La sicurezza nelle città: dallo spazio difendibile a tecnopolis

Abstract

The crisis of the welfare state has contributed to the transformation of the role of the city. The latter evolved from a traditional place of reception and socio-economic development to a place where collective fears are perceived, due to a continuous and unstoppable resurgence of crime, deviance, inequality and social segregation. Therefore, the city has become the privileged place to experiment with the tools of preventive intervention. A new role for municipal and regional actors, that have never had direct powers and responsibilities in preventing and combating crime, started to be imagined. The participation of citizens, rather than a new vision of the management of the commons, has also resulted in a kind of externalization of preventive control, which has sometimes been referred to as proximity security, subsidiary, neighborhood control, and others. However, these attitudes have often revealed a delinquent rather than a welfare or community-based soul. Finally, the preventive paradigm, which is still the figurehead of public safety policies in cities, is now almost exclusively relegated to overt forms of punitive administrative law based on eminently situational interventions.