Security in Inner City Areas

Security is complex and is part of our everyday lives. An explanation of security, according to Buzan (1991) (cited in McDonald, 2008, p.70) is that ‘security is the absence of threats’. Generally, it is concerned with matters related to safety, which can be physical, financial, social or emotional. However, it can also apply to an array of concepts like risk, danger and segregation (Carter et al., 2008b, p.4). Social, cultural and material practices produce security (Carter et al., 2008a, p.180) and in conjunction with material entities in inner-city areas mediate diverse experiences and understandings of individual security in our communal worlds (Carter et al., 2008b, p.6). As the city is a place of intermixing, difference and diversity (Carter et al., 2008b, p.15), the actual and imagined fear of ‘others’ has become an intrinsic part of urban life (Watson, 2008, pp.115-116). Positive and adverse imaginaries of city life and fears and insecurities constantly produce and destroy security in our shared worlds and ‘underpin social-spatial segregation and division’, an idea posited by Sophie Watson (Carter et al., 2008b, p.15). According to Ken Booth, people can only achieve genuine security if they do not deprive others of it (McDonald, 2008, p.70). This assignment will explore this issue and use the materiality of inner-city areas, under the guise of gated communities, sports utility vehicles and closed-circuit television and surveillance to examine the security among the inhabitants who reside in these built-up residential areas.

Insecurities and fear in the city

‘Illocutionary speech acts’, an idea posited by Ole Wæver (1995) (cited in McDonald, 2008, pp.51-60), mediated through the media together with intensified levels of m...

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...ner-city areas (Carter and Davey Smith, 2008, p.172). The city as a built material form highlighted that bricks, mortar, houses and walls are thoroughly implicated in the shaping of the security of cities. The inner city is often subjected to strategies of different kinds of segregation and defence against individuals who are different from us and that this is prompted by a battle of individual insecurity (The Open University, 2013b)

In addition, these examples illustrated the materiality of bodies in these inner-city populations and the ways in which these contribute to stereotypical beliefs and biases of the ‘other’ or foreigner (Carter et al., 2008, p. 183). Materiality through the individual and the social are inextricably bound, in seeking greater security; individuals may actually become more insecure and fearful than they were before (Watson, 2008, p.129).