1.1 Introduction
The world is urban. As more and more people reside in urban areas, so too does it require that the problems associated with urbanisation and the dynamic growth of cities be increas-ingly explored, as the numbers of people that such issues affect increases proportionally. This previously unprecedented growth of cities also results in the fact that it is cities, which have been placed at the centre of development discourses. These discourses focus on the ways in which urbanisation trends bring seemingly vast opportunities on the one hand, balanced by a number of unforeseen challenges on the other. Most often it seems to be the experience that planned development processes struggle in the quest to keep abreast of dynamic urban growth patterns, even in some of the world’s most developed nations. Attributed to the fact that the highest percentages of urban growth are occurring in those countries least likely able to deal with the additional pressures levied through express urbanisation processes, it goes without saying that it is therefore the world’s most vulnerable citizens who bear the true brunt of any negative “side-effects”, as it is these populations that reside in the “expanding cities and slums of developing countries” (Muggah, 2012, vi).
Alongside the deficiencies of underdevelopment, which arise as cities cannot adequately ab-sorb the influx of urban (im)migrants, increases in the experiences of urban violence are occur-ring at an alarming rate, gaining more focused attention from researchers and policy-makers alike. This prefatory chapter addresses the issue of dynamic urbanisation within the context of the current discourse on its linkages to severe increases in urban violence, focusing on develop-ing countries, countries of the so-called Global South.
The identification of urban violence as a serious development challenge is explored through a presentation of the ways in which international violence prevention discourses and practical approaches have developed over recent years, relating these approaches to the various theories that have supported their advancement. This discussion formulates the context and overall posi-tioning within which this research has been conducted, highlighting urban violence as one of the most prevalent and problematic challenges currently facing academics and urban development practitioners.
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1.2 Research Context: Dynamic Urbanisation, Inequality and Urban Violence
The world’s cities are experiencing an increasing challenge of urban violence, which has devel-oped itself as one of the central challenges towards the creation of accessible and liveable cities for urban populations across the globe, particularly within the context of developing nations (The World Bank, 2011; Muggah, 2012). For example, particularly in Africa and the Americas, murder statistics according to population size are quoted to be double those being experienced in more developed countries.
UN-Habitat reports the prevalence of urban violence, placing focused concern on the premise that violence is exacerbated through a complex mix of social, institutional and environmental causes resulting in perpetuated feelings of insecurity, particularly amongst those populations most at risk, the urban poor (UN-Habitat, 2007). As the most recent World Development Report contends, this complex “mix” arises through a combination of internal and external stresses that test the proverbial immune system of developing cities (The World Bank, 2011).
This section therefore positions the role that urbanisation plays in the construction of urban contexts within which social, institutional and environmental factors interrelate in ways that fail to support the growth of settlements and communities where inclusion, resilience and safety are a reality. This discussion begins with the role that dynamic urbanisation plays in what is referred to here as the development of underdevelopment.
1.2.1 Dynamic urbanisation: the development of underdevelopment
Urbanisation is a worldwide phenomenon with the most quoted statistics being that of interna-tional organisations such as the United Nations (UN), which state that, in 2008 more than half the world’s population was already recorded to be living in cities. This urbanisation experience will by no means be halted in the near future as projections determine that the world’s urban population will rise from a current estimate of 3.6 billion (in 2011) to 5 billion by 2030 and to 6.3 billion by 2050, representing an urban population increase of 67% (United Nations, 2012b, p. 3). This demonstrates that it is urban areas that will not only be required to absorb all global population growth over the next 40 years but also continue to absorb any rural migrant populations (ibid.). These statistics are, however, particularly pertinent to the developing conti-nents of Africa and Asia where the urbanisation process is at its most rapid – by 2030 these two continents will include almost seven out of every ten urban dwellers across the world. Africa alone will experience an increase in its urban populations of almost 1 billion over the next four decades (UNFPA, 2007; United Nations, 2012b). Essentially, where more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, likewise will any challenges faced within the urban con-text, also affect the majority of our global population. Figure 1.1 depicts the distribution and projection of urban and rural populations for developed and less-developed regions between 1950 and 2050.
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Figure 1.1.: Projected urban and rural populations for developed and less-developed world re-gions (United Nations, 2012b).
The process of urbanisation as it has been observed to occur can be categorised into two broad categories: urbanisation that occurs “with development” and urbanisation that occurs
“without development” (Cheru, 2005, p.2-3). As urbanisation has progressed and the global economy has opened up to include many more previously removed economies, such as that of South Africa, another intermediary, categorisation of urbanisation in terms of development becomes visible, something that Cheru (2005, p.2) refers to as contexts where urbanisation occurs within circumstances of “limited development”. The understanding of the differences in the experience of cities facing urbanisation, with varying degrees of development4, provides sig-nificant insight into why the urbanisation challenges being faced are so much more exaggerated in the developing (African) context. Cities located within the context of more developed nations predominantly experience the forces of urbanisation characterised by continuing development, meaning that, as urbanisation occurs, the focused development and provision of services and infrastructures mean that these cities are able to more adequately accommodate growing urban populations. At the other end of the spectrum however, cities in developing nations by contrast,
4 Development refers in this context to the physical development of infrastructures within urban areas that allow growing urban areas to accommodate increasing populations adequately in terms of the provision of access to basic services and physical infrastructures such as public transportation, roads, housing etc. The use of the term here does not intend to promote all development as good but is merely a commentary on how it is that urbanisation has resulted in under-serviced and under-resourced urban areas, resulting in inadequate living conditions for millions of urban residents.
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generally experience the challenges of urbanisation without, or at best, with limited services and infrastructure development capacities. Cities thus experience differential levels of develop-ment when undergoing rapid urbanisation, which is essentially dependent on the level at which existent infrastructures, physical and otherwise, are (un)able to cope.
Urbanisation processes coupled with a lack of focused and complimentary economic devel-opment and urban planning policy results in the relative absence of secondary cities, leading to the growth of primary urban centres, which do not enjoy the support of smaller surrounding urban areas. Due to the prevalence of only a small number of large primary cities, urban areas thus continue to develop without the ability to cope with the influx of new urban dwellers, re-sulting in the culmination of large, over-populated urban areas with poor economic bases that are unable to deliver the municipal capacity required to provide even the most basic of services (Cheru, 2005; UN-Habitat, 2007).
Researchers in the fields of sociology, planning and criminology, link urbanisation and the resultant inability of urban areas to provide access to services and infrastructure, particularly in developing countries, with increases in the prevalence of urban violence and, along with ma-jor international organisations, thus view urban violence as one of the most significant threats to development at local, regional and international level. The resultant economic, social and political situations of cities, within the global south correspondingly increases the rate, inten-sity and overall impacts of urban violence (Winton, 2004; Moser, 2004; Moser and McIlwaine, 2006). The varied linkages between social and infrastructure services and their relationship to urban safety supports the argument that the success of crime and violence prevention strategies in more developed nations can be attributed largely to the more sophisticated infrastructures and social service delivery systems present within developed cities than to the actual safety and prevention strategies themselves, as these societies have benefited from “the protective lay-ers of centuries of uninterrupted investment in the delivery of services and access to basic rights”
(Holtmann, 2011, p.109).
Development specialists such as Winton (2004) remind us of the fact that by no means is violence unique to urban areas, however, academic focus situates the experience of increasing,
“endemic” violence within the urban context, showing how it is that complex social, economic and political processes driving the development processes of cities interact alongside processes of urbanisation to create situations with which cities cannot cope. It is under these conditions that the normalisation of, what Moser (2004, p. 6) refers to as everyday violence, increasingly results as a reality of daily life.
It is not to argue that urbanisation is by any means the sole reason for the prevalence and continuing trend towards increased urban violence but it does provide a platform from which one can begin to grasp and tackle the role that environment and the construction of place, particularly under the multiple stresses inflicted by rapid, dynamic urban growth, has played in relation to the experience of inadequate development and thus violence, particularly ubiquitous in relation to continually growing, underprivileged, poor communities.
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1.2.2 Rapid development, social change and disorganisation
The notion that underdeveloped, inadequate urban contexts hold the potential to result in so-cial disorganisation, which in turn has been linked to increases in urban violence, is not a new one. Social disorganisation theory, popularised by Chicago School sociologists Shaw and McKay (1942), provided empirical evidence from studies undertaken in the City of Chicago linking high levels of delinquency with what they termed socially disorganised areas where residents, par-ticularly youth, suffer a detachment from conventional groups and institutions. Despite some critique levied against social disorganisation theory due to the possible spuriousness of the pre-sumed relationship between social disorganisation, the detachment from conventional groups and delinquency (Bohm, 2001, p.69), what is important here is that the linkages established be-tween urban environments, marginalisation and increased cases of delinquency have informed the development of contemporary prevention practices that target environmental improvement.
In an extension of the Chicago School Theories linking delinquency with socially disorgan-ised urban environments, the architect Oscar Newman (1973) presented evidence on the re-lationship between the actual physical form of an urban environment and the prevalence of crime. Based on his position that badly designed buildings and spaces in urban areas experi-ence higher levels of crime than well-designed neighbourhoods, Newman’s theory of defensible space provided a model for the design of residential environments which would inhibit crimi-nality through the use of physical and non-physical barriers, with particular importance placed on the creation of improved surveillance. It is this model that supports what we now term crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), a prevention methodology still very much in use today and one of the foundational intervention approaches used in the case study investigated through this research (chapter 5).
What is taken from the work of the Chicago School Theorists and Oscar Newman, in their investigations into neighbourhood characteristics and resultant delinquency as a manifestation of social disorganisation and inadequate design, is that rapid urbanisation with which many cities have not been able to cope, contributes to the creation of urban areas characterised by physical underdevelopment along with marginalisation and the inadequate access of residents to economic opportunities and social support. Furthermore, rapid growth and resultant social change in growing urban areas leads to the breakdown of social cohesion within these com-munities as rapid growth and residential mobility often occur with very high frequency. Such areas therefore most often do not provide for the conditions in which stable residences can be established, resulting in ties to normative institutions being lost. Central to the theory of social disorganisation is the dismissal of the thesis that violence and crime are attributable to deviant racial groups, ethnic or immigrant cultures, asserting instead that regardless of ethnicity, cul-ture or race, any group living within socially disorganised urban communities would be subject to higher rates of crime.
Within socially disorganised areas, the structural factors that characterise these neighbour-hoods lead to the breakdown of normative values usually based on strong family and community 1.2. Research Context: Dynamic Urbanisation, Inequality and Urban Violence 10
structures, which in turn results in the development of deviant subcultures of violence. Empir-ical research has shown that communities which exhibit low levels of networks, unsupervised youth groups and low organisational access and participation exhibit higher rates of crime and delinquency (Sampson and Groves, 1989). These subcultures, as they progress over time, result in the development of a value system increasingly conducive to violence.
Bohm (2001) extends the discussion on Chicago school theories, asking what it is that fuels the way in which cities develop and what determines where these areas of social disorgani-sation occur, arguing that it is not simply the processes of rapid growth occurring at random but also that it is the result of the way in which urbanisation occurs, predicated on the value and decision-making processes and interests of the political and economic elite. It is these de-velopment decisions that orient the ways in which urbanisation processes are approached and dealt with that play a significant role in the development, or underdevelopment as it may be, of particular urban settlements. Critical theory approaches support the contention that human beings are both determined and determining in our behaviour. In direct opposition therefore to classic and neoclassic approaches, which centre on the assertion that humans act entirely based on free will and positive theoretical approaches, which propose that human actions are determined, critical theories assert that we, as human beings, create the very institutions that determine and constrain our actions (Bohm, 2001, p.104).
This position is extended through this research in chapter 4, which depicts the role that post-apartheid governance in South Africa and the experience of Cape Town as one of the country’s largest cities, has played in the creation of urban landscapes where economic success is starkly juxtaposed against the social failures still being observed and arguably exacerbated almost 20 years on. Rapid urbanisation and the consequential inadequate urban environments that evolve, mostly inhabited by the poorest of the poor are all factors, which arguably may or may not result in the increase of crime and violence.
As the point has been made, it is a complex mix of the way in which a multitude of risk factors converge usually supported, perhaps even exacerbated, by local development policies driven by varied elite interests that results in what can be termed socially disorganised, inadequate urban living environments where increasing violence and crime becomes a daily reality. Research has shown however that inadequate development, marginalisation and the extreme poverty, which generally characterises the urban contexts being described, cannot be simply and linearly connected to increases in violence in these areas. Rather, violence is at its worst where all of the mentioned factors are further contributed to by the hopelessness that occurs when social and economic opportunities exclude those who are poorest (Vanderschueren, 1996, pp.98-102).
In many developing countries, the urban poor live in abominable conditions just a few kilome-tres away from a sector of society that is so far beyond their reach in terms of access to services and material wealth that it no longer makes sense to bother to dream of such attainment. Sup-porting this, clear linkages have been established between development status and homicide rates, based on human development index (HDI) valuations and measures of inequality based on Gini index indicators, as shown in Figure 1.2 (UNODC, 2011).
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Figure 1.2.: Global homicide rates and development indicators. Source: UNODC (2011).
South Africa relates directly to this trend as one of the most unequal countries in the world Figure 1.3, displaying persistently high levels of violent crime with a national homicide rate of 36,5 per 100.000 of the population5Figure 1.4.
Figure 1.3.: Distribution of family income – Gini index country comparison. Source: CIA Fact-book 2011. Map developed through chartsbin.com.
Anomie or strain theories developed in the fields of sociology and criminology support this line of thought in providing a theoretical understanding of the impacts that such exclusion has on urban residents and the communities in which they live.
5 This map depicts data from 2008. Subsequent UNODC statistical data demonstrates a drop from 36,5 to 30,9 homicides per 100.000 population in 2011. Statistics freely available at http://www.unodc.org.
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Figure 1.4.: Comparative map of global homicide rates per 100.000 of the population. Source:
UNODC Statistics on Crime and Justice 1995-2011. Map developed through chartsbin.com.
1.2.3 Underdevelopment and societal anomie: urban residents under strain
Sociologist Émile Durkheim first introduced the concept of anomie in the early 1890s, which can be roughly defined as the condition of instability that results in societies or individuals, from the breakdown of value systems or a lack of purpose or opportunity. In extending Durkheim’s concept of anomie, Merton (1938) theorised that the most severe causes of anomie in individ-uals is the inability, through access to acceptable means, to achieve personal goals, resulting in increased strain that, if perpetuated, results in a breakdown of regulated systems. Under these conditions, previously acceptable means of goal attainment are replaced with varying forms of illegitimate means of achievement. Merton’s work resulted in a continuum of responses to anomie, ranging from conformity and social innovation through to rebellion. Delinquency and crime, which may often be violent, are the result of such rebellion. Essentially, according to Merton, anomie results most in contexts where normative success is restricted through a lack of opportunity. Therefore, likewise to the theory of social disorganisation, high crime rates in de-prived urban areas can be supported using Merton’s anomie theory in that individuals residing in such neighbourhoods are most often marginalised, excluded from basic opportunities such as access to education or the local economy, that would provide them with the means of attaining
Sociologist Émile Durkheim first introduced the concept of anomie in the early 1890s, which can be roughly defined as the condition of instability that results in societies or individuals, from the breakdown of value systems or a lack of purpose or opportunity. In extending Durkheim’s concept of anomie, Merton (1938) theorised that the most severe causes of anomie in individ-uals is the inability, through access to acceptable means, to achieve personal goals, resulting in increased strain that, if perpetuated, results in a breakdown of regulated systems. Under these conditions, previously acceptable means of goal attainment are replaced with varying forms of illegitimate means of achievement. Merton’s work resulted in a continuum of responses to anomie, ranging from conformity and social innovation through to rebellion. Delinquency and crime, which may often be violent, are the result of such rebellion. Essentially, according to Merton, anomie results most in contexts where normative success is restricted through a lack of opportunity. Therefore, likewise to the theory of social disorganisation, high crime rates in de-prived urban areas can be supported using Merton’s anomie theory in that individuals residing in such neighbourhoods are most often marginalised, excluded from basic opportunities such as access to education or the local economy, that would provide them with the means of attaining