ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the topic of causality, how it influences our comprehension of the world, and to what extent urban security policies are shaped by it. Drawing upon the work of the philosopher Hume, the chapter highlights how the concept of causality is, for instance, rooted into criminological theories (e.g., broken windows), environmental crime prevention (e.g., designing out crime projects), and regeneration projects. The chapter further unveils how these theories and interventions, more than based upon cause-effect connections, rely on affect and chaos theories. Finally, the chapter introduces Simondon’s theory of information: socio-spatial processes do not evolve in a causal-linear way, but through (quantum) leaps of information. Triggered by information, a quantitative and nonlinear accumulation of affects in bodies makes the latter become something (qualitatively) different, changing their ethical direction and process of individuation. At the end of the chapter, two examples are provided: the first one explains how narratives of mixed communities and of high crime rates are implied in housing policies and may bring about regeneration interventions in London. Both narratives are apparently based upon a causal understanding of the urban realm. By contrast, the second example shows how information, affectively accumulated and spread in a ‘criminal’ area (West Norwood snooker club), in the end triggers a qualitative change of status in the latter (the West Norwood snooker club is transformed in a nine-flat building).
