Surveillance
Urban surveillance is the systematic observation of space and of those who use it: cameras, facial recognition, plate readers, phone tracking, drones. It is justified by security and produces two documented effects: it concentrates on neighbourhoods and bodies already under suspicion, and it changes everyone's behaviour in public space.
Stephen Graham described in Cities Under Siege (2010) how military techniques of control are imported into the city; Shoshana Zuboff, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), how extracting behavioural data becomes a business model. The surveilled city is the smart city without its advertising.
Videos on this term (14)
- Urban ecology
Unequal Connection: Stephen Graham and Technology in the City
Stephen Graham shows that transport, energy and data networks are a geography of power: fragmentation, bypass,…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Urban economy
Ananya Roy: The State Can Also Be Informal
Ananya Roy shows that urban informality is produced by the state as it tolerates, authorises or demolishes…
Ananya Roy 3 min read - Urban AI
Who Controls the City When Software Is Privately Owned?
When a company operates a city's sensors and algorithms, the vendor governs: lock-in, algorithmic opacity, the…
3 min read - Surveillance / data
Stephen Graham: Militarisation and Surveillance in the City
Stephen Graham describes in Cities Under Siege the new military urbanism: how techniques of war, surveillance and…
Stephen Graham 2 min read - Urban form
Vertical by Stephen Graham: The City from Satellites to Bunkers
Stephen Graham shows in Vertical that the city is a volume: skyscrapers and drones above, tunnels and bunkers…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Public space
Setha Low: Spatial Justice and the Right to Public Space
Setha Low studies what makes a public space just or exclusionary. Her ethnographies of plazas, parks and gated…
Setha Low 3 min read - Urban history
Divided Berlin: The History of a Fractured City, 1945-1989
Berlin Divided City, edited by Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake, explains how the Cold War produced two Berlins.…
Philip Broadbent 3 min read - Urban economy
The Spectacle City: Consumption and Exclusion per Debord and Zukin
The spectacle city is built to be seen: events, icons and showcases that exclude residents. What Guy Debord and…
3 min read - Public space
Setha Low and Don Mitchell: The Politics of Public Space
The politics of public space decides who may be in the plaza. What Setha Low shows in On the Plaza and Don Mitchell…
Setha Low 3 min read - Infrastructure
Urban Infrastructure, Power and Inclusion: Star and Larkin Explained
Urban infrastructure decides who belongs to the city. What Susan Leigh Star and Brian Larkin propose, Graham and…
3 min read - Housing
Anna Minton: Ground Control and the Privatisation of Public Space
Anna Minton exposed in Ground Control and Big Capital the privatisation of public space, security by design and…
Anna Minton 3 min read - Shrinking cities
Post-Industrial Regeneration: Guggenheim Effect, Culture and Exclusion
Post-industrial regeneration bet on culture and tourism after the factories, from Bilbao to Glasgow.
3 min read - Surveillance / data
Urban Security and Technology: Surveillance (Lyon and Graham)
Cameras, drones and facial recognition are transforming urban security. What David Lyon and Stephen Graham explain,…
3 min read - Surveillance / data
Urban Militarisation: Surveillance and Control (Graham and Davis)
Urban militarisation brings the tactics and technologies of war into the surveillance of cities. What Stephen…
3 min read
