From “Spaces of Fear” to “Fearscapes”

Setting the Frame: The Spatialization of Urban Fear

Some years ago, Zygmunt Bauman (2005) observed that contemporary Western societies are the safest and yet the most fearful they have ever been. During the past few decades, this paradox has had spatial consequences in contemporary (Western) cities, as evident in scholarly debates about a wide range of processes: residential auto-seclusion, forced socio-spatial exclusion, fortification and privatization of public space(s), exclusionary urban renewal, fragmentation of urban territories, and so forth. Urban and geographical studies have been exploring several key concepts: Mike Davis’s (1998, 2006) “ecologies of fear,” the geopolitics of military urbanism (Graham, 2010); “splintering urbanism” (Graham & Marvin, 2001); discourses on terrorism and risk and their effects on urban production (Barnard-Wills, Moor, & McKim, 2012); the “end of public space” as the result of privatization (Sorkin, 1992); and research on “divided cities” (for a review, see Allegra, Casaglia, & Rokem, 2012). Can we really use the expression “spaces of fear” to summarize this range of processes? The core aim of this article is the deconstruction of the concept of “spaces of fear,” to be replaced with that of “landscapes of fear”or “fearscapes”—as debated in concluding remarks. Throughout the article, I will provisionally use the term {spaces of fear}.

Urban fear, together with its relationships to urban planning and production, is a complex and multilayered world, comprising several dimensions, such as the psychological, sociological, cultural, and politico-economic (Abu-Orf, 2013; Epstein, 1998; Sandercock, 2002). As such, as far as the production of fear of violence and crime in the urban realm is concerned, one cannot expect simple relationships between a “cause” (the volumes of violent acts and crimes) and an “effect” (fear). While one would expect some correlation between these two dimensions, we must remember Bauman’s findings: All across the Western world violent crime rates have being dropping dramatically since the early 1990s, at the same time as fear of crime has been growing to the highest levels ever recorded (International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, 2012; van Dijk, van Kesteren, & Smit, 2007).

Abu-Orf (2013) has offered a sophisticated theory for the paradoxes of fear embedded in urban planning in contexts of violent conflict and war. That said, as far as research on “ordinary” urban contexts (see Robinson, 2011) is concerned, mainstream urban studies have been treating fear as the direct consequence of crime—and thus urban security as a social demand—without questioning their mutual relationships (see Bannister & Fyfe, 2001; Cozens, 2011). In recent years, some of the layers of the urban fear paradox have been explored. In the new critical urban theories (Brenner, 2009; Marcuse, 2010), contemporary urban production is taken as being the result of hegemonic capitalist relations, while other scholars have built on Foucault’s (1975) “disciplines” to question the “dark side” of planning as a technopolitical means for controlling urban space (Pløger, 2008; Yiftachel, 2009). From these perspectives, spaces of fear are understood as being the result of hegemonic production, the built environment as a product of uneven power relations.

This article provides two steps toward more nuanced theories for the understanding of urban spaces of fear. First, Roitman, Webster, and Landman (2010) highlight how the literature on gated communities (GCs) has given limited attention to the way such developments transform urban fabrics by “segmenting the physical city [. . . .] and creating physical and emblematic barriers” (p. 9). This can be said of the studies available on the spatialization of urban fear in general. The article thus presents a taxonomy that stresses the cumulative impact of spaces of fear on urban fabrics (see the section “{Spaces of Fear}: A Taxonomy”) and a map of spaces of fear in an actual urban territory—that of Palermo, Italy (section “Mapping {Spaces of Fear}: Palermo”).

Second, building on empirical analysis and focusing both on hegemonic discourses on the (capitalist) production of space and on the discursive relations that frame spaces of fear at the local level, a slight reframing of mainstream theories (see the section “Debate: Replications and Deviations From the Theory”) together with a different conceptual approach (see the section “From {Spaces of Fear} to ‘Fearscapes’”) are suggested. This is consistent with recent calls for a deprovincialization of urban theories (Amin & Graham, 1997; Meagher, 2010; Robinson, 2011), insofar as mainstream debates risk making generalizations based on the exceptional cases of global cities. For this reason, this article presents the case of an ordinary city, Palermo, in a region, Southern Europe, at the “borderlands” of urban theories (Baptista, 2013; see the section “The Context”).

{Spaces of Fear}: A Taxonomy

In this section, a literature review is organized through a threefold taxonomy that focuses on the cumulative spatial effects of spaces of fear. The aim is to frame a conceptual methodology for the practice of mapping (see the section “Mapping {Spaces of Fear}: Palermo”). “Enclosure” refers to spaces of exclusion/seclusion, “Post-Public Space” to the privatization and fortification of public space(s) and buildings, and “Barrier” to the “splintering” (Graham & Marvin, 2001) of infrastructural nets. The main features of the three categories are outlined in Table 1. Recognizing the need for “theory building more fragile and uncertain, and theory itself more unstable and less secure in its claims” (Robinson, 2011, p. 17), this taxonomy is to be considered a summary of commonalities, a conceptual tool to be explored and put in crisis on a case-by-case basis, rather than a stable, definitive theory.

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Table 1.

A Taxonomy for the Spatialization of Fear in the Urban Space.

Spatial form/process	Enclosure (secluded residential forms/spaces of exclusion)	Post-public space (exclusionary/privatized public spaces/buildings)	Barrier (splintering infrastructural nets)
Characteristic spatial shape	Enclosed shape	Enclosed shape/not-spatial	Edge
Main socioeconomic processes concerned	Voluntary or compelled seclusion/exclusion	Privatization/reduction of access rights	Reduction/polarization of mobility rights
Main spatial impact on urban fabric	Clusterization	Fortification	Fragmentation
Means	Physical barriers/security means	Physical barriers/security means/regulations and norms	Physical barriers
Prototypes	Gated community/camp	Shopping mall	Israel/Palestine military urbanism

Mapping {Spaces of Fear}: Palermo

The Maps and Data

The maps of spaces of fear in Palermo, presented and debated in this section, follow the taxonomy outlined in the section “{Spaces of Fear}: A Taxonomy,” adapted to the specifics of the case. ² Principal evidence sources were a campaign of photographic surveys spanning the whole municipal territory (July 2010-March 2011 and December 2011-February 2012) and web-based geographical information services (Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Street View, Bing Maps). The Oreto river, the hillsides, and the main streets of the historical center are represented to highlight the main features of the urban territory. Some of specific issues abovementioned have been explored in depth through case study research in further publications—references are provided where available.

Enclosure, Auto-Seclusion

Residential developments have been included on the map when these are provided with common spaces, roads, parking, and services and designed to be secluded from the surrounding urban fabric. Two typologies have been observed: walled villa developments and walled block developments. A great variety of entities is observed, from small developments made of a few residential units to three developments covering 50/75 hectares, each hosting around 200 villas, and a development consisting of 12 blocks, with around 5,000 inhabitants. The biggest entities were often created though the privatization of public streets. I detected 177 walled villa developments (Figure 1a) located within the peripheral areas of the municipality and the northern plains and 1,058 walled block developments (Figure 1b), mainly concentrated in between the central urban area and the low-density peripheries. The historical evolution of walled residential developments shows three phases (Figure 1c):

In the 1970s and 1980s, massive urbanization sees a prevalent role for walled blocks.

In the 1980s, walled villa developments begin to be built, up until 1990, in two clusters, in the northern plains and in the western periphery, and then during the 1990s, walled villas developments characterize the suburbanization of the municipality’s outskirts.

Since the 1990s, urban restructuring developments in the central areas are dominated by walled blocks.

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Figure 1.

{Spaces of fear} in Palermo: (a) walled single-family houses developments; (b) walled residential block(s) developments. (c) a + b + urbanization phases: up to 1940 (red), 1970 (orange), 1990 (yellow); and (d) spaces of compelled seclusion. Color figure available online.

As far as security measures are concerned, in addition to omnipresent walls/fences, CCTV systems and entrance guard posts are found in most developments. Proactive measures typically used in GCs, such as 24-hour patrols and real-time video surveillance, are, however, not used—Italian regulations on CCTVs (Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, 2010) permit data to be recorded and used only for justified purposes, and real-time surveillance is thus forbidden. Another peculiarity of the local version of fortified residential developments is the absence of any explicit references to the issue of security when advertising the housing units, though this is also the result of Palermo’s real estate market being historically characterized by small, family-run enterprises that rely on informal networks. Broadly speaking, relatively weak correlations between fortification of residential developments and discourses on security are found.

Enclosure, Hetero-Seclusion

Two spaces of compelled seclusion/exclusion have been found (Figure 1d). The history of the Zen, a council housing district built during the 1970s and 1980s in the northern plains, is a well-known story of spatial seclusion and social exclusion, though with some peculiarities (Lo Bocchiaro & Tulumello, 2014). Its utopic modernist design was reflected in the failure of realization phases, the squatting of most housing units, and the extreme poverty of its settled populations. Disinvestment (i.e., the buildings for public services were never constructed, several dwellings are still waiting for a water connection) characterized the phases that followed, as did organized crime gangs’ firm exertion of influence on local communities. Since the 1980s powerful stigmatizing rhetoric has been developed by social media (Fava, 2007), and when a new phase of real estate development (of mostly affluent walled villas developments) was implemented in the surrounding area, the construction of an oversized ring road brought about the spatial seclusion of the district. Rhetorical discourses’ capacity to shape the policy across the district is exemplified by Bonafede and Lo Piccolo’s (2010) account of how a participatory planning process was blocked by the municipal government, which was “concerned” by the risk that public participation may permit the “Mafia” to influence decision making.

The second space of exclusion to be studied is a perfect example of the conditions endured by Roma populations in Italy—conditions described as “appalling” (FRA–European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2009, p. 72). Palermo’s “nomad camp” began in the early 1990s when a group of Roma people who had been evicted from a dwelling in the Zen district squatted in an area of the Favorita park: a “temporary” arrangement that still exists today for the lack of any effective housing policy and for the strong stigmatization over the Roma people (Tulumello, 2013b). The camp has never been formally recognized—according to the town plan, the area is a park—and no policies for dealing with its inhabitants’ housing issue have ever been carried out. As a result, the area is a legal “void” and its inhabitants live under the permanent threat of eviction.

Post-Public Space

The shopping mall is a brand new reality in the metropolitan area of Palermo, insofar as the first mall opened in 2009—with three malls existing in the municipality currently and four more under construction in the metropolitan area. Seventeen smaller commercial facilities—built in the past 15 years—mimic the mall by offering pseudo-public spaces (Figure 2a).

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Figure 2.

{Spaces of fear} in Palermo: (a) shopping malls and similar entities; (b) privatized public spaces and buildings; (c) fortified public spaces and buildings; (d) infrastructures and fragmentation.

Nine privatized public buildings and spaces have been identified (Figure 2b). They are areas or buildings with historic, architectonic, or positional values, capable of producing high rent revenues and conceded for use, to the substantial benefit of the private partner. Access is regulated by the beneficiary private entity, often with access fees. One key example is that of a wide portion of the urban waterfront, now walled, surveyed by cameras and managed by the port authority. As such, it is officially a public space but is in fact run by private investors. ³ The other entities are Mondello beach, which for decades has been managed by a private enterprise paying a very cheap lease and is fenced-off during the summer season; Vittorio Emanuele square, where an underground private car park has been built by Palermo’s first project-financed public–private partnership; a public garden (Palmeto delle Cattive), which is transformed into nightclub during the summer season; five public buildings (Villa Costa, Villa Filippina, Ex deposito locomotive Sant’Erasmo, Palab, Expa) renovated with public funds and conceded to private firms—in most cases, nightclubs.

A total of 55 fortified public spaces or buildings have been mapped (Figure 2c). In all, 34 buildings are fortified for reasons of use—military and public security facilities, the national bank, the courthouse. Twelve administrative buildings, all built or renewed in the past decade, have been fortified when their usage requires no such fortification. In recent years, public access and use have been affected by fortifications, fences, and patrols in eight public spaces: areas adjacent to fortified buildings; walled and controlled public gardens; public spaces fortified during special events, as in the case of streets surrounding the football stadium, closed and patrolled on match days; or two central shopping districts heavily patrolled during temporary pedestrianizations (see Palermo’s poster on INURA New Metropolitan Mainstream project, www.inura.com).

Barrier

Thirty infrastructures—24 roads and 6 railways—restrict or impede mobility in the direction transverse to their longitudinal development (Figure 2d). The principal cases are the urban ring road that breaks the urban territory in two, isolating some neighborhoods and dividing others; the road axis that, together with the aforementioned fortification of the urban waterfront, separates the city from the sea; and the previously mentioned ring road that secludes the Zen district.

Debate: Replications and Deviations From the Theory

The practice of mapping spaces of fear in Palermo confirms some elements of mainstream theories. During the past four decades, the securitization and seclusion of the residential environment, often through privatization of public streets, have been clustering in the urban territory. More recently, late suburbanization processes (Casanicchia et al., 2006) are shifting new walled, residential developments in the outskirts of the metropolitan area; although no quantitative data exist, a growing offer is found in real estate advertising. Two areas of exclusion have been identified, where physical separation, stigmatization, and legal-institutional voids are used to “blacken” (Yiftachel, 2009) some “uncomfortable” issues. Germinal privatization and fortification of public spaces/buildings are found to have taken place in recent years, at the same time as demands—both by public and private entities—for the implementation of video surveillance systems is shown to be growing (Tulumello, 2013a). Most processes are occurring in central areas, which can be explained by two factors: the launch, in the 1990s, of the regeneration of the historical center (Azzolina, 2009; Cannarozzo, 2000), and the recent success of shopping malls—here the classic story of the “reaction” of local governments to the success of malls resonates. Infrastructural systems have fragmented the urban territory, and a case exists of their use in spatially containing a “problematic” district.

Yet some peculiarities and discordances to theories reviewed in the section “{Spaces of Fear}: A Taxonomy” are to be highlighted, in relation to the local context and historical patterns. The diffusion of spaces of fear in Palermo shows temporal differences as compared to other Western contexts. Fortification and privatization of public spaces are happening late, and this is connected to the socioeconomic “delays” mentioned above—for example, the late creation of the conditions for investment by multinational promoters as a result of the criminal influences (Cannarozzo, 2000) or the historical absence of a strong economic fabric (Trigilia, 1994). Although walls and fences have been a characteristic of residential production over the past four decades, an explicit social construction of “secure” GCs is not found. This mirrors the broader case of Italy more widely—Cascina Vione (Milano) is considered the very first GC in the national territory (Ciulla, 2011)—as can be explained by the historical civic and public dimension of its cities (Petrillo, 2000). The processes of clustering and fragmentation of the urban territory of Palermo are fuelled by two diverging engines: technical/institutional planning means—such as infrastructural network planning—and the lack of effective land use regulations, which has permitted disordered urban growth and the creation of enclosed residential entities designed without considering the surrounding urban space.

The production of some spaces of fear has been and is less explicitly connected with the issue of security, as is the case for walled residential developments, and as such it is necessary to take a closer look at the underlying socio-political processes. Although the global paradox of urban fear characterizes Palermo and Italy, the security rhetoric is less grounded on global concerns—such as those following the September 2001 terrorist attacks—and more on local/national ones (Tulumello, 2012, 2013b). In a context marked by relatively weak democratization of local politics and bypassing of consensus building, some spaces of fear are the result of discursive relations of power (see Bonafede & Lo Piccolo, 2010; Lo Bocchiaro & Tulumello, 2014) rather than of the spatialization of global concerns around security depicted in mainstream theories. In the next section, concluding comments on the space between these “replications” and “deviations” are provided to suggest some direction for new theoretical understandings.

From {Spaces of Fear} to “Fearscapes”

This article has discussed the process of the spatialization of urban fear—for its growing relevance in the Western world—in the city of Palermo. A spatial approach and the practice of mapping have been used to explore the relevance of spaces of fear in the construction of a contemporary city expected to be relatively less influenced by global processes. What is the role of spaces of fear in segmenting the physical city (of Palermo)? The maps of Enclosure, Post-Public Space, and Barrier, represented together (Figure 3a), show that in the past few decades, spaces of fear are among the main features of urban production. One may expect such patterns in global cities of the “geographies of fear” (Davis, 2006). The inverse of the map (Figure 3b) shows how infrastructural systems create longitudinal fractures while clusters of secluded areas break the continuity of the urban fabric. A trend for more fragmented and polarized urban tissues is to be found moving from the historical center toward the peripheral areas, following the historical evolution of urban production.

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Figure 3.

Fearscapes in Palermo.

According to the “deviations” highlighted in the previous section, a reframing of mainstream theories is necessary to discern how the spatial patterns expected of cities shaped by global processes may be replicated, in different contexts and times, by particular processes. Evidence from Palermo would suggest that there is a need for less global/hegemonic and more discursive approaches to the spatialization of the geographies of fear. In other words, spaces of fear may emerge, rather than from linear hegemonic trends, through a complex frame resulting from the collision of, and conflict between, global trends and local peculiarities: exclusion policies practised by powerful agents plus technical means of planning plus an absence of effective planning regulations plus scarce democratization, and so on. On these grounds, building “safe” and static theories around the worldwide spatialization of urban fear is an unattainable task.

I would suggest that the convergence of a “global/hegemonic” and a “local/discursive” dimensions is crucial to unmask the paradoxes of urban fear and deconstruct the inherent concept of {spaces of fear}. The “global/hegemonic” dimension treats urban fear as a by-product of global power-relations, looking at: first, the way the mass media uses narratives about crime to build an audience (Glassner, 1999) and the effects on people’s perceptions (Heath, Kavanagh, & Raethompson, 2001); second, the use of global discourses about terrorism and risk for creating mass anxiety, justifying “emergency” security policies and attacks on civil rights (Oza, 2007); and third, how political discourses on fear and crime shape the consensus on anti-welfare politics (Bialasiewicz, 2006). The “local/discursive” dimension stresses the local production of fear on two bases: on one hand, the inherent conflictuality of urban space(s) made of differences continuously reproduced, often with exclusionary aims (Sibley, 1995; Young, 1990); on the other, the need for neoliberal (local) governance to create frames of perceived inclusion (Miraftab, 2009) around the construction of oppositional categories such as “we/the others,” “safe/dangerous” (Hutta, 2009)—hence the discursive construction of feelings of fear in urban policies such as “revitalization” or “regeneration” (Kern, 2010; Smith, 1996).

More nuanced theories are needed to unmask the urban “spaces that entail fear.” These should be critical, multilayered, and well-balanced across global processes and local power relations. The spatial approach of this article is a first step, and more studies are needed at different scales and with different approaches—for example, the in-depth analysis of specific planning processes. Some preliminary reframing of existing theories is suggested following the outlined taxonomy (see the section “Mapping {Spaces of Fear}: Palermo”):

In summary, we need to question the political significance of spatialities (Keith & Pile, 1993) and the politico-economical dimensions of fear in planning in ordinary cities—as advocated by Leonie Sandercock (2002). From this perspective, Lefebvre’s (1974) theory on the (re)production of space is crucial in exploring relational/conflictual relations between “spatial practices,” institutional/hegemonic “representations of space,” and experienced “representational space.” Similarly, this article has suggested that urban fear is at once a spatial/discursive practice, the result of hegemonic representations and policies, and a trigger for less civic urban lives. We should be aware that often, {spaces of fear} are produced by factors quite different from the actual danger these spaces hold.

I shall therefore conclude by turning the concept of {spaces of fear} on its head via a linguistic trick. According to Gold and Revill (2003), the discursive dimensions of both landscape and fear are generated at the intersection of different spheres: “the practical and the reflexive, the natural and the cultural, and the affective and the rational” (p. 36). However,

[landscape] also refers to an ensemble of material and social practices and their symbolic representation. In a narrow sense, landscape represents the architecture of social class, gender, and race relations imposed by powerful institutions (Zukin, 1991, p. 16).

Two opposed but converging conceptions of power and production are mobilized by the concept of “landscape”: the hegemonic and the discursive—the same approaches I have suggested for a critical understanding of the paradoxes of urban fear. Moreover, landscape is a category generated by the distance between an observer and the observed object (Desportes, 2005, p. 10). We should be aware that if we reduce such a distance, “living” some urban spaces and fears rather than accepting their representations, we may discover that they are not (always) two faces of the same coin, that they are not spaces of fear. Those areas of contemporary Western cities that we provisionally termed {spaces of fear} may be more properly understood as “landscapes” of fear: “fearscapes.”

It is my contention that this linguistic approach, together with its conceptual/political dimensions, is crucial for the deconstruction of the complex dynamics of power relationships, spatial (in)justice patterns, hegemonic relations, and discursive fears contained in the increasingly prevalent spaces of the Enclosure, Post-Public Space, Barrier. We—as researchers and as citizens—should therefore stop assuming urban fear as a “fact” and security as a “social demand.” It is time to critically engage with “fearscapes” and their role in the fragmentation and erosion of the civic role of the urban space. If we stop accepting {spaces of fear} as a matter of fact, and start questioning the spreading “fearscapes,” we would come to understand that, in the safest and most fearful cities, “there is indeed nothing to fear but fear” (Debrix & Barder, 2009, p. 411).