Urban Studies

This essay argues for civility's vital place in contemporary urban life. Contrary to many critics who see civility as a conservative or nostalgic virtue deployed to repress difference and frustrate social change, it is argued that civility should be understood as democratic, pluralistic and premised on a sense of moral equality. Civility's most obvious contribution is functional-in easing social conflicts and facilitating social interactions in a complex and diverse market society. However, there is also and maybe more importantly an intrinsic moral value to civility. Observing the formal conditions of civility is one of the ways in which we communicate respect for others and generate habits of moral equality in the everyday life of a democracy.

Research on urban incivility has made progress but has limited scope thanks to a stereotyped and policy-relevant focus on problem neighbourhoods and urban renewal. It also lacks benchmark comparative data, has almost nothing to say about interpersonal incivility and is experiencing diminishing returns to effort. A new agenda is proposed that explores everyday life incivility as this is experienced over the broader population in the course of daily routine. The Everyday Life Incivility in Australia Survey is introduced. This was a random national sample survey collecting systematic narrative information on interpersonal encounters involving a rude stranger. Findings from the study are reported here, documenting the range of low-level incivilities experienced in daily life and outlining some of their properties. The results challenge received wisdom about the corrosive effects of urban incivility on society.

Images of violence and conflict often go hand-in-hand with life in Black, urban communities, an association buttressed by the sensational media accounts that highlight crime, firebombings and riots. Past scholarly research also depicts interethnic relations in Black neighbourhoods as conflict-ridden, with immigrant merchants pitted against Black customers. However, this paper argues that previous research has been biased toward conflict and controversy and does not reflect the full range of commercial life in Black communities. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, it investigates both interethnic conflict and co-operation between African American, Jewish and Korean merchants on the one hand and their Black customers on the other, in five predominantly Black neighbourhoods in New York City and Philadelphia. The paper dispels the myth of the ubiquity of urban conflict and argues that civility, routine and 'business as usual' are the norm.

Do we stand before a rising tide of incivility, of disrespect? Or, is this the latest moral panic? Examining (the UK) New Labour's approach to incivility in the city, as manifest in the respect and urban renaissance agendas, this paper argues that the current zero-tolerance approach to incivility is based upon a confused understanding of anti-social behaviour and contradictory evidence of its occurrence and impact. Ultimately, it is proposed that a version of urbanity that endeavours to enforce respect and create the respectable city will prove counter-productive. Rather, respect and the respectful city require tolerance of, and engagement with, incivility.

Discourses on anti-social behaviour in the UK are embedded within a wider politics of conduct based around concepts of citizenship, self-regulation, welfare conditionality, obligations to communities and rights and responsibilities. This paper explores how the regulation of behaviour is framed within ideas of community and contractual governance and identifies the central role for housing within strategies aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour and promoting civility. It discusses the use of Anti-social Behaviour Orders in governing conduct within a wider package of regulatory mechanisms including Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and tenancy agreements. An increasing focus on governing the interactions between neighbours is identified along with techniques to achieve this, including the growing use of conditionality in welfare entitlement. The paper argues that the regulation of conduct is symbolic of significant realignments of the roles of various actors in policing residential areas and raises fundamental questions about the link between conduct, citizenship rights and the scope and ambition of governance interventions aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour at individual and community levels.

This article explores the growing emphasis upon the policing of incivilities and anti-social behaviour, situating this within debates about the role of social capital in the construction and maintenance of social order. It outlines a critique of certain dominant assumptions within debates about social capital, notably with regard to crime and security. Nevertheless, social capital is used as a lens through which to consider some of the questions that confront policing interventions in attempts to promote social order and civic renewal. It suggests that fostering weak social ties, rather than strong bonds of 'togetherness', may be preferable in supporting open and tolerant communities. The article considers the work of neighbourhood wardens and their contribution to fostering social order in deprived neighbourhoods. It draws upon research findings from wardens working in the city of Leeds, highlighting dilemmas regarding their ambiguous roles in relation to community cohesion and policing.

In North American cities, shopping malls are heralded as the new town square. Historically, the town square was a place where diverse people came together and where politics, economics and sociability were intermingled. However, shopping centres, which are separated from the old downtown by distance or design, seem for many people to be the new heart of public and social life. It is argued in this article that the regulation of the spaces of the mall is intended to create 'community' rather than a 'public'. In the process of creating community, the political potential of public space and the quality of publicity created are contorted so as to muffle political opposition and critique in the name of civility. This argument is illustrated through an examination of the Carousel Center Mall in Syracuse, New York.

This paper is a review of the aims and practice of active citizenship in England. It sets out the key concepts and gives an account of the developing policy agenda in crime, regeneration and housing, education, health and local government. It reviews the current state of scientific knowledge in this area, in particular summarising research commissioned by the Home Office Civil Renewal Research Programme, 2004-05. Whilst the research findings show the positive contribution of government initiatives in this area, a key theme that emerges is that the policy context and the causal relationships are often more complex than advocates sometimes claim.

Can the contemporary city qualify as the topos of the good life, as it has in classical literature on human emancipation? As geographical entities, cities are hardly discernible places with distinct identities. They have become an endless inhabited sprawl without clear boundaries and they have become sites of extraordinary circulation and translocal connectivity. Similarly, sociologically, contemporary cities do not spring to mind as the sites of community and well-being. For the vast majority of people, cities are polluted, unhealthy, tiring, overwhelming, confusing, alienating. Politically, too, the contemporary city bears little resemblance to imaginings of the times when urbanism stood for citizenship, the ideal republic, good government, civic behaviour and the ideal public sphere. The politics of emancipation with a big 'P' is no longer a particularly urban affair in either genesis or practice, having given way to national and global institutions and movements. What remains of the urban as demos in these circumstances? At one level, clearly very little, as one instance in a wider demos or demon that pulls in many directions. This said, the urban remains an enormously significant formative arena, not only as the daily space of over half of the world's population, but also as the supremely visible manifestation of difference and heterogeneity placed together. Urbanism highlights the challenges of negotiating class, gender and ethnic or racial differences placed in close proximity. It also profiles the newness that arises from spatial juxtaposition and global flow and connectivity, forever forcing responses of varying type and intensity in the face of negotiating strangers, strangeness and continuous change. Possibilities thus remain for continuing to ask about the nature of the 'good city'. This paper outlines the elements of an urban ethic imagined as an ever-widening habit of solidarity built around different dimensions of the urban common weal. It offers a practical urban utopianism based around four registers of solidarity woven around the collective basics of everyday urban life. These are 'repair', 'relatedness', 'rights' and 're-enchantment'.