Social Control in Public Spaces: A Review of Literature
Zach Rubin
The study of social control enjoys a broad base of literature and research
woven into the fabric of our understanding about such things as class, status, and
normativity. Much has been said on why those patterns so strongly affect our
everyday lives, but it is usually only as an obligatory tangent that researchers
address the spaces within which those means of control are performed. More
specifically, public spaces represent an under-addressed area of research about
deviance and social control. These are the spaces where all elements of society
witness, absorb and perform the enforcement of social norms, where they are
produced and reproduced for everyone to see. With that proposition, this paper
therefore is two things: a review of existing literature on the enforcement of social
control in public spaces and an invitation that future research uses the crux of
public space as a starting point for addressing problems of social control. It will
cover several strands of sociology that in one way interpret how social control
occurs and is reinforced in public space, including economic development, free
speech, crime and fear; public health, and normativity.
The Sociology of Public Space
Formative thought on the sociology of space can be attributed to Georg
Simmel’s “The Sociology of Space” in which he writes that social space that has been
produced as a result of modernity has been developed for the individual experience
(Frisbey 1998). Rather than a pre-modern idea of public spaces as owned by the
sovereign or as a commons, public space in modern developed democracies are of
the people and for the people – the straightforward definition of public. This leads
to greater freedom but also greater anonymity. We see this in modern studies of
public space, wherein people roam more as consumers and less as members of a
community or as subjects of the sovereign, and where contemporary capitalism has
increased the sense of anonymity through increasing linkages between private and
public spheres that changes the communal nature of that space. Henri Lefebvre
(1991) would take this further in describing space as the prime aspect of false
consciousness in the individual. Revolution, he said, would have to reapportion
space, rather than time or the instruments of production, because such things exist
only in space and cannot be exist outside of space. This is point is made apparent
repeatedly throughout the literature, as the focus on public spaces demonstrate
their role as center stage on which dominant institutions are at first reinforced and
then contested. It is not to say, however, that the primary function of public space is
in facilitating revolution or other social movements. Most people use public space
for recreational purposes most of the time (Gans 2002) and in doing so practice
normativity. Those are neither the individuals nor the interactions worth
elaborating on here. Rather, there would be no “normal” use of public spaces were
there not challenges to that ideal by people who do not perform “normal” in public
places.
For example, the populations most likely to encounter a contradictory
definition of public space are the vagrants, transients and homeless who need to use
it the most. Increasingly, they are swept from public places as undesirable elements
of society - out of sight, out of mind – or, as Don Mitchell (1997) calls it, “the
annihilation of space by law,” with anti-homeless legislation passed to sweep the
homeless away and promote “livability” and middle-class panache. In some places,
this leads to the emerging practice of “banishment” against the underclasses. Take,
for example, a recent study of Seattle’s public spaces, by Katherine Beckett and
Steve Herbert (2009). That city, in an attempt to sweep criminal elements from
public space, employs Stay out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay out of Prostitution
Area (SOAP) orders. Anyone cited for even a the most minor of offences, even noncriminal ones, can be banned from the area and charged with a criminal offense for
as much as a year if they return to the area before their citation expires. If one is
standing on a corner where suspected prostitutes spend their days turning tricks,
they may be subject to a citation even with no evidence that they were committing a
crime, intending to commit a crime or ever had a criminal thought. The authors find
that this does not have the intended result of reducing overall crime in the city but
rather causes crime to become geographically dynamic, with zones that constitute
SODA and SOAP criteria shift from one place to another after populations are
banned from each initial high crime area. This study, as with many discussions on
public places, demonstrates how social control disproportionately comes down on
those already disadvantaged by society. If one has no means to contest a SOAP or
SODA order, they may be banned from visiting family members or important
services for months, cutting them off from vital support networks. Being banned
from even passing through a public space for suspicious but not criminal activity is
indicative of the current trend in social control.
But then, we already know from a strong consensus among sociological
literature that a heavy-handed approach to crime or homelessness does not
necessarily reduce the problem. SOAP and SODA zones are merely a spatial
manifestation of a problem for which we need a deeper understanding and a more
balanced approach. With the highest rate of incarceration in the developed world,
the United States takes this approach to many problems with the end result of
segregation instead of rehabilitation. Beckett and Herbert say the same that while
the physical layout of the city becomes increasingly dynamic, social relations stays
the same.
Another consequence of the movement to create social control the city is the
destruction of public space by means of militarization (Davis 1992). This movement
leads down a slippery slope, as the right of expression as a part of democracy in the
city is contingent upon public space as a space of expression and free speech
(Mitchell 2003)1. Nowhere is this more apparent today that in the “Occupy”
movement that began on Wall Street and quickly spread to the rest of the world.
Occupiers started by camping out in Zuccoti Park, near Wall Street as the symbolic
target of their ire. To Occupiers, the excesses of big banks and neoliberalism have
created vast inequalities both in the US and globally, and the individualistic mindset
behind those economics is incredibly damaging to society. Thus, they took to
1
Discussion of public spaces in cities across the world and their importance can be
found in a study done by John R. Parkinson (2012).
exercising their most basic right of free speech by marching in the streets and
camping in the park.
However, it has been argued that it is precisely such neoliberal valuation which
has allowed the movement to happen, as people connected to form a social
movement more as individuals than as a pre-existing community (Van Stekelenburg
2012) – that the form of protest particular to Occupy Wall Street is a “product of our
times” and distinct from historical social movements. Indeed, the movement began
less through traditional networking as it did through aggregation (Juris 2012). This
is made possible by the increasing use of technologies such as Twitter2 and
Facebook. The ultimate irony of this movement is that did not begin in a public
space, as Zucotti Park is privately owned. A number of factors converged to permit
temporary refuge to the protestors, who were eventually forced to leave by
repeated police raids after two months. Had the movement begun in a genuinely
public place, the outcome may have been far different.
What are public Spaces?
For the most part, definition of public space can take on two definitions. The
first is any space in which one interacts with strangers, a broader philosophical idea.
The second is used in this paper in which we talk about space dictated by the social
contract of governance and the people – a park, a sidewalk, a plaza and certain
government properties that have a legal-historical role of serving the public.
2
As further proof of their importance, Jeffery Juris refers to the Occupy Movement
as #Occupy, a Twitter term, throughout his ethnography.
Government at all levels has formalized definitions of the space that they designate
for use by the general citizenry3. Public spaces are used for free speech, free
association, and even a free place of leisure. In its most essential form, a public
space defined in this paper should be somewhere that any denizen can pass through
or gather in without caveat. We will see below that this definition becomes more
complicated and snagged with exceptions in a neo-liberal agenda that privileges the
private sphere over the public sector.
It becomes increasingly difficult to answer the question of asked by the subtitle in our time, as public spaces have experienced contraction and mutation in
favor of private enterprise. The contemporary urban designer would note that
public spaces are designed for clientele, focusing on the specific socioeconomic
background and services needed at the time (Sampson 1990). However, this can
change with time depending on how those factors change as well, meaning public
spaces are always subject to redevelopment. Sometimes this means that public
spaces are “acquired” by city governments for private redevelopment, an example
found in Staheli’s (2002) study on community gardens in New York City. The city
redeveloped the gardens, planted in abandoned lots to improve the neighborhood
where the city refused to step in before. Neighbors who used the plots for gardens
3
In the literature referenced for this paper, there is little consensus about what
“public” space is. In fact, no two authors use the same definition so we must rely on
a bit of vagary. As noted, the idea of public space is often tangential to an author’s
main point and therefore pinning down some cohesion in this area will require a
different, more theoretical endeavor.
were furious: for years they had maintained empty lots abandoned by their owners
and acquired by the city but left to fill with garbage and unsavory elements of
society. They maintained a beautiful space where the city administration did not,
until the city decided the place needed to become something else. Her interviews
with gardeners demonstrate the hegemonic nature of the city, where two different
publics exist: one, the vision of the city government (supposedly the will of the
people) and the other a “counter” public claiming a right to have their own vision for
their neighborhood.
Economic Development
One cannot doubt that the notion of public space is under attack. As Banerjee
(2001) notes, public spaces are shrinking due to a worldwide trend of economic
liberalism, shrinking governments and changes in the meaning of community due to
the dizzying pace of technological advancement. He suggests several ways of reinventing public space to combat its shrinking value, including the refurbishment
“old and languishing areas”, re-imagining streets as public spaces, and a re-focus of
the discussion towards public life as a part of public spaces. Many of these
suggestions are incorporated in the new urban trend of establishing “parklets,” tiny
parks in limited spaces like medians and parking spaces4 (Jones 2012, Hurst 2012).
Staheli (ibid.) adds that active participation between public, private and non-profit
spheres is beneficial for the vitality of public space. In this vein, a notable trend
adopted by many cities is the ever-increasing popularity of economic development
4
For additional explanation of this phenomenon, see http://parkingday.org
tools that utilize public-private partnerships to generate manufactured spaces with
the intent of attracting commerce. Banerjee suggests these kinds of partnerships
are a good idea, given that all parties involved have an interest in public space. Such
tools are found under many different names, and the reader living in any medium to
large city in the United States will undoubtedly recognize their local version of the
Business Improvement District (BID) detailed by Clough and Vanderbeck (2006) in
Burlington, Vermont. BIDs like Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace are
technically public space paid for and managed, at least in part, by private businesses
that have stepped in to fill a dearth in funding. They find this arrangement troubling
in its tendency to limit free speech in a way true public spaces don’t, preventing or
displacing events that might interrupt commerce.
More specifically, these authors focus on anti-war protests the in plaza area
of the Marketplace. As opposed to a truly public space, types of activities are either
sanctioned or banned in the BID based on decisions by a non-profit board which
attempts to restrict activities based on what it deems necessary to create an
“economically successful downtown which is vibrant, clean and safe.” Of course,
they are still limited in this scope to the constitutional protections afforded to every
citizen, but that did not stop the board for attempting to limit some of the more
outrageous act of pubic speech like a die-in. Such restrictions are especially
surprising given the left-leaning nature of Burlington and Vermont in general.
The trend of BIDs and associated economic tools is widespread, as is their
support from the business community. These districts are responsible for the
revitalization of downtowns once dilapidated by flight to the suburbs, and have
helped to change the perceptions those suburbanites have of downtowns from
dangerous to fashionable. And, they have accomplished this without building their
own law enforcement bodies. Rather, a careful approach of hiding the less desirable
elements of society has helped them change their image (Vindevogel 2005).
BIDs represent a greater transformation of public space as well: one from an open,
free-use space to one where people perform the duties of the “good citizen”
(Schaller and Modan, 2005) where recreation is increasingly displaced or
augmented by consumption. Such is the nature of BIDs – they are created by forces
of commerce and as such create a space fueled by commerce as part of the greater
neoliberal economic trend. The zone of commerce created as part of a BID has the
power to raise its own taxes and implement its own improvements with the
revenue, a problematic proposition as sales tax revenues are re-distributed to
narrowly defined community endeavors rather than public works (Schaller and
Modan 2005). Again we see that the built environment of the city is dynamic, but
the social relations remain the same even as space changes.
A further example of this trend by Zukin (et. al. 1998) compares consumption
in the classically liberal Coney Island against the newly constructed space of Las
Vegas. The former represented a public space around which commerce grew, while
the latter represents a place of commerce containing public spaces. The former’s
decline represents the shifting of economic winds as the other grew out of the
desert in a strangely anatopisitic miracle of neoliberalism. The public spaces of the
Las Vegas Strip are all privately owned spaces (except the crowded streets and
sidewalks) with little chance for respite from consumption and advertising. This
also leads to, Zukin et. al. say, a greater stratification in the accessibility of space by
racial and economic divisions.
Free Speech
Probably the most important function of public spaces is as a laboratory for
democracy. Indeed, it is the great social movements over time that have taken to
the streets and parks to speak their mind about the problems of society in the form
of protest. Traditionally, this has been limited in several ways: protestors should
not slander, incite violence or panic and each gathering typically requires a permit.
This did not stop the occupy movement nor other movements in recent history to
make their opinion known simply by virtue of their presence. Indeed, it is often that
simply being present with a message that protestors legitimize their message over
time (Mitchell 1995) as they become a visible fixture of the community.
However, the changing nature of public space in the neoliberal era also
changes the burdens placed on those who would speak their mind. During the
presidency of George W. Bush, protestors were subject to a more heavily securitized
landscape and shuffled into “free speech” zones when they wished to protest the
policies of the two-term leader (Hampson 2005). These zones were often hundreds
or thousands of yards away from where the president actually was on his many
visits around the country and were of questionable constitutionality, though the
exception in the right to assembly was justified by a directive of national security.
Another stark example of the changing nature of protest in public spaces can
be seen at the recurring protest at the School of the Americas (SOA)5. Protestors
have gathered every year at the gates of Ft. Benning on Columbus, Georgia to protest
the aforementioned institution every year since 1990. The SOA, a training camp for
Latin American military where US instructors dispense the secrets of counterterrorism and counter-insurgency, is central to a debate over US intervention in the
affairs in those countries that the protestors bring to the gates. Indeed, there are
many famous graduates of the school (Manuel Noriega, Augusto Pinochet and Hugo
Banzer to name a few) who remained staunch allies of the US while committing
atrocities at home. Protesting the US policy of providing aid to some of Latin
America’s worst dictators attracted only dozens at first, but eventually grew yearly
to peak at about 25,000.
The changing size of the protest and relations between protestors and the
state after the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States have dramatically
altered the space in which the free speech of this protest takes place. As Rubin
(2009) notes, local police and MPs from the base team up to add rows of barbed5
This school has had many names over the years, beginning as the Latin American
Ground School (LAGS) in Panama, then becoming the SOA when it was moved to Ft.
Benning 1983 and finally renamed at the beginning of the new millennium as the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). It is referred to
colloquially as the SOA by protestors since that is the institution they initiated their
campaign against, and they feel the later name change reflected only cosmetic
differences.
wire fence, sentries with M-16 machine guns, entry checkpoints and helicopters
flying overhead. Increased security presence in the wake of a changing security
landscape has only emboldened protestors though. The symbolic act of crossing the
line on to the base was at first to get arrested as defiance of US policy, though it
became even a greater statement when the first fence was erected and yet a greater
one with three fences. Wacky and artistic displays of dissent also abound, as each
year a troupe of puppeteers organizes the building of props dozens of feet tall and
wide and stage dramatizations of the atrocities blamed on the institution. Others
host die-ins and splatter themselves with red paint or carry coffins and paint their
faces as sad clowns.
Free speech as expressed in public spaces is a convention under threat, a
theme that is woven throughout this paper. Economic imperatives and national
security play a major role, and we will see below that technology aids in this
changing regime of social control of public spaces.
Crime and Fear
Fear of violence is often a feature of public spaces, especially where one finds
an intermixing of social classes, ethnicities and cultures. With reasonable cause,
people tend to socially disengage from the mass of strangers around them when in
public places (Kim 2012) out of a sense of insecurity. Carro (2010) finds three
major source of insecurity: environmental factors such as lighting, cleanliness or
presence of “uncivil” behaviors; the social construct of a place as safe or unsafe, and
the ability of the individual to cope with these variables. Generally, attributes like
age, gender and social support lend to feeling safer in any given situation such that
the least fearful person in any given public place is the well-connected young white
male. Physical features such as entrapment, lighting, concealment also play an
important role in creating a fear of public spaces (Blöbaum and Hunecke, 2005).
Conventional thought in this area centers on the role of Panopticism as a
means of social control (see Foucault 1984). In this theoretical paradigm, everyone
is subject to the gaze of others as well as unknown agents of enforcement, leading to
the rational self-policing of public spaces. However, more direct measure of control
dot the landscape of public places today. The trend in control of crime has been to
install cameras in public places where the crime rate, perceived or real, is high.
Cameras mean more actual policing, since they represent a constant gaze from law
enforcement than from fellow citizens. Concurrently, some literature has begun to
move away from Panoptic self-policing to focus on the neoliberal, top-down,
“resposiblization” view of policing (Coleman 2003, Coleman and Sim 2000). Others
say this is too simplistic, that the neoliberal, top-down approach does not account
for the numerous citizen groups that support cameras and consistently advocate for
further video surveillance (Hier et. al. 2007) which represent, rather, a new era in
the self-policing of society. Cameras have been shown to enjoy public support, and
with due merit since they are shown to be effective in preventing crimes like
prostitution, or facilitating police intervention and after-incident investigation
(Klauser 2007).
The Beckett and Herbert piece noted earlier in this work also claims that the
era of a panoptic society is slowly being displaced by the neoliberal ideology that the
public is incapable of controlling crime via its own social control. Instead, we must
rely on cameras, increased presence of police, and other security devices like metal
detectors to ensure security. The flip side to this that police departments have also
taken steps to hold themselves accountable for efficient and equal enforcement.
Cameras have been placed on the dashboard of cruisers for years, and an emerging
progression of this trend can be seen in the use of personal cameras attached to the
officer’s person as a means of determining just exactly what happened during an
incident.
There are also other specific types of fear instilled on the population in the
era of neoliberal policing. Heightened insecurity can expunge an acute awareness of
other social problems caused by inequality. It is a part of women’s identities, as
expressed in studies of both men and women, that women are not safe in public
spaces (Day 2001). Areas associated with safety promote masculine traits of
control, competition, aggression and physical strength (Day 2003). In fact, women
will often rely on avoidance strategies and self-imposed restrictions to remain safe
from perceived danger in public space, while men do not share the same concern
and do not plan in a similarly deliberate manner (Starkweather 2007). One feminist
critique of women’s experience in public space is that they are inherently
disadvantaged in the setting since the masculine has traditionally been associated
with the public and political while the feminine has been relegated to the private
and domestic (Rose 1990). Women’s movement is constrained in public places by
fear: not only of violence, but also of performing a role.
In this way public spaces can been seen as a spatial expression of patriarchy, as
the often looming danger of assaults on women (especially at night) force them to
be hyper-aware or alter their routine (Valentine 1989). Women are socialized to
avoid dangerous places, often due to the widespread perception that if they are
assaulted in a public space, they were at fault for being in the wrong place. What
results is often a decrease in mobility for women, at least when they are alone
(Keane 1998). In a study of pubic spaces in Singapore, Yeoh and Yeow (1997) found
that women’s fears of public spaces are time and location specific. Actions taken to
reduce the fear of crime, such as the installation of cameras, have also been shown
to have less of an impact on the perceptions of women versus men (Yavuz and
Welch 2010). The most notable thread from the literature presented on women’s
fear in public places is the seeming consensus that fears of crime are greatly
unfounded. Usually a crime like sexual assault is committed by someone the victim
already knows and the crime is not likely to be mitigated by being in a “safer” place
like one’s neighborhood or home. Likewise, the increased presence of cameras
make the population feel safer but have not yet been shown to reduce the threat of
violent crimes.
Public Health
Not every act in a public space is subject to criminal or constitutional debate.
Rather, shifting cultural attitudes are often at play in the decisions made about
activities in public spaces. For example, public health advocates quite often use
highly visible marketing campaigns and advocate for legislation that leads to greater
understanding and social pressure to perform healthy behaviors. In some cases,
they are privileged over private interests by virtue of access to public space for
messaging in the form of PSAs about what constitutes a healthy lifestyle or exercise
and stretching stations along public paths. This is not to say that private spaces
aren’t used to encourage the right diet and exercise, as there are plenty of billboards
that do. Eating one’s vegetables is healthy, but rarely is the hamburger-eater openly
disparaged in a public space despite the negative health effects. Rather, it is those
behaviors with the direct potential to affect others that are put into the crucible of
public space advocacy and direct action.
Perhaps the most striking and oft-debated behavior subject to control in
public spaces is smoking. Smoking at one time was a common activity in almost any
common space – stores, movie theaters, airplanes and even hospitals. Now
populations equipped with knowledge of the dangers of smoking have abandoned
the habit in droves. For those that have not, smoke-free advocacy groups have
pushed a two pronged approach focused on the sphere of public spaces to further
eradicate the practice (Poland 2005). They work first to create stigma by calling
out, either in personal interactions or through marketing, those who continue to
smoke as perpetuating a dangerous behavior and therefore attempt to shame them
in public. Second, they try to limit the public places where smoking is allowed
through legislation. These efforts have produced success over time in
“denormalizing” tobacco use, according to Bell, et. al. (2010), who finds that longtime smokers don’t necessarily quit smoking under new restrictions but fewer
people will start smoking.
Such efforts have resulted in many public health victories in recent years with
the prohibition in many cases of tobacco use in parks, sidewalks, government
buildings and schools. Anti-smoking activists understand that context plays a large
role in smoking behavior (Poland 1998) and that the less socially acceptable it is the
more likely someone is to cease the practice. The same can be said for drunk
driving, where new efforts at social advertising in public places (Graffinga et. al.
2011) targets would-be automotive dangers on the streets of Brescia, Italy.
Normativity
A final dimension of social control in public spaces could be called physical
presentation because it encompasses both deviant behaviors and physical
appearance. This is not as much of a catchall category as it appears at first brush.
There are real constructions and conceptions about how to present oneself in a
public space, and also many ways to break from that conformity by choice or by
circumstance.
As one side of this dimension, let us talk about sex. Actual sex in public is
typically frowned upon, in part due to the portrayal of negative consequences like
assault or abduction by the media (Hennelly 2010). That does not stop people from
climbing into a large tree in a public park late at night for a covert romp, or secretive
homosexual tryst in public restrooms as detailed in Laud Humphreys’ infamous
Tearoom Trade (1970) study. However, the more common concern is the
intersection of sex and gender performed by everyday users of public spaces.
Nightclub goers like the ones detailed by Jade Boyd (2010) in Vancouver
demonstrate a striking heteronormative streak produced and reproduced in public
spaces through a combination of governmentality, surveillance and private
enterprise. Private spaces like nightclubs, especially ones in BIDs like the one
studied by Boyd, serve to dictate terms of hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity of
public spaces through hegemonic conformity. In other words, one must dress up
like the appropriate, hypersexed gender or risk derision from a drunken and
judgmental public. Further, the performance of sex and gender is not just a product
of the western world. In Japan, the idea of masculinity is based on “sex of
appearance” (Murata 2002) regardless of ones’ actual orientation.
The other side of this dimension is physical difference, an appearance that
one cannot necessarily not perform. Disabled persons are the classic example here,
as one cannot simply regrow limbs, begin walking from being wheelchair bound or
heal other deformations. The body is not a passive object onto which norms are
applied, but rather part of the generation of those norms – “facts” which influence
debates about public space (Butler and Bowlby 1997). Many disabled people fear
an imbalance: either they are neglected as simply needing a “cure” to rejoin normal
society or as “different” and outside of the regular public. More and more, the needs
of the disabled are accommodated for in public spaces with the inclusion of ramps,
water fountains, audible crossing indicators, and a host of other helpful additions to
the built environment. This does not stop the sense of exclusion that comes from
people staring or talking behind the back of someone for looking or acting different.
Someone with Tourette’s syndrome, which causes people to stare as vocal and
movement tic, for example, produce the violation of implicit social rules (Davis et. al.
2004) that stigmatizes the Touretter. Little people as well have no control over how
they are perceived in public places. Though they may not be able to easily use
typical fixtures in public spaces, like benches or water fountains, they hesitate to be
labeled as “disabled” and opt rather to avoid them along with general interactions
with strangers (Kruse 2003). From the perspective of “normal,” each of these
groups threaten to unravel order by their mere presence, though some more than
others. Thus, there is a “hierarchy of acceptance” in disability experience (Dear et.
al. 1997) that is in a large part due to awareness from media coverage. In a public
space little people may be treated with more tolerance than a Touretter erratically
spewing vulgarities.
Conclusion
Public spaces encompass an enormous diversity of activities and meanings
relevant to social being. Eating lunch in a park exposes one to a much broader array
of social possibilities than does eating the same meal in the rule-oriented bounds of
a corporate break room. Shopping in stores on a public plaza that is part of a BID is
likely done in the presence of a greater array of people, as the same shopping in the
enclosed private space of a shopping mall will not likely include non-economic
actors like the homeless or anti-war activists. It is in public spaces that the crucible
of public thought as a generalizable mechanism operating on our daily lives can be
studied at the interactional level, generating new understandings of and solutions to
social problems. “However,” Rowland Atkinson (2003) warns, “there has been a
privileging of a policy discourse which celebrates the displacement of social
problems rather than their resolution. It is argued that such a discourse cannot
ultimately provide sustainable policies for the regulation of public spaces and
threatens the inclusion of some users of public spaces who may not be considered to
be legitimate patrons.” Until public spaces are seen as the testing ground of
democracy and equality rather than the free market, public space will continue to
reinforce difference and strife rather than understanding.
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