Rowland Atkinson & Gesa Helms 
Securing an urban renaissance [PDF ebook] 
Crime, community, and British urban policy

This collection adds weight to an emerging argument that suggests that policies in place to make cities better places are inextricably linked to an attempt to civilize, pacify and regulate crime and disorder in urban areas, contributing to a vision of an urban renaissance which is perhaps as much about control as it is about the broader physical and social renewal of our towns and cities. The book has three key themes: the theories, strategies and assumptions underpinning the securing of ‘Urban Renaissance’; the agendas of current urban policy in the field of crime control; and, thirdly, the role of communities within these agendas. The book provides focused discussions and engagement with these issues from a range of scholars who examine policy connections that can be traced between social, urban and crime policy and the wider processes of regeneration in British towns and cities. The book also seeks to develop our understanding of policies, theories and practices surrounding contemporary British urban policy where a move from concerns with ‘urban renaissance’ to those of sustainable communities clearly intersect with issues of community security, policing and disorder. Providing a rare disciplinary crossover between urban studies, criminology and community studies, Securing an Urban Renaissance will be essential reading for academics and students in criminology, social policy and human geography concerned with the future of British cities and the political debates shaping the regulation of conduct, crime and disorder in these spaces.

Circa l’autore

Rowland Atkinson is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Housing and Community Research Unit at the School of Sociology, University of Tasmania. A former research fellow of the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, his work has focused on issues of neighbourhood change and patterns of social exclusion and privilege in cities including research on gentrification, gated communities, defensive homeownership and informal regulation in affluent and deprived neighbourhoods. Gesa Helms is a Research Fellow at the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow. Her research interests lie, firstly, in the political economies of urban restructuring, in particular urban governance, economic regeneration, labour markets and social inclusion policies in old-industrial regions. A second strand of research centres on debates around social regulation, policing and surveillance.