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Reconsidering Crime and Urban Fortification in South Africa

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The Urban Fabric of Crime and Fear

Abstract

Crime and fear have given rise to numerous reactions in the way the built environment takes form. This includes fortification on many scales, from burglar bars on windows and walls around properties to barricades around entire neighbourhoods. This chapter explores the causes and consequences of urban fortification in South Africa. It also considers the implications of crime and urban fortification for socio-spatial order and integration. Some of these consequences contribute to social and economic exclusion, which may reduce opportunities to address poverty and hardship. This chapter makes use of the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Responses (DPSIR) model to illustrate how urban fortification influences the socio-spatial landscape in South African cities. The model shows the need to consider urban security and fortification and their relationship to urban sustainability from a systemic viewpoint, i.e. as an integrated subsystem which is part of a larger system – the city. Finally, the chapter explores possible scenarios in which fortified spaces are an integral part of future urban environments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sustainable development has been defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (UNHSP 2007).

  2. 2.

    Considering cities as socioecological systems offers a comprehensive and integrated way to investigate both the social and the environmental processes and their influence on each other in a holistic and systemic manner, broadening the understanding of urban sustainability to include a systems approach that focuses on both social and environmental systems (Bartuska and Kazimee 2006; du Plessis 2008).

  3. 3.

    There is often an assumption that the environment analysed through the DSIR framework includes only an analysis of the relationships between the natural environment or ecosystems and socio-economic changes. The ‘environment’, however, also includes the built environment, especially related to the city as the system of analysis. Given this, the DPSIR framework has been used very effectively to analyse the sustainability of human settlements in South Africa (du Plessis and Landman 2002, 2004).

  4. 4.

    The seven crimes include street robbery, cash-in-transit robbery, bank robbery, truck hijacking, house robberies, business robberies and car hijackings.

  5. 5.

    The study has also indicated that individuals may choose a criminal career in preference to other opportunities available to them on the grounds that the returns from crime are obtained more quickly and are likely to be better because the work opportunities open to them are regarded as unattractive; because of the excitement, camaraderie or sense of power to be had in committing crime and being known as a criminal; and because they do not think seriously about the long-term consequences of this choice (CSVR 2007: 168).

  6. 6.

    ‘Shebeen’ is the word used in many township areas in South Africa and generally refers to informal taverns selling alcohol.

  7. 7.

    A positive feedback loop brings about a change in the system and serves to increase the perturbation it responded to. A negative feedback loop responds to the perturbation in the sense that it reduces the effect thereof.

  8. 8.

    A strong positive feedback loop may lead to a point where it either stabilises the system or completely destroys it.

  9. 9.

    A study on medium-density mixed housing in South Africa, which was later repeated by a group of final year planning students, indicated that these developments facilitated opportunities for social mix through a mix of population groups, especially in projects such as Brickfields, Carr Gardens, Amalinda and Sakhasonke and to a larger extent in Thornhill and Melrose Arch. It also indicates that the type of mix may differ according to the type of project and the area in which it is located, for example, the different distribution of population groups in Amalinda and Hull Street, and the thresholds or levels of income groups targeted, for example, Thornhill and Melrose Arch.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Town & Regional Planning, University of Pretoria, X20, Hatfield, 0028, South Africa

    Karina Landman

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  1. Karina Landman
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Correspondence to Karina Landman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Urban Planning and Environ, Royal Institute of Technology, Drottning Kristinas väg 30, Stockholm, 10044, Sweden

    Vania Ceccato

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Landman, K. (2011). Reconsidering Crime and Urban Fortification in South Africa. In: Ceccato, V. (eds) The Urban Fabric of Crime and Fear. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4210-9_10

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