Safety and Security
Insecurity remains one of the major challenges for cities of the Global South such as Cape Town and Bogotá. In both cities, the distribution of violent crime follows that of sociospatial inequality, being concentrated in the cities’ most deprived and marginalised neighbourhoods characterised by high levels of informality and inferior public infrastructure provision. At the same time fear of crime pervades all sections of society, resulting in the rise of fortified gated communities and prevalence of private security actors, which further exacerbate existing levels of inequality and insecurity.
Against this backdrop, URI seeks to understand how different characteristics of the built and social environment – and efforts to modify these factors – impact on security. How can different forms of public lighting be implemented to reduce crime in informal settlements? To what degree, and for what reasons, do existing neighbourhood-level interventions focused on alterations to the built and social environment work to increase levels of security? How do physical manifestations of segregation shape the distribution of crime? The answers to these questions, and others, will inform the development of innovative policy recommendations to help increase security for urban dwellers in Cape Town, Bogota and beyond.