STUDENT PAPERS ARCHIVE

Surveillance, Social Control, and Dystopia

An Annotated Bibliography on the “Security City.”

Photomontage page from my original paper, Surveillance, Social Control, and Dystopia: An Annotated Bibliography on the “Security City.” This bibliography informed my UCLA Urban Planning master’s capstone on crime prevention planning and security-obsessed urbanism, the latter we now call Hostile Architecture. Hostile Architecture was a focus area in my graduate studies and eventual writing, speaking, and teaching. [Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell]

I researched and wrote this annotated bibliography for Professor Susanna B. Hecht’s UP 239 Utopias and Dystopias course at UCLA Urban Planning. Other than a few spelling errors corrected here, this is the same paper I submitted on June 13, 2005. With two decades passed, all but one of the hyperlinks are dead, though these texts are findable elsewhere online or in libraries. The URLs are preserved for the archival record. This is part of my Student Papers Archive series.

Angel, Schlomo (1968). Discouraging Crime through City Planning (working paper no. 68). Berkeley: UC Berkeley Institute of Urban & Regional Development.

One of the earliest works published on crime prevention through urban design, this Jane Jacobs-inspired paper sketches out public space designs that enable mutual surveillance based on increased user density. Angel hypothesized that crime in public space emerged in a “critical intensity zone” between extremely low and high usage. To counter this victimization period, he proposed creating “evening squares” in which an optimally dense user population would prevent crime by mutually monitoring each other’s activities.

Bentham, Jeremy (2005). The Panopticon, or Inspection-House. Available online: http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm/.

This abridged version of Bentham’s design and management plans for the panopticon prison provided the foundations for Foucault’s pioneering analysis of disciplinary spaces.

Blakely, Edward J. and M. G. Snyder (Spring 1998). “Forting Up: Gated Communities in the United States,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research vol.15, no.1: 61–72.

Adapted from the authors’ influential book on the same topic, this article examines gated community residents’ desire for social status and exclusivity. The authors argue that the gating reflex is on the rise across the social spectrum, and is no longer a status symbol and defensive feature reserved for the elite.

Borden, Iain (November/December 1996). “Thick Edge: Architectural Boundaries and Spatial Flows,” Architectural Design vol. 66: 84–7.

In this brief but imaginative essay, the author explores the postmodern city’s use of borders and edges as ways to control spatial circulation and social interaction. These boundaries are envisaged as extensions of capitalism’s power to direct spatial and social relations towards consumption.

Boyne, Roy (May 2000). “Post-Panopticon,” Economy and Society vol. 29, no. 2: 285–307.

The author reconsiders the concept of panopticism in the wake of increasing surveillance of public and private life. The author reviews arguments that the panopticon model of centralized surveillance is outdated in a world dominated by the decentralization of knowledge. Acknowledging that the diagram of surveillance has changed, he concludes that new forms of surveillance still adhere to a panoptical impulse.

Bring, Mitchell (May 1978). “TV Surveillance: the Not-So-Hidden Dimension of Public Space,” Landscape Architecture vol. 68: 189–90, 231–2.

This early article discusses what was, at that time, an emerging trend of using closed circuit television surveillance in public space design. The author warned that video surveillance threatens democratic use of public space.

Carter, Michael (1995). “Guerilla Programming of Video Surveillance Equipment.” Available online: http://www.notbored.org/gpvse.html.

Originally published as a pamphlet manifesto, this concise article calls for staging guerilla performances in front of surveillance cameras as acts of resistance. The article is considered a founding document for the growing performance-based surveillance resistance movement.

Crowe, Timothy (1991). Crime Prevention through Environmental Design: Applications of Architectural Design and Space Management Concepts. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

One of the most often-cited sources on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, the manual outlines CPTED’s origins, principles, and applications. Written in textbook like prose and complete with several diagrams, maps, and appendices, the book is a helpful desk reference for CPTED-minded planners.

Cuff, Dana (September 2003). “Immanent Domain: Pervasive Computing in the Public Realm,” Journal of Architectural Education vol. 57, no. 1: 43–49.

The author examines how expanding and networked computer technologies are changing the way people experience public space. The author’s take on pervasive computing posits a “double view, utopian and dystopian.” On one hand, pervasive computing facilitates expanded communication and technological innovation; on the other, it increases surveillance capabilities and hastens the loss of privacy. Cuff contends that the future of the public realm is inevitably intertwined with the growth of pervasive computing.

Davis, Mike (2003). “Scanscape,” Quaderns vol. 237: 52–57.

In this brief essay, the author describes how increasing surveillance technologies and the LAPD’s expansion into city planning decision-making have turned downtown LA into a “scanscape,” a heavily surveilled space in which white-collar office workers and tourists are made to feel safe.

Davis, Mike (1992). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. New York: Vintage.

In this groundbreaking exposé of a dystopic postmodern Los Angeles, Davis describes and critiques elements of the built environment that make up what he calls “Security-Obsessed Urbanism”: gated properties, surveillance cameras, ‘bum-proof’ benches, panopticon-inspired architecture, privatized security services and militarized police forces.

DeLanda, Manuel (2001). “Panspectron,” in Joy Garnett, *Rocket Science*, exhibition catalogue, 12.04.01–19.05.01, ISBN 1929032072. Available online: http://www.firstpulseprojects.com/panspectron.html/.

In this brief essay, the author reviews a range of military surveillance technologies, including satellites, spy planes, x-rays, radio waves, infrared systems, multispectral scanning, and night vision systems. Citing their increasing use on civilians and in cities, DeLanda posits that we are transitioning from a panopticon to a wider panspectron model.

DeLanda, Manuel (1986). “Policing the Spectrum,” in Michel Feher & Sanford Kwinter (eds), Zone 1/2: City, New York: Urzone/Johns Hopkins University Press: 177–87.

DeLanda reviews the US military surveillance system’s attempt to police abstract spaces. His review covers crypotology, the covert mapping of Tibet, NSA and CIA surveillance operations, early forms of computer hacking, cellular automata, and the abstraction/extraction of bodily knowledge for the purposes of discipline and control. He envisions a resistance movement in which theorists expand their analyses to identify ways out of this surveillance system.

De Lint, Willem (2000). “Arresting the Eye: Surveillance, Social Control and Resistance,” Space and Culture vol. 9, no. 9: 21–49.

The author opens up the discourse on surveillance by suggesting surveillance technologies are not merely instruments of social control. The article highlights benevolent uses of surveillance technologies that enable governments to understand the needs of a population. Ultimately, De Lint contends that surveillance and social control are not synonymous.

Ellin, Nan (ed) (1997). Architecture of Fear. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

The comprehensive volume includes twenty essays that examine how fear, insecurity, and social anxiety shape contemporary urban space. The Security City, rife with surveillance systems, gated communities, privatized public spaces, defensible houses, etc., developed in response to these fears, and ironically perpetuates insecurity. The authors represent a cross-section of perspectives making for a well-balanced analysis that is, on balance, rooted in architectural criticism.

Fabijancic, Tony (September 2001). “The Prison in the Arcade: A Carceral Diagram of Consumer Space,” Mosaic vol. 34, no. 2: 141–157.

The author synthesizes the writings of Foucault and Walter Benjamin in this examination of the emergence of a carceral diagram in 19th century shopping arcades. The author situates this development in an era of disciplinary transformation that saw Haussmann’s restructuring of boulevards and the birth of crowd psychology.

Farrar, Margaret E. (Fall 2000). “Health and Beauty in the Body Politic: Subjectivity and Urban Space,” Polity vol. 33, no. 1: 1–23.

The author, a political scientist, synthesizes the work of Foucault, Lefebvre, and Kristeva to explain how power and spatial subjectivity informed early 20th century American open space and housing reform policies. The author argues that such spatial planning practices enabled power to be manifested in cities and in the citizenry. The article represents a rare instance in which a political scientist successfully deals with the topic of space, power, and city planning.

Finn, Mary A. and S. Muirhead-Steves (June 2002). “The Effectiveness of Electronic Monitoring with Violent Male Parolees,” Justice Quarterly vol. 19, no.2: 293–312.

The authors assert that electronic monitoring of violent male offenders is an effective deterrent to recidivism. They base their position on a study that showed electronic monitoring reduced return to prison rates and parolee substance abuse rates. The authors maintain that expanded electronic monitoring of high risk offenders should be explored.

Flusty, Steven (September 2001). “The Banality of Interdiction: Surveillance, Control and the Displacement of Diversity,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research vol. 25, no. 3: 658–664.

In this follow-up to his book Building Paranoia, Flusty describes how surveillance, strict codes of conduct, and enclavism have become normalized in Los Angeles. Consequently, says Flusty, the critical literature has diminished and increasing social control seems to be an acceptable, routine function of social and spatial relations.

Flusty, Steven (April 2000). “Thrashing Downtown: Play as Resistance to the Spatial and Representational Regulation of Los Angeles,” Cities vol. 17, no. 2: 149–58.

The article describes the privatization and corporatization of downtown public space and forms of resistance centered on “play.” Recounting his walking tour of downtown LA’s Bunker Hill, Flusty identifies the playful acts of resistance he observed: skateboarding, public poetry reading, and performative “bubble-blowing.”

Flusty, Steven (1994). Building Paranoia: The Proliferation of Interdictory Space and the Erosion of Spatial Justice. West Hollywood, CA: Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

The author categorizes various spatial and architectural typologies that convey insecurity in the built environment, including varying examples of interdictory spaces and models of “paranoid architecture.” Unlike other writers on the critical left, Flusty’s descriptive analysis is less inflammatory, as he is more concerned with situating these typologies in broader public discourse.

Foucault, Michel (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.

In this pioneering study, Foucault traces modern society’s development into a panopticon-like dystopia characterized by diffuse and pervasive surveillance and spatial control practices. Virtually all criticism of surveillance-centered dystopias stem from Foucault’s lyrical critique of disciplinary urban spaces.

Haggerty, Kevin D. and R. V. Ericson (December 2000). “The Surveillant Assemblage,” British Journal of Sociology vol. 51, no. 4: 605–622.

In this excellent essay, the authors augment the dominant Foucauldian-Orwellian discourse on surveillance society with an analysis of expanding and abstracted systems of surveillance. Citing Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of rhizomatic flows, the authors contend that technological surveillance has become a “surveillant assemblage” of decentralized gazes in real and virtual space.

Heavy Trash (2005). “(internet website).” Available online: http://heavytrash.blogspot.com/

This website is the virtual headquarters for an anonymous group of architects, artists, and planners who erect large, disposable art objects around fortified city spaces in order to call attention to these exclusive areas. Their resistance art has included a bridge spanning a gate at a public park and viewing platforms erected outside several gated communities.

Howeler, Eric (2002). “Anxious Architectures: The Aesthetics of Surveillance,” Archis no. 3: 9–18, 20–3.

The author describes the assortment of security technologies being incorporated into architectural design, including CPTED and defensible space techniques, remote alarm and surveillance systems, and global positioning devices.

Incirlioglu, Emine O. and Z. Tandogan. (April 1999). “Cultural Diversity, Public Space, Aesthetics and Power,” European Journal of Intercultural Studies vol. 10, no. 1: 51–61.

The authors argue that inclusion and exclusion in public space can be studied through aesthetic criteria. Put bluntly: aesthetically pleasing, civilized and desirable persons are allowed in public spaces; aesthetically undesirable persons, such as the homeless or certain “visible foreigners”, are excluded. The use of such an aesthetic criteria precludes the democratic use of public spaces and mutual coexistence.

Jacobs, Jane (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.

This groundbreaking opus vilifies modernist city planning for killing pedestrian life at the street level. In response, Jacobs calls for a return to dense, diversified urban environments reminiscent of 19th century cities, where additional “eyes on the street” permit informal surveillance of public space.

Jeffrey, C. Ray (1971). Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

The book title is somewhat misleading since Jeffrey devotes only one chapter to crime prevention through environmental design in which he talks little about physical security elements and more about socio-psychological factors relating to crime prevention. Nevertheless, in this book Jeffrey coins the term CPTED and establishes the ideological basis for design-based crime prevention which gives rise to the dystopian security city.

Jencks, Charles (March/April 1995). “Aphorisms on Power?” Architectural Design vol. 65: 20–3.

This brief essay by the noted architectural theorist and historian explores architects’ ability to wield positive creative power and negative coercive power. Although coercive power enables a stronger degree of spatial control, it is paradoxically more fragile. Consequently, the author says, coercive power gives way to creative power.

Jones, Peter (1999). “Building the Empire of the Gaze: The Modern Movement and the Surveillance Society,” Architectural Theory Review vol. 4, no. 2: 1–14.

Retracing the trajectory of the modern movement starting from its origins in ocularcentrism, Jones illustrates how modernist architecture’s salient features — glass, the interior, the house, and the factory — contributed to the rise of what Foucault called surveillance society. Jones’ critique is effective but could benefit from more in-depth analysis, including additional evidence and elaboration.

Katyal, Neal K. (March 2002). “Architecture as Crime Control,” 111 Yale Law Journal no. 1039.

This law review article is extraordinary in that it focuses little on law and instead outlines crime prevention through environmental design and its sociopolitical implications for the built environment. Written primarily for law professionals with limited knowledge of the topic, Katyal’s article is thorough, comprehensive, and filled with painstaking detail characteristic of law reviews.

Kawash, Samira (Winter 1998). “The Homeless Body,” Public Culture vol. 10, no. 2: 319–339.

The author analyses the construction of the homeless body as a public discourse and a deviant counterpart to the abstract public body. The placelessness and uncertainty of the homeless body is compared to the fixity and certainty of the public spaces they inhabit. The author catalogs strategies to control the homeless’s use of public space which result in the exclusion of homeless bodies.

Koskela, Hille (2000). “The Gaze Without Eyes: Video Surveillance and the Changing Nature of Urban Space,” Progress in Human Geography vol. 24, no. 2: 243–265.

The article refutes the argument that urban space has become oppressive, dystopic and prison-like through the proliferation of video surveillance cameras. Although Koskela agrees that a surveillance camera’s “gaze” represents a form of invisible power and that cameras create asymmetries of power in space, she ultimately concludes that cities, which are publicly accessible, democratic spaces, cannot reasonably be compared to prisons.

Leman-Langlois, Stéphane (2002). “The Myopic Panopticon: The Social Consequences of Policing through the Lens,” Policing and Society vol. 13, no. 1: 43–58.

The author argues that the police’s reliance on video surveillance technologies is ineffective and inadvisable because surveillance cameras have a “myopic” purview. Monitoring surveilled spaces channels police attention into fixed spatial parameters. Policing, says the author, becomes a reactive activity dependent on observing crimes in progress.

Leong, Sze Tsung (1998). “Readings of the Attenuated Landscape,” in Bell, M. and S. T. Leong. (eds) Slow Space. New York: Monacelli Press.

The author uses Foucault’s tripartite of sovereign power, disciplinary power, and bio-power as well his concept of heterotopia to explain the contours of America’s “attenuated landscape,” that is, postindustrial cityscapes characterized by disorientation and absence. Leong effectively employs Detroit and Houston as models of attenuation.

Levin, Thomas Y. et al. (2002). Ctrl [space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother. Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM Center for Art and Media; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The anthology is a collection of scholarly essays, interview transcripts, images, and performance art synopses relating to technology and surveillance. The individual works are informative, humorous, creative, and provocative, and provide evocative counterpoints to arguments favoring increased public surveillance. This critical anthology can be read as a catalog of resistance efforts against surveillance.

Litz, Stefan A. (2000). “The Fortified Society: Social Exclusion as a Result of Privatization and Fortification of Space,” Berlin Journal of Sociology vol. 10, no. 4: 535–554.

Focusing on the US, the author discusses the causes, typologies, and implications of exclusionary and fortified urban space. The article includes a thorough discussion of elements of the built environment that enable exclusivity: walls, gated entries, surveillance systems, privatized public spaces, and private police forces. The author contends that, in an advanced capitalist society like the US, the purpose of architectural fortification and social exclusion is to distance oneself from “undesirable persons and social groups.”

Lynch, Mona (October 2001). “From the Punitive City to the Gated Community: Security and Segregation across the Social and Penal Landscape,” University of Miami Law Review vol. 56, no. 1: 89–111.

The law review article examines how society has taken on the characteristics of prisons. The author compares the partitioned-off spaces of gated communities to prisons, attributing this synthesis to cultural, political, economic and structural changes and psychological anxieties in the Security City.

Markus, Thomas A. (March/April 1995). “What Do Buildings Have to Do With Power?” Architectural Design vol. 65: 8–19.

The writer examines how power manifests in buildings. His analysis begins with a discussion of language as a system of explaining and understanding form. He says buildings are constructed using formal architectural languages that communicate operative power constructs such as structure, control, and surveillance.

Nellis, Mike (May 2005). “Out of this World: The Advent of the Satellite Tracking of Offenders in England and Wales,” Howard Journal of Criminal Justice vol. 44, no. 2: 125–150.

This recently published article examines emerging satellite tracking and electronic monitoring technologies in the United Kingdom. The author praises satellite tracking for enabling police authorities to monitor individual offenders’ movements and contends that electronic monitoring will open up avenues to more humanistic approaches to offender supervision.

Newman, Oscar (1973). Architectural Design for Crime Prevention. Washington: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.

One of the earliest comprehensive studies on design-based crime prevention, the book outlines Newman’s theory of Defensible Space and describes its application in cities. Defensible Space entails four basic tenets: Territoriality increases residents’ control of public space, Natural Surveillance enables visibility, Strategic Juxtapositions create safe zones, and distinctive Building Images create a sense of spatial and architectural order.

Newman, Oscar (1975). Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space. Washington: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice.

The book updates Newman’s theory, incorporating socioeconomic and demographic factors absent from his original work. Using less hyperbole, Newman provides several Defensible Space design guidelines for architects, planners, and policy makers. A cynical reading might infer that this work is a “how-to” guide for creating legitimated dystopian security cities.

Nieto, Marcus (June 1997). “Public Video Surveillance: Is it an Effective Crime Prevention Tool,” California Research Bureau, CRB-97–005. Available online: http://www.library.ca.gov/CRB/97/05/index.html/.

This extensive government report assesses the effectiveness of video surveillance as a crime deterrence method and reviews legal and constitutional issues relating to surveillance of public spaces.

Nisbet, Nancy (2004). “Resisting Surveillance: Identity and Implantable Microchips,” Leonardo vol. 37, no. 3: 210–16.

The art review essay explains artist Nancy Nisbet’s installations commenting on surveillance through bodily microchip implantation and recounts how surveillance technologies are influencing identity and subjectivity.

Outtes, Joel (April 2003). “Disciplining Society through the City: The Genesis of City Planning in Brazil and Argentina (1894–1945),” Bulletin of Latin American Research vol. 22, no. 2: 137–164.

The author traces the evolution of city planning in Argentina and Brazil between the years 1894 and 1945. Employing a Foucauldian lens, Outtes interprets planning as a mechanism through which the state achieves spatial and social discipline from the production of orderly and hygienic cityscapes and the promotion of industrial culture. The author also examines how the pursuit of racist eugenics in Brazil ultimately “poisoned the planner’s discourse.”

Reynolds, Bryan and J. Fitzpatrick (Fall 1999). “The Transversality of Michel de Certeau: Foucault’s Panoptic and the Cartographic Impulse,” Diacritics vol. 29, no. 3: 63–80.

The authors synthesize Foucault’s theory of panopticism and de Certeau’s writings on everyday spatial practices to produce a complex and often times confusing framework for challenging spatialized power and subjectivity by undertaking transversal movements across cityspace. In short, transversality is the ability to cut across different spaces, disrupting existing power structures within them.

Rosenberg, Richard S. (1999). “The Workplace on the Verge of the 21st century,” Journal of Business Ethics vol. 22, no. 1: 3–14.

The article discusses how internet tracking, e-mail monitoring, background checks, drug screening, and video surveillance are bringing the Security City into the private realm of the workplace.

Schmidt, Annesley K. (1998). “Electronic Monitoring: What Does the Literature Tell Us?” Federal Probation vol. 62, no. 2: 10–19.

The literature review assesses several corrections programs using electronic devices to monitor the whereabouts and movements of offenders participating in home-based incarceration.

Schneider, Richard and T. Kitchen (2002). Planning for Crime Prevention: A Transatlantic Perspective. London; New York: Routledge.

This comprehensive study reviews design-based crime prevention strategies in the US and the UK. The authors outline the history of defensible urban design, provide thorough reviews of design-based crime prevention methods, and offer several recommendations to advance the general field of planning for crime prevention. Most noteworthy, the authors criticize the general neglect of crime as a planning issue and challenge city planners to take on more active roles in crime prevention.

Sipes, James L. (September 2002). “A New Kind of Scrutiny,” Landscape Architecture vol. 92, no. 9: 58–63.

The article reviews design-based technologies landscape architects are using to achieve spatial control in the Security City. These measures include: traffic bollards and circulation barriers, surveillance cameras, and biometric scanning devices such as facial recognition systems, hand readers, retinal scanners, and voice recognition systems.

Sniffen, Michael (7 July 2003). “US Develops Urban Surveillance System,” Akron Beacon Journal.

The newspaper article explains the Pentagon’s plans to create an urban surveillance system comprised of a network of cameras and satellites that will allow military authorities to monitor activities in non-US cities. The surveillance system will be capable of reading license plates and identifying individual faces in cities. Although the program is being developed for war zones, the author notes that the technology can be modified for homeland use.

Soja, Edward W. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell.

The book’s chapter on the Carceral Archipelago synthesizes several critical perspectives on what Soja describes as the “incarceration of cityspace.” Soja argues that globalization and economic restructuring have produced significant sociopolitical and economic imbalances that have created volatility in the contemporary metropolis. According to Soja, this volatility produced the need for security-obsessed urbanism as a means to keep the city from collapsing into chaos.

Sorkin, Michael (March 2003). “Can Architects and Planners use Security Concerns to Create more Humane Cities?” Architectural Record vol. 191, no. 3: 73–4, 76.

The author contends that security-centered urbanism devalues the notion of “the good city” and engenders urban anxiety, paranoia, and a fortress mentality. In the post-9/11 era and with violent crime primarily manifesting in cities, this fear is not completely unwarranted. The author proposes an approach to urban design that tries to balance the need for secure and comfortable spaces.

Surveillance Camera Players (November 1999). “Time in the Shadows of Anonymity: Against Surveillance, Transparency and Global Capitalism.” Available online: https://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html.

This position paper authored by a performance-based surveillance resistance movement advances a theory of surveillance predicated on increasing transparency in political, economic, and social relations. Their take on transparency as a political construct augments the literature on architectural transparency as a surveillant quality.

Whitely, Nigel (May 2003). “Intensity of Scrutiny and a Good Eyeful: Architecture and Transparency,” Journal of Architectural Education vol. 56, no. 4: 8–16.

The article traces the meaning of transparency in modernist architecture. Transparency has been alternately conceived as an emblem of open democracy, a symbol of technological progress, and a motif of capitalist urbanism. In the security centered 21st century, transparency in society and architecture is enabling pervasive surveillance.

The original cover page. [Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell]