ‘Manchester is a city that thinks tables are for dancing on’ written on - but did not feature in the analysis, due to time and space constraints. Moreover, it would be interesting to test the penetration and audience reception of these semiotic messages.
The vast quantity of data collected during this PhD research meant that challenging choices had to be made about what could be included in the analysis. For instance, participants were probed about their perceptions of the image of Manchester circulating in the media and in public opinion. These findings are concisely synthesised in appendix 3 and could be explored in more depth. Similarly, the empirical work with stakeholders also resulted in reflections over the role of iconic architecture in articulating change, and discussions over aesthetics. These produced interesting insights, for instance on the role of heritage, which could be explored further.
Furthermore, as noted, a remarkably small group of actors have played and continue to play a large role, though their membership in key partnership organisations, in shaping the city centre. Pursuing an actor-network analysis of the organisation structures of these bodies (their directorship and advisory boards) might visualise in striking terms their connections, and further disclose their presence within Manchester’s circuits of governance.
Finally, a most interesting path for future research would be to connect and compare the securitisation and various security configurations in Manchester with those present in
224 other key sites, such as airports (or at border crossing more generally), centres of strategic infrastructure, stadiums and mega event sites (like Olympic parks).
225 Appendices Appendix 1: Details of Participants
Participants no. 1-28 were accessed through one-to-one face-to-face interviews (except for participants no. 4 and 5 who were accessed through a group interview, also face-to-face), generally lasting just under 1hour. These were almost exclusively conducted on location at the interviewees’ places of work or in a nearby location. Participants 29-39, instead, were accessed via two focus groups held in the city centre, each lasting just under 2 hours.
n Participants Type of stakeholder and Date and location rationale for selection
1 Managing Director institutional stakeholder/ 21.03.2012 of Visiting city brander Visiting Manchester HQ, Manchester (Tourist Piccadilly Basin board) 2 Director of Strategic institutional stakeholder/ 23.04.2012 Marketing, city brander Cafe within Marketing Marketing Manchester’s Manchester building, Piccadilly Basin
3 CEO of CityCo, the institutional stakeholder 24.04.2012 city centre CityCo HQ, Kings Road management company
4 Sir Howard institutional stakeholder/ 12.06.2012 Bernstein, local government Town Hall (group interview City Council Chief with n.5 below) Executive
5 Head of the City institutional stakeholder/ 12.06.2012 Centre urban planning and Town Hall (group interview Regeneration Team, regeneration expert with n.4 above) City Council
6 Chair of Greater institutional stakeholder/local 04.04.2012 Manchester Police government/ police/ security GMPA HQ, Salford Civic Authority and City expert Centre Councillor 7 Security expert, institutional stakeholder/ 15.05.2012 male security expert his office, city centre Anonymous
8 GMPA Police police/ security expert 23.02.2012 Inspector, male UoM (during a fair for students at which police and other services had stalls)
9 Police police/ security expert 19.07.2012 Superintendent, Police Station GMPA, male
10 Design for Security police / security expert/ urban 02.042012 Consultant, planning and architecture Design for Security GMPA
226 GMPA, male expert HQ, Moston
11 Research Manager, business Interests (the 05.04.12 Manchester Chamber has a Cafe in front of Chamber of Chamber of financial/professional sector Commerce, City Centre Commerce, male focus)
12 Director of Special business interest/property 21.03.2012 Projects, developers (heavily involved in Bruntwood HQ, Bruntwood city centre regeneration) Piccadilly Gardens (property developers), male
13 Deputy CEO of business interest/property 14.06.1012 Urban Splash developer (Urban Splash were Urban Splash HQ, Timber (property pioneers in Manchester city Wharf developers), and centre regeneration), but also Chairman of city brander for his role at Marketing Marketing Manchester Manchester
14 Arts venue artistic arts/ cultural sector (senior 11.07.2012 lead role) Arts venue Anonymous, female
15 Northern Quarter cultural sector/city centre 01.04.2012 artist (painter) worker His NQ studio Anonymous, male
16 Canal Street bar business interests/ city centre 14.03.2012 owner, male worker His bar in the Gay Village
17 Bakery owner and business interests/ city centre 02.04.2012 manager, female, worker Her bakery in Spinningfields Spinningfields 18 Florist /receptionist, business interests/ city centre 31.03.2012 female worker Her shop in the Civic Quarter
19 Charity shop 'ethical' business interests/ city 29.03.2012 assistant, female centre worker Her shop in Deansgate
20 Florist 2, male business interests/ city centre 31.03.2012 worker His shop in the Civic Quarter
21 Hair saloon business interests/ city centre 29.03.2012 manager, female worker Her saloon in Deansgate
22 Big Issue vendor, ethical business interest 08.03.2012 male /former homeless/ city centre Cafe of Royal Exchange worker Theatre, St Ann’s Square (in front of his place of work)
23 Community NGO/ city centre worker 17.07.2012 engagement LGF HQ, Gay Village coordinator, Lesbian and Gay
227 Foundation, male 24 Independent business interests/city centre 08.03.2012 cafe/eatery worker His cafe/eatery, Civic Quarter manager, male
25 Student, female city centre frequent user (and 20.02.2012 pilot 1) Her place of study, UoM
26 University academic City centre frequent user/city 22.02.2012 staff, male centre worker (and pilot 2) His workplace, UoM
27 City centre resident Resident of Princess St/Portland 12.10.2012 1, female area A cafe in the Gay Village
28 City centre resident Resident of Deansgate area 12.10.2012 2, male Came to UoM to be interviewed 29 City centre Residents of Piccadilly Basin, FG 1 on 13.09.12 Manchester to residents accessed the Courts (between Piccadilly city library, city centre 39 in focus groups 1 and Portland), Gay Village, and 2 Whitworth St, Whitworth FG2 on 11.10.12 RIBA Cafe West/First Street, Deansgate & (hired after hours), Portland Castlefield; different age groups Street. and different type of accommodation (mostly rented, but from high-end to basic and from studio to multi-bedroom; different length of stay – only one had been less than a year in the city centre.
The gender spread of the residents accessed was 4 females and 7 males (plus 1 male and 1 female interviewed separately, above). While age and ethnicity were not collected formally, residents, including participants 27 and 28, displayed a spread of age ranges (the youngest was in his early 20s, the oldest in his early 70s, through the majority were under 45 years of age), and a level of ethnic mix (2 participants of Chinese/Asian heritage, 1 of Indian/Pakistani heritage and 2 who might perhaps describe themselves as of mixed ethnicity).
228 Appendix 2: Maps of Manchester
Figure 7. Map of Manchester within the UK From http://www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/UK-Map- Manchester.jpg (accessed 25 May 2014)
Figure 8. Map of the City Region From http://manchestermule.com/article/local-enterprise-partnership-takes-shape- %E2%80%93-and-it%E2%80%99s-all-power-to-the-private-sector (accessed 25 May 2014)
229
Figure 9. Map of Manchester City Centre From http://www.sos.eps.manchester.ac.uk/student-life/manchester/photo-gallery/ (accessed 25 May 2014). The map map used during fieldwork is available on http://www.visitmanchester.com/media/115401/pocket%20map%202011_2010.pdf (accessed 25 May 2014)
Figure 10. Map of City Centre Ward From http://www.manchester.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/17987/a26k_city_centre_2011_0 2a ©Crown map (accessed 25 May 2014
230 Appendix 3: Media
3a) Assembling the Manchester Evening News (MEN) Dataset
The process of assembling the Manchester Evening News (MEN) dataset, using LexisNexis, highlighted that football coverage was one of the most common types of coverage retrieved when recalling articles on Manchester. Even when using the search terms of ‘Manchester’ and ‘city centre’, the articles initially retrieved often were not about the city centre, but about Manchester City football club (and about Manchester United), and about game fixtures and scores. Consequently, the automated engine search was subsequently refined through manual exclusion of football stories from the article dataset192.
The final dataset included 226 articles on Manchester city centre, which are heterogeneous in terms of content and format, differing widely also in length and extent of analysis offered, with some articles being discursive, some offering extended commentary, and others simply listing events or very concisely reporting on developments. The type and position of these articles in the paper also vary. The majority of the coverage collected is in the form of news articles (171, appearing in the initial and central pages of the newspaper), followed by feature articles (30), business sections articles (21), and accompanied by a handful of articles taken from the sport section (4).
3b) Coverage of the August 2011 Unrest
The disturbances were mainly referred to as ‘riots’ in the MEN coverage. The term is by far the most commonly used (occurring 318 times, 213 times as ‘riots’ and 105 as ‘riot’). Other terms employed - albeit less frequently - to describe the incidents that took place include ‘looting’193 which is obviously framed in the coverage as the main activity taking place during the rioting, with 132 occurrences. This was followed by ‘violence’ appearing 59 times (in a variety of combinations194 including in expressions like ‘criminal lawless violence’), ‘disturbances’ 29 times, ‘mayhem’ 17, ‘lawlessness’195 16, ‘chaos’ 16, ‘unrest’ 12. Some of these choices are more emotionally loaded than others - for instance ‘chaos’ and ‘mayhem’ are comparatively more emotive terms than ‘unrest’ and ‘disturbances’, and as such tended to appeared more often in condemnations of events, rather than in the discussions of police tactics. Those who took place in the events were generally referred to
192 The search terms were arrived at after various piloting and the three month parameters were chosen so as to include coverage of the riots but also to allow capture of more routinely circulated coverage, beyond that generated by these somewhat extraordinary events. 193 These terms have been lemmatised for Boolean search, so ‘looting’ in the text above stands for all occurrences of the possible lexical items of its lexeme, such as ‘loot, loots, looted, looting’, which have been computed together. I have instead computed separately lexical items that identify actors (such as ‘looter’ and ‘looters’), separating their occurrences from that of that may generally be indicating an event or activity. 194 These combinations are known as collocations and were derived from concordances extracted with the help of WordSmith software for computational textual analysis. This software was here mainly used to compute the frequencies and concordances of specific lexical items (or terms), although it can be used for a variety of other types of textual and linguistic analysis, including investigating semantic prosody. 195 This search also included a couple of occurrences of the term ‘lawless’, used for instance in clusters such as ‘criminal lawless violence’.
231 as ‘rioters’196 a term appearing 97 times, and followed by ‘looters’ with 72 instances, and ‘thugs’, which was used 36 times.197
References to possible causes for the unrest were scarce, with only a couple of MEN articles, in the immediate aftermath of the events, asking why the riots took place. One of them dwells on the apparent lack of motivation or cause behind these events, which are framed as instances of mere greed and ‘copy-cat violence’, while another article anticipates some of the consequences of reading the riots as resulting from a moral vacuum:
Zero tolerance is back on the agenda. Both Manchester and Salford councils have promised to work with their partner housing associations to get convicted rioters kicked out of their homes. (MEN, 15 Aug 2011, p.8)
The implications of this type of coverage and framing of the unrest are discussed in Pieri 2014b, appendix 6.
3c) MEN Coverage of Other Manchester Events
In line with the varied calendar of events taking place in the city centre, the MEN covered events ranging from Moroccan Markets to sport events (e.g. the Sky Ride bicycle ride, the triathlon or the Formula 1 racing in Deansgate), advertising them ahead of their occurrence and then reporting their success afterwards. Several family and children-friendly events were also featuring (including the Manchester Picnic), as well as events organised by city centre galleries and museums, or by private groups (like Manchester Pride, the Food and Drink Festival, and other ticketed events in theatres and music venues). The vast majority of activities reported were held entirely in the city centre,198 and the main public areas used were squares (St Ann’s Square and St Peter’s Square, but also Piccadilly Gardens), although events frequently also took place around Castlefiled and Deansgate (for instance the sport events mentioned above), and the newly completed Spinningfield area (for instance the site of the openair deckchair cinema, the dog show, the vintage car show and so on). Many of these events involved food, music and a party-like atmosphere, while others were more focused around sports or arts. In the period covered (Aug- Oct 2011) references are also made to events occurring at different times of the year and considered ‘regular big drawers’, such as the award-winning yearly Christmas Market, various sport world competitions, and the Manchester International Festival (a ticketed and biennial event) which the coverage reports as having boosted the city economy by £37.6m in 2011.
3d) Stakeholders’ Views of Manchester in the Media Many institutional stakeholders, including the CEO of Manchester City Council, the Managing Director of Visiting Manchester, and the Marketing Director of Marketing Manchester, along with property developers, the representative from the Chamber of Commerce and other stakeholders from the cultural and NGO sectors, believed that the coverage enjoyed today was largely positive. This was in part explained through the quality
196 This was lemmatised, so the count includes both references to ‘rioter’ and ‘rioters’. See Pieri 2014b (in appendix 6) for a discussion of the context and implications of this coverage. 197 A couple of instances out of the 36 occurrences of the term ‘thug(s)’ refer to incidents covered in the newspaper database collected but entirely unrelated to the August riots. 198 A minority, including the Sky Ride event or the Food Festival, had their focal point in the city centre but extended elsewhere too.
232 of cultural and sporting events – especially the football199 – on offer and partly due to the efforts of those tasked with marketing Manchester and ‘feeding’ positive stories to the media:
we proactively target international media (..) there are things completely beyond our control, well like the riots and such, that are gonna create negative media coverage, so, but we basically just do what- look to counteract with positive stories whenever we can (Marketing Director Marketing Manchester)
While this effort was recognised and praised by at least one of the business stakeholders, the CEO of Manchester City Council was increasingly satisfied that there no longer was a need to actively drive positive stories about Manchester and its city centre.
Some of the participants working and living in the city centre, however, held different views, and were concerned that media coverage was still scarce and largely London-centric (a view also held by the Art Centre participant and, to an extent, by the Chamber of Commerce representative too):
S: the only thing that I'd say was bad about Manchester, is that it doesn't quite make it down to London. So when something's good going on (..) it's kind of kept locally, which is a bit of a shame, apart from big big things like the Commonwealth Games (..) E: so it is more lack of coverage than it being positive or negative? S: yeah, but that's to be expected with a little city in the UK [in comparison to London] (bakery owner)
Aside from the primacy of London, limiting the share of coverage Manchester could secure, others saw the coverage Manchester does receive as largely negative - focusing on crime and other negative stories:
the media hum in on the bad story rather than the good story. They are always going to heighten the bad things (hair saloon manager)
P: I think it depends on the scale of the media. I think nationally it probably gets a bad press, sometimes, but I think E: about what, more or less? P: crime I think, and fear of crime (Design for Security consultant)
I don't see a lot of positive media about the city centre. I only ever hear about the bad things that happen (..) like the riots and.. one month ago someone was hit by a tram, stuff like that (..) it makes you be more careful when you are around, and more op-, like, your eyes are open more. But I think that people who are coming from different places and don't know about the city centre, I think it would scare them a bit away (florist 1)
not really good story (..) this morning about some lady getting.. some bleach falling in her face (..) and only a few months ago there was that Asian guy who got murdered, from India or somewhere, so you don't really hear many positive kinds of things really (florist 2)
199 Participants most frequently mentioned football as the reason for Manchester appearing in the media today, and these were generally seen as positive references, with only two participants attributing to football stories a negative connotation. As discussed, this is also confirmed empirically by the pilot searches preceding the media coverage collection.
233 As in the first quote above, for some the negative coverage was a feature of journalism itself, which was privileging negative stories to grab public attention and sell more papers, whereas for others it was a matter of national coverage versus local one (as exemplified by the second quote above), which instead they perceived to be rather favourable. While some stakeholders praised MEN, the publication was far from unanimously liked.200 Whenever participants differentiated geographically between city centre and the outskirts of Manchester, the general trend was to see the city centre as receiving positive coverage, and the suburban areas negative one (mainly around crime issues, but also around deprivation). In terms of regional positioning, one participant (the Art Centre stakeholder, who had been amongst those lamenting the newsworthy primacy of London), reported the regional coverage as being Manchester-centric, possibly to the detriment of other neighbouring localities.
3e) Stakeholders’ Perceptions of the Role of the Media As mentioned when discussing perceptions of safety in the city centre, participants often referred to a stereotypical view of Manchester, a view some saw as circulating in the past, and others as still circulating today, and attributed to Southerners. There was general consensus, however, that this image of Manchester as a grim Northern industrial city no longer (or for some never) was a truthful representation of the city - and did not reflect the image of the centre as it is now. There was disagreement, instead, as to whether the national media were continuing to circulate this stereotype. For some the national media were at times complicit in perpetuating this portrayal:
there is a little bit of a kind of lazy journalism that sometimes will use Manchester as, as an example of- you know the city still has- the city council area, if you like, in the whole of Greater Manchester, still has some quite severe pockets of deprivation (Marketing Director Marketing Manchester).
The recent transfer of the BBC headquarters from London to neighbouring Salford was hailed as now beginning to redress the imbalance, and some participants reported an increase of coverage since the move:
I have noticed that the BBC do a lot more reports and things from Manchester now that they are here, so their reporters don't need to go as far (..) London will always be the focal point to the Country. But I think, I think the very fact that they've chosen to come to Manchester is really positive for the city (Lesbian Gay Foundation).
Most institutional, business and cultural sector stakeholders, however, saw the national media as pivotal in circulating an opposite image of the city, one that raised its profile and documented its transformation, particularly though coverage of large events:
BBC news (..) shows all around the world, well when the party conferences are here, every place and every city in the world sees Manchester on screen (..) the coverage, not just on the global news, but the benefits that the city gets in terms of being able to articulate the transformation of Manchester, the vision for Manchester, and the investment that that creates to Manchester! (Director of Special Projects, Bruntwood)
200 For instance the GMPA Chair lamented that its headlines at times appear to ‘betray’ the content of its articles.
234 The festival (..) has been great for the profile of the city. (..) it does grab headlines, it does get that press from London, maybe more so than regular things that take place in various circles (Artistic Director, city centre art centre).
Regardless of disagreement on whether the national media was diffusing negative or positive images of Manchester, participants largely saw the coverage as having a direct impact on public opinion of Manchester and its city centre. The media were seen as directly affecting the public opinion of audiences outside Manchester, particularly influencing those who had not had first-hand experiences of the place.
There was instead some disagreement about the extent to which participants saw themselves as being affected by the same coverage. Institutional stakeholders believed the media coverage directly affected the opinion of prospective visitors and investors, but they did not talk of themselves as being affected by the coverage. In some cases they saw themselves, instead, as engaged in successfully shaping the coverage, aligning it with their own upbeat view of Manchester. Other stakeholders’ attitudes were more mixed. Those participants who already tended to perceive the city centre as riskier felt more affected by coverage that they perceived to be negative. Those who also understood the coverage to be mainly negative but found themselves in dissonance with that image of the city centre generally reported disregarding this coverage and not being affected by it:
E: in terms of the image in the media, as far as you can tell, what does Manchester come up in the stories- in the newstories for? C: it seems really rough and.. low class. I don't know, it's not like that at all. It is a bit rough but just as much as anywhere else. (..) I suppose because with the football, that gives it a bad image, and the riots gives it a bad image. But this is not really what's Manchester is about, people judge it before they come here (Charity Shop Assistant)
As mentioned local mainstream media coverage, such as MEN, was seen as offering a positive view of Manchester and its city centre. The motivations behind this attitude in reporting were at times openly discussed:
I don't read the local papers that often, but I think especially, well some of the local papers have a vested interest in the city centre, they don't want to drive people away really, they want to sort of portray it as quite a nice place. (Design for Security consultant)
A small number of participants mentioned new media and citizen journalism, and their role in complementing or supplementing the flaws of local coverage by mainstream media. The CEO of CityCo, for instance, praised the presence of novel online news outlets, such as Manchester Mule201 (while dissociating himself from their political stance), because he saw them as counteracting the most patently ‘tabloid’ aspects of the MEN coverage. At the same time, he also warned that other on-line outlets, such as Mancunian Matters202, or other forms of citizen journalism, such as blogging and tweeting, may project a distorted perception of the city centre as a risky site by amplifying the significance of isolated incidents, and fomenting instantaneous outrage or panicked perceptions. The references to other media were too few to draw conclusions about possible trends, beyond the suggestion that each medium might be seen as a corrective for the flaws of the others.
201 Manchestermule.com (last accessed 1 June 2014). 202 http://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/ (last accessed 1 June 2014).
235 Appendix 4: Fieldwork schedules and prompts
4a ) Interview Schedule and Prompts
1 (Prompt 1 map of the city centre) How often are you in Manchester city centre? Briefly probe: What activities? When? [And with whom?]
2 How would you describe MCR city centre?
2b What (sort of things) do you like about MCR city centre? Why?
2c What (sort of things) do you dislike about it? Why?
3 Is Manchester city centre undergoing any changes?
3b (If so), are these changes for the best or the worst? Why? --- 4 Is Manchester city centre a safe or an unsafe place to be? Why/how? [probe: in your own experience? If any site is mentioned, probe type of safety/security issue]
4b Does this change - over time (of day/night)? from area to area (map)? If you are on your own?
4c If I asked you to think about security measures in Manchester city centre, what would come to mind? Or: Are you aware of any security measures in the city centre? (probe: any that you can see?) --- 4d (If measures are mentioned) How do you feel about XXX? (if none mentioned, move straight to prompts below]
CCTV What are your thoughts on CCTV use in the city centre? [generally discuss CCTV without Prompts 2-3, but depending on interviewee] safety postcard at X-mas What are your thoughts on this? [P4 - only used with police] Party C - show P5-6: What are your thoughts on this? Have you been in the city centre during the party conference? What was your experience of the security measures in place? Exclusion zones – P7-8 What are your thoughts on this? Are you aware that these measures can be imposed?
4e Are there any safety /security measures that you would you like to see used more or used less in the future? (4f) (if new buildings/areas were discussed before, ask whether these will be or feel safer) --- 5 Cosmo in your view, is Manchester city centre cosmopolitan? Why/ How? (optional P9/use if term ‘cosmopolitan’ does not get them going) ---
236 6 When you think of Manchester in the newspapers and media, what kind of news stories come to mind? (if unable to answer, mention football, and then say: apart from football what would you say is Manchester often in the media for?)
6b (if able to answer 6, ask 6b and c. If not, go straight to 7) Do these stories reflect what life is like in Manchester? And in the city centre?
6c Do these news stories match your opinion of how (un)safe or secure the city centre is? Do they match your opinion of how cosmopolitan the city centre is?
7 If I can ask you to look ahead, instead, what do you think the city centre will be/look like in 10-15 years from now?
8 If you were in (sole - when asking councillors) charge, what would you like the city centre to be/look like in the future? What would be your priorities (for the city centre)? --- 9 Anything else you want to add? Many thanks!
Prompt 2 – taken from a City Council websit, reads:
CCTV in Manchester Manchester City Council believes that effective CCTV services are pivotal in tackling crime and disorder, anti-social behaviour and environmental crime. CCTV also assists in effectively managing traffic, e.g bus lanes.
The council takes a zero-tolerance approach to these issues, and uses CCTV to confront the issues in and around our city, making your neighbourhoods safer, cleaner and stronger.
CCTV was first introduced in Manchester in 1998, and now, in 2007, the Council operates some 200 cameras broken down in 5 schemes:
Manchester City Centre, targeting retail and entertainment areas. ..
Prompt 3 – From newspaper dataset, reads
We’re all spied upon, but to what purpose? The Trouble with all Britain’s CCTV cameras is they don’t stop crime
Studies into efficacy of CCTV have been inconclusive. Dover council introduced cameras in 1993. After 12 years, they found burglary in the areas covered had halved and car crime was down 87% - but all of these could be the result of better locks and alarms. Over the same period, however, public disorder and crimes of violence had almost trebled. A study in Gillingham in Kent concluded that crime in the high street had fallen by a third over the five years after CCTV was installed, while it was static in areas where there was none. In 2004 a Home Office inquiry by a team at Leicester University, which examined 14 CCTV systems, found that only one had really cut crime. That was in a car park. The others, they concluded “had no overall effect on crime”. Yet, instead of accepting it may not be the best form of crime control, more money is being spent on digitising CCTV.
237 The fact is that if it was half as effective as its proponents say it is, then the rest of the world would be as festooned with cameras as we are. (From The Daily Telegraph, 23 Aug 2011, p.19)
Figure 11 - Prompt 4 (from the ethnography)
Prompts 5 and 6 – from ethnography and newspaper dataset: Image: Ring of Steel photo: reproduced as Figure 13 in appendix 5, below. Text : Ring of steel to guard the Tory conference SECURITY at the Conservative Party Conference will be ‘tighter than ever before’. Armed police will be drafted in to safeguard delegates in a £4m security operation launched ahead of the conference opening tomorrow, A 2.2km-long (1.4miles) ‘ring of steel’ has already been erected around the secure zone in the city centre and around 1,000 police officers will be at the site during each day of the conference From Manchester Evening News, October 1, 2011, p2
Prompt 7 - From newspaper dataset, reads: ‘Riot yob banned from city centre for 2 years’
A RIOTER has become the first in the country to be slapped with an ASBO. The landmark court order means Jason Ulett is banned from Manchester city centre for the next two years.(..)
He was wearing a hood and riding a push-bike among a crowd of people suspected of looting the store. A struggle ensued when an officer stopped him and Ulett refused to remove his hood. More police came to the scene but Ulett continued to swear and struggle until he was handcuffed. The next day, Ulett, of Woodward Court in Ardwick, pleaded guilty to a public
238 order offence. Manchester magistrates jailed him for 10 weeks, making him one of the first rioters to face justice.(..)
The ASBO bans him from an area of the city centre bounded by Great Ancoats Street, the Mancunian Way, Dawson Street, Trinity Way, Miller Street and Swan Street. It also prevents Ulett from remaining in any shop in the country if he is asked to leave by the staff. (..) Assistant Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said: "(..) This case offers a timely reminder ahead of this weekend's Trade Union Congress (TUC), where we are expecting large numbers of people to peacefully protest on the streets of Manchester, that anyone who wishes to cause trouble or incite disorder will be met by the full force of the law." Manchester Evening News, 29 Sept 2011, p.2
Prompt 8 – quoted in full in chapter 6.3.9 (ANPR exclusion zone), from Manchester Evening News, August 13, 2011 Saturday, p. 4.‘Police turn back 50 cars in operation to stop criminals entering city centre’
Prompt 9 – from policy document, section on Cosmopolitan Central Manchester, reads:
‘Central Manchester is currently home to a range of institutions and facilities that attract and retain people from all over the world, contributing greatly to the diversity and vibrancy of the city as a whole. It also has a long established BME community, and acts as a welcoming first point of entry to Manchester for many new migrants from all over the world. This cosmopolitan community includes long established Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities as well as a significant Afro Caribbean community. More recent ethnic groups from countries such as Somalia, are now being joined by workers from the new EU Member States such as Poland’. City Council (2006) CMSRF
4b) Focus Group Schedule and Prompts Jot down (warm up) If you think of Manchester (at large), what are the first two or three things that come to your mind? Please jot down on post-it (writing your name on the back). All read.
Jot down. If you think of Manchester city centre now, what comes to mind? Please jot down on post-it (writing your name on the back). All read & explains/ (briefly) say what you’ve written and how you would describe MCR city centre?
If you think about your experience as city centre residents, what do you like about living in MCR city centre? Why?
What do you dislike or consider a downside of living in MCR city centre? Why? [probe: any suggestion on what should/could change]
What do you think the city centre will be like in the future, over the next 10 years? [After immediate round of responses, distribute brainstorming prompt: this is just to brainstorm some ideas but don’t feel constrained to these (you can certainly ignore this is you prefer). What do you imagine the city centre to be like 10-20 years into the future?
If you were deciding about the future of the city centre, what would you want for the city centre? What would be your priorities? [or What would you want to see happening? What would you like the city centre to be like in the future? ]
239
Is Manchester city centre a safe or an unsafe place to be? Why/how? [in your own experience as a resident how do you find it in terms of safety? If any site is mentioned, probe type of saf/sec issue]
********** If they think it is safe, continue with: Jot down. If I asked you to think about security measures present in Manchester city centre, what would come to mind? Post it jot down (name on back) – read out & how do you feel about these?
P ID dominance [Someone mentioned CCTV or CCTV is one of many security measures in place in the cc] and I wanted to get your views on how CCTV is used together with other intelligence at the moment. Distribute prompt, what do you think about this?
P3 - Party Conference/special event security Have you been in the city centre during the party conference? What was your experience of the security measures in place? What are your thoughts on this image and text?
The police has been collecting a database of residents who live very close to the conference centre. This is taken from the newsletter of GNT apartments. If you look at the last three lines, these are the details that the police have been collecting from residents of GNT. Have you been asked to give your data to the police database (is anyone living in the area)? Where you aware of this database? [Distribute other prompt]: when speaking to one of the police officials responsible of the operation, this is how they described how they collect and retain the data [Allow time to read] What is your view over this data collection and the resident database that the police holds?
P6 [distribute photos] We are now closing by briefly looking at another event, Pride, anyone living in or around the Village? As a resident, what is your experience of the event? And of the road closures and security? P7 distribute Chorlton quote : what are you thoughts on this?
Anything you want to add before we close? CLOSE
Many thanks for taking part and sharing your views. Repeat my contacts details.
********** If unsafe, continue with:
Distribute quotes safety. These are the views of two people who work in the city centre? As residents, how do you feel about these views? Do they match your experience?
Jot down. If I asked you to think about security measures present in Manchester city centre, what would come to mind? Post it jot down (name on back) – read out & how do you feel about these?
P3 - Party Conference/special event security Have you been in the city centre during the party conference? What was your experience of the security measures in place? What are your thoughts on this image and text?
240 The police has been collecting a database of residents who live very close to the conference centre. This is taken from the newsletter of GNT apartments. If you look at the last three lines, these are the details that the police have been collecting. Have you been asked to give your data to the police database (is anyone living in the area)? Where you aware of this database? [Distribute other prompt]: when speaking to one of the police officials responsible of the operation, this is how they described how they collect and retail the data [Allow time to read] What is your view over this request for data and the database that is created and managed by the police?
P6 [distribute photos] We are now closing by briefly looking at another event, Pride, anyone living in or around the Village? As a resident, what is your experience of the event? And of the road closures and security? P7 distribute Chorlton quote : what are you thoughts on this?
Anything you want to add before we close? CLOSE
Many thanks for taking part and sharing your views. Repeat my contacts details.
Prompts:
Figure 12 - Focus Group brainstorming prompt
Safety: ID Dominance prompt reads: ‘We have a very comprehensive intelligence and also data sharing policy with Greater Manchester Police, which is both targeted, compliant with data protection, and that is information that we share on a control basis with a number of organisations within the city.
241 Again it’s about reducing crime, and for those individuals that want to continue to come into the city, to reduce their ability to walk around the city – I am going to try and say this word now – ‘anonymously’. (..) we take away that, you know, ability to walk around undetected’ Manchester security expert, 2012
Party conference prompts – same photo and text used as interview prompts 5 and 6 (see above), then, Great Northern Tower Newsletter (about resident database collected by the police, see Chapter 6.3.5 for image of this). Then:
POLICE DATABASE OF RESIDENTS living near the Conference Centre Superintendent: yes, we’re still doing that. We are doing that now (..) E: (..) do you keep the data, or does it get collected anew every year? S: yeah, we refresh it. We keep it, but then we refresh. We do another-, at the moment the process is that we’ve got some, a volunteer officer special constable. They’re visiting each flat against the ledger, and they’re saying, explain to them [the residents] personally what it is that is going to happen this year (Interview with GMP Superintendent, July 2012)
Pride Security Prompts: photos of Pride gating, all appearing in appendix 5, below. Then: Manchester Pride was here before the residents, they knew what they were moving into, if you don't want to move into a vibrant city, don't go, go live in Chorlton! Get a car! (Bar owner, Canal Street)
242 Appendix 5: Images of Temporary Events’ Securitisation and Gating
5a) Photos of Ring of Steel, Manchester City Centre
Figure 13 - Conservative Party Conference 2011
Figure 14- Conservative Party Conference 2013
243
Figure 15 - Conservative Party conference 2013, Town Hall
244
Figure 16 - Conservative Party conference 2013
Figure 17 - Conservative Party conference 2013
245
Figure 18 - Labour Party Conference 2012
Figure 19 - Labour Party Conference 2012
246 5b) Photos of Gating for Gay Pride 2012, Manchester City Centre
Figures 20-25 – Gay Village 2012
247 Appendix 6: Surveillance & Society Peer-Reviewed Journal Article – First publication from this research
Pieri, E. 2014. Emergent policing practices: Operation Shop a Looter and urban space securitisation in the aftermath of the Manchester 2011 riots. Surveillance & Society 12(1): 38-54.
Freely downloadable on: http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and- society/article/view/riots/man-riots
Abstract:
Figure 26 – First page of publication 1
248 Appendix 7: Cosmopolitanism Peer-Reviewed Book Chapter - Second publication from this research
Pieri, E (2014) 'Contested Cosmopolitanism' in Kaunonen, L (ed) Cosmopolitanism and Transnationalism: Visions, Ethics, Practices. COLLeGIUM: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 15. Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, pp. 14–38.
Freely downloadable on: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/45242/02_PIERI_1305.pdf?sequence=1
Abstract:
Figure 27 – First page of publication 2
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