Description
Urban spaces and societies serve as primary sites for realising grand projects of development, civilisation and progress. Accordingly, cities are a nodal point within contemporary global capitalist regimes as they serve as testing ground for innovations across technological, political and organisational fields. In this paper, we inquire this intersection through the study of so-called “Safe City” projects, which, notwithstanding their seemingly simple goal of providing a safe environment for residents, yield much more ambiguous insights at closer sight. We develop a feminist perspective on security embedded in a wider critique of infrastructures and urban policy regimes that is applied to the travelling and various iterations of ‘Safe Cities’ from the Israeli to the Central Asian context.
Our empirical analysis thus first traces the emergence and global spread of ‘Safe City’ projects from Israeli security firms and their global partnerships alongside other leading proponents. Second, we analyse concepts, policy measures and technologies employed in the Central Asian cases of Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and Almaty (Kazakhstan). Besides societal commentary and debate on these efforts, we examine initiatives and programmes that identify and address communities and groups that have been excluded from these grand schemes, such as informal or ‘new settlements’ at the urban margins or children and youth. In conclusion, we highlight that the primary focus on compatibility with business and public policy interests foregrounds the elitist and exclusionary nature of ‘Safe Cities’, but also opens up debates on more representative conceptions of security and wellbeing.
