ABSTRACT
The decline, in some cases virtual abandonment, of town and city centres, both a response to the more general economic decline of urban areas and of the growth of retailing in out-of-town sites, became a characteristic of the urban geography of many cities in the late 1980s and 1990s. The problem was particularly acute in the UK, which tended to possess city centres oriented almost entirely around commercial and retail activity. There was no tradition in the UK, for example, of people living in city centres, unlike many continental European and certain US cities. In response cities put forward a series of measures aimed at the physical revitalisation of town and city centres that are detailed elsewhere in this chapter. Central to this creation of the spaces of urban regeneration was the securing of these spaces. Along with bad transport and bland city centre environments one of the things that kept people out of city centres was crime, and particularly their fear of crime. There appeared little point in cities fashioning apparently ravishing urban renaissances if the persistence of fear of crime among urban populations prevented people enjoying new developments and more importantly spending their money there. A key prerequisite for any sustained development of town and city centres in the UK, therefore, was the necessity to increase people’s feelings of security in these areas and to reduce actual levels of city centre crime. The development of closed circuit television (CCTV) systems in town and city centres was advocated from the late 1980s as a ‘technical fix’ for the problems of crime and security in their central areas. CCTV had long been employed in private spaces and arenas such as sports stadia. However, from its first appearance in a wholly public space in the South coast seaside town of Bournemouth in 1985, CCTV rapidly won massive public and widespread political and business support to become an almost ubiquitous feature of the British urban landscape ten years later (Fyfe and Bannister 1996; 1998). The growth of the instillation of CCTV systems in the public spaces of British cities was staggering in its speed and spread. CCTV systems are now installed in the central areas of all major cities in the UK and their pervasiveness has spread down the urban hierarchy. It is increasingly
common to find them now in even quite small towns. By 1996 Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin found a total of 150000 CCTV cameras had been installed in British urban areas and they were increasing at a rate of more than 500 per week (1996: 225). This growth was being increasingly facilitated by central and local government in the form of financial assistance and the relaxation of planning regulations for the instillation of cameras (Fyfe and Bannister 1998). The advocates of CCTV, local authorities and development agencies, for example, cited a number of advantages to support the case for its introduction. Primarily, they argued that the presence of CCTV cameras would significantly reduce the levels of city centre crime. They drew on a number of ‘before and after’ studies all of which suggested CCTV did reduce incidence of crime, to support their claims. Further, it was claimed CCTV images would assist the police in increasing the clear up rates of crimes committed ‘on-camera’. Beyond tangible impacts on crime and clear-up rates, advocates of CCTV argued it would increase consumer confidence in city centre areas. There was much talk of CCTV helping to restore the ‘feel-good factor’ amongst the public in city centres (Fyfe and Bannister 1998). Finally, in contributing to the revitalisation of town and city centres, CCTV was said to generate a number of indirect economic spin-offs through increased consumer use of city centres and increased retail and business confidence.
