ABSTRACT
Both private and public spaces in contemporary cities are highly regulated. Mounted cameras, sensors, and other advanced surveillance technologies allow police and private security firms to monitor the use (and users) of streets, parks, sidewalks, and shopping malls. Certain forms of architecture and exterior designs discourage certain behaviors, such as the gathering and forming of groups, while encouraging others, such as shopping and other forms of consuming. The regulation of particular spaces – drug-free zones, panhandler-free zones, gun-free zones, and even teenager-free zones (shopping malls at certain hours) – adds another layer of social control to the urban landscape. These regulatory methods diminish the likelihood or risk of so-called undesirable behaviors by spatially excluding certain activities – and actors – in designated places. Cities have become especially adept at managing risk by anticipating problems and preventing them spatially– as reflected in the concept, spatial governmentalilty. In this reading, Sally Merry shows us how spatial governmentality differs from other forms of regulation that tend to focus on managing individuals or social groups, rather than the spaces they live in, work, or occupy. Spatial regulation includes curfews, allowing people into a space at specific times only, and prohibiting behavior, such as prostitution or alcohol consumption, in certain areas. As Merry demonstrates, spatial regulation is aimed at those deemed incapable of self-management. Hence, managing spaces and other traditional forms of regulation, such as imprisonment of offenders, work hand in hand as effective strategies of urban governance. As Merry notes, these strategies are the result of decades of economic inequalities that divide urban populations in the United States. In American cities, spatial strategies such as “gated communities” exclude the poor from access to the wealthy. In this reading, Merry examines spatial control and how it relates to gender violence in the town of Hilo, Hawai’i. The focus of security and spatial regulations enacted in Hilo is to protect potential victims and to reduce the risk of danger, not to reform those who commit crimes. In this case, self-management training programs for offenders and a spatially based system of deterrence increased the public safety of women in Hilo.
