ABSTRACT
The city as a complex political, economic and emphatically social system influences, distributes and structures the experience of crime and harm among its various communities and citizens. As a primary space in which legally prohibited and socially harmful behaviour occurs, the city has become the dominant place of residence for humanity as a whole. This context sets the scene for this opening chapter, which seeks to open a discussion about the value of connecting urban studies to criminology in an invigorated and interdisciplinary dialogue in order to expose the roots of social harms in urban contexts. In this urbanised age, what does criminology have to say about this condition and its worst impacts on those who are its citizens? Similarly, how might studies of urban areas situate and understand new and existing forms of crime and harm? The main argument of this chapter is that to get beyond superficial treatments of the urban crime problem we must get under the skin of the social life of urban systems as well as understanding the influence of political and economic forces in cities.
