'The Eyes upon the Street': Closed-Circuit Television Surveillance and the City
Nicholas Fyfe · 2006
In British towns and cities, too, the fortress impulse in urban design and management is becoming mote prominent. Gated residential communities, the private policing of office and shopping spaces, local curfews to reduce the risk of public disorder at night in city-centre streets, and, within the last five years, the proliferation of public space CCTV surveillance systems are all increasingly common strategic responses to anxieties about crime and concern at declining consumer and business confidence in urban centres. Of course, the &s;fortress impulse&s; in urban design is not new (see Bannister, 1991; Tilley, 1995) but the widespread introduction of CCTV surveillance cameras and other surveillance technologies has significantly increased what Rule (1973) calls &s;surveillance capacity&s; in contemporary cities. To an unprecedented degree, people are now under surveillance in the routines of everyday life and thus more visible to invisible watchers than ever before. At work, numerous devices can monitor the duration of our working day and the length of our rest periods; when consuming goods, surveillance techniques evaluate our credit worthiness, record our purchases and analyse our preferences; and as we move through space, CCTV surveil- lance cameras (of which it is estimated there are currently more than 500,000 in public and private spaces across Britain; see Norris et al., 1996) watch and record us on transportation systems, in shops and offices, and on the street. In short, someone &s;going about his or her daily routine may be under watch for virtually the entire time spent outside the house&s; (Squires, 1994: 396).