(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Read:
Jean-Pierre Garnier, "A indefensible space. The layout (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation]
There is no "planning criminogenic", there is a policy of relegation and social control of
the poor. A scathing summary. ---- This little book, almost a brochure, originally
published in 2007, reminds us that the planning and management of the city are still
thinking to maintain the dominant social order. ---- In fifty pages, the Independent
sociologist Jean-Pierre Garnier said that the urban space, as directed by planners today,
architects and public power is no longer a space dedicated to the capitalist economy and
the rich people. And because of this, that this space is also thought to control the poor,
say "dangerous", pushing them further in the peripheries and creating a safe family
planning in the popular districts of city centers. ---- For decades, policymakers
associate said tough neighborhoods and their "criminogenic urbanism"[1] to the people who
live there by stigmatizing. The issues of class and social inequality are completely
ignored in favor of the false explanation of a dysfunctional urban planning. But the
author recalls: the fact that the problems of poverty "arise in town does not mean that
they come from the city."[2]
Two mechanisms are at work. To begin the renewal policies lead both from relegation and
gentrification. As the formula very well David Harvey[3], "the absorption of surplus urban
transformation has an even darker side: it is brutal phases of urban restructuring
through" creative destruction, "which always has a dimension of class since it is usually
the poor, the disadvantaged-es and all those who are marginalized from political power
that suffer the most from this type of process".
The second mechanism is well known, is the multiplication of laws and security
arrangements. Lops of the law in 1995 to Loppsi II Act in 2011, legal range is even wider
for flicage urban and peri-urban areas in general.
Jean-Pierre Garnier quote, but not limited to, the militia of "securing" stipendi?es by
private donors, residentialisation, video surveillance, monitoring neighborhood, etc. All
these devices fall under what is called "situational prevention", which creates
"defensible space", that is to say, safe spaces, separate poor.
Changes in urban morphology, architectures are also thought to prevent the
self-organization of populations, either to reclaim the spaces but also simply to live. To
oppose this? Defend the "right to the city", create spaces of resistance, collective and
self-directed for everyone, which allow people to reinvest their places of lives and
organize horizontal and solidarity.
Vincent (AL Paris northeast)
Jean-Pierre Garnier, A indefensible space. The layout for the safe time , the world upside
down, 2012 3 euros.
[1] According to this concept, some neighborhoods, for their architecture and furnishings,
engender delinquent activities.
[2] Jean-Pierre Garnier address this issue in a highly contemporary violence , Agone, 2010.
[3] David Harvey, Capitalism against the right to the city , Amsterdam, 2011.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Jean-Pierre-Garnier-Un-espace
