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Jane Jacobs' framing of public disorder and its relation to the 'broken

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Article

Jane Jacobs’ framing of public disorder and its relation to the ‘broken windows’ theory

Prashan RanasingheUniversity of Ottawa, Canada

AbstractThough much has been written about the ‘broken windows’ theory, very little effort has been made to locate and contextualize it within an historical perspective. This article serves as a corrective to this void. I explore the way the concerns about public disorder, which (re)emerged in the US academic literature beginning in the 1960s, were important forerunners for the concerns that would be raised in ‘broken windows’. Specifically, I locate the significance of Jane Jacobs’ seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and explore its relation to the ‘broken windows’ theory, explicating the (dis)connections and (dis)similarities between the way these two texts frame the problem of public disorder and the normative agendas that are espoused.

Keywords‘broken windows’, history of criminological thought, Jane Jacobs, public disorder

Introduction

The ‘broken windows’ theory (Wilson and Kelling, 1982, 1989) is an influential theory in criminology. The original ‘broken windows’ article (Wilson and Kelling, 1982) is one of the most widely cited articles in the policing literature (Manning, 2001: 316). The theory’s influence within public policy is evident in the numerous resources earmarked to attend to its ‘warnings’, the most famous example being the ‘quality of life’ initiative undertaken in New York City in the mid-1990s (Bratton, 1998; Giuliani, 1998; see also

Corresponding author:Prashan Ranasinghe, Department of Criminology (Faculty of Social Sciences), University of Ottawa, 25 University Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada Email: [email protected]



64 Theoretical Criminology 16(1)

Harcourt, 2001: 46–54). The key tenets of ‘broken windows’ can be found in popular media as well, evinced for example in Malcolm Gladwell’s (2002 [2000]) bestseller, The Tipping Point, or the oft-cited explanation regarding the riots and looting that enveloped New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where ‘broken windows’ was relied upon to explain why such behaviour, in such circumstances, was quite ‘normal’ and far from unexpected (Woolner, 2005).

Though there is an extensive literature on and about the ‘broken windows’ theory, little effort has been made to locate and contextualize it within historical perspective (see Harcourt, 2001: 27–37). Why this is so is not entirely clear. One possible explanation is that the theory has become a folk wisdom of sorts, a concern that Roger Matthews (1992: 20) raised nearly two decades ago. Another possible explanation, in the broader sense, is the tendency to place little emphasis on, and give attention to, the history of criminology, a concern that has been repeatedly raised, especially in recent times (see, for example, Bursik, 2009; Laub, 2004; Rafter, 2010; see also Laub and Sampson, 1991). In particular, little effort has been made to explore the history of criminological thought and its intel-lectual past, that is to say, the history of ideas and the way these ideas are appropriated and their subsequent ‘travels’ over time and across space. This is what John Laub (2004: 20) has in mind when he notes that: ‘Ideas matter and they matter a great deal. Ideas are at the core of what we do and … our ideas must be grounded in the history of our field.’ There are exceptions however (see, for example, Garland, 2000; Jones and Newburn, 2002), but much more is required to fill the wide lacunae that exist.

There is a related aspect that contributes to this problem as well: an unfounded belief that the intellectual writings and knowledge produced today is somehow better than what was produced in the past, or somehow better suited to explaining contemporary life. This phenomenon, Paul Rock (2005) calls ‘chronocentrism’ (see also Downes et al., 2009: 20, who talk about the ‘chronocentric fallacy’). Chronocentrism, first explicated by Gary Saul Morson, refers to ‘the natural egotism attendant on taking one’s own time as special’ (1994a: 13), which is to say ‘the conferring of … authority on the prejudices of one’s own time’ (1994b: 52; see also Bernstein, 1994). Two recent American Society of Criminology Presidential Addresses have drawn attention to this problem by speaking of a ‘presentism’ (Laub, 2004: 1) and a ‘newness fetish’ (Bursik, 2009: 6) which permeates the field (see also Rafter, 2010).

This article draws inspiration from those who have highlighted the importance of excavating criminology’s intellectual past and explicating its historical (re)production. My focus is the history of ‘broken windows’. One aspect of this history is the concern about public disorder which (re-)emerged1 in the US academic literature beginning in the 1960s in various disciplines outside criminology proper (see, for example, Banfield, 1974 [1970]; Wilson, 1969 [1968]; Zimbardo, 1970 [1969]). In fact, criminology only came to appropriate concerns about public disorder in the late 1970s, shortly before ‘bro-ken windows’ was published, but long after other disciplines had drawn attention to it. These earlier writings spoke eerily about the changing nature of urban spaces and the relations in these spaces: for example, not only was crime on the rise, but riots had become a common occurrence in large urban centres as well (Banfield, 1974 [1970]: 214–218; Zimbardo, 1970 [1969]: 240–247, 280–283). In addition, the concern over what would be called an ‘urban crisis’, involving for example, poverty, poor transportation and



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housing, congestion and flight to the suburbs, also paved the way for a heightened con-cern about public disorder.

In seeking to narrate this aspect of the history of ‘broken windows’, I turn to Jane Jacobs’ (1961) classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The Death and Life of Great American Cities is an important (and interesting) text for a variety of reasons, one aspect pertaining to the ways in which it framed the problem of public disorder, and in that sense, was a precursor for what would be fully elaborated in the ‘broken windows’ theory. In this article, then, I seek to explicate the relation between The Death and Life of Great American Cities and the ‘broken windows’ theory, suggesting that Jacobs’ text is crucial to understanding and making sense of the intellectual ideas that were promul-gated in ‘broken windows’.

It would be incorrect to say that the history of ‘broken windows’ has been neglected wholeheartedly. Bernard Harcourt’s (2001: 27–37) interesting discussion explores the writings of Edward C. Banfield (1958, 1974 [1970])—James Q. Wilson’s mentor and colleague at Harvard—which had a profound effect on the work that Wilson would pen, both on his own accord, and later with George L. Kelling, and the ways these earlier works were similar in ethos to ‘broken windows’. There are however, several shortcom-ings in Harcourt’s discussion, namely, his failure to explore several other important texts and their relation to ‘broken windows’. In the first place, Harcourt fails to locate and discuss an important essay that Wilson wrote prior to the publication of ‘broken win-dows’. In that piece, Wilson (1969 [1968]) spoke of an ‘urban unease’, which has very similar features to the sequential link and spiral of decline that he and Kelling would later develop; in fact, this piece is reflective of how similar Wilson’s ideas were to those of Banfield’s. In the second place, Harcourt fails to explore the way the concerns about the fear of crime were taken up in criminology prior to ‘broken windows’. In particular, two seminal articles by James Garofalo and John Laub (1978) and Dan Lewis and Michael Maxfield (1980), are pertinent to understanding the history of ‘broken windows’, and the trajectory it would take. The concept of fear, as will become apparent, is crucial to mak-ing sense of the ‘broken windows’ theory, for it is the foundation upon which the theory is developed. Perhaps the most significant shortcoming of Harcourt’s analysis is his wholesale failure to locate the importance of Jacobs’ work in relation to the history of ‘broken windows’ and public disorder; in fact, Harcourt never mentions Jacobs’ name nor her work.

It would also be incorrect to state that scholars who have written in the wake of ‘bro-ken windows’ have failed to mention or cite the work of Jacobs and her importance to criminology. It is admitted for example, that ‘littered through … [The Death and Life of Great American Cities] is a fairly well-developed theory of crime committal’ (Mawby, 1977: 170). Yet, there are two related problems. First, even when Jacobs’ work is acknowledged, many writers pay too scant attention to the significance of it, briefly mentioning it in passing, which in many cases occupies a sentence or two at best, a foot-note at worst (see, for example, Perkins et al., 1992: 22–23, 1993: 30; Taylor and Gottfredson, 1986: 398; Taylor et al., 1980: 54; but see Mawby, 1977). Second, where Jacobs’ work is mentioned, it is not in relation to ‘broken windows’, but to the ‘defensi-ble space’ theory, which Oscar Newman (1972) would develop later. What this means is that the historicity of her work vis-à-vis ‘broken windows’ is rendered virtually




impossible to appreciate. Consider for example the work of Tim Hope and Mike Hough (1988), whose article, which begins with an attempt to trace the historicity of public disorder (‘incivilities’ as they term it), has this on the work of Jacobs:

The first sign of a break with this tradition [of resuscitating ‘natural’ communities’] came not from a criminologist but an architectural journalist—Jane Jacobs … Jacobs took a sceptical attitude towards the urban pastoral which underpinned many community projects, arguing that the attempt to generate or regenerate close-knit urban communities was fundamentally misconceived and that anonymity of city life was part of its richness. She emphasised the informal social control which a (well-planned) city could yield, in contrast to the potential for integration of deviants which an active community promised; and she identified diversity of land-use as the lever for maximising informal social control. Though … [her work] did not achieve an immediate impact, it has subsequently infused thinking about neighbourhood[s] to a considerable degree. (Hope and Hough, 1988: 30)

Hope and Hough’s summary of Jacobs’ work is accurate as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough to allow for a full appreciation of its relation and importance to the con-cerns about public disorder and the ‘broken windows’ theory, a fact that is true of most other writers as well.2

That Jacobs made a profound impact on the study of urban spaces is an understate-ment. This is evinced for example in the recent space that City and Community (2006), an associated Journal of the American Sociological Association, set aside for a retrospec-tive, shortly after her death. In planning circles, where she made the greatest of contribu-tions, her influence is readily visible. For example, Evelyn Ruppert (2006: 166) notes that Jacobs’ ‘words have acquired so much symbolic power that professionals need only cite a connection to her ideas to increase the authority of their practices!’ This is all the more remarkable given that Jacobs spent a lifetime deriding orthodox planning as too simple, naïve and out of touch with reality. Specifically where matters of public disorder are at stake, the influence of her work is even more visible, and has gone a long way—though in ways perhaps unintended by her—of framing legislation and court rulings. In R v Banks (2001) for example—the first constitutional challenge to Ontario’s Safe Streets Act (1999), which banned squeegeeing and aggressive panhandling—Justice Babe, in upholding the Act, cited Jacobs’ work to substantiate the claim that ‘aggressive begging can pose … both short and long term [problems to the] health of urban areas’ (R v Banks, 2001, paras 86–87). These examples suggest not just the broad range of influences that Jacobs had, but the ways her ideas constituted particular problems and solutions to these problems. ‘Broken windows’ is just one, albeit an important, example.

This article is organized as follows. I begin with a brief summary of the key tenets of the ‘broken windows’ theory. I then explore the foundations of ‘broken windows’ by pay-ing attention to the intellectual paths of Wilson and Kelling up until their point of col-laboration. Next, I explore the key tenets of Jacobs’ work, focusing specifically on the way she frames the problem of public disorder and its relation to the ‘broken windows’ theory. It bears mentioning that Jacobs does not use the term public disorder—that term would be made (in)famous by (and, perhaps because of) ‘broken windows’. Furthermore, it is true, and this is worth stressing, that ‘broken windows’ never once cites, nor



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mentions, the work of Jacobs. Any reference to her work and ideas are by implication only. Yet, as I will demonstrate, the commonalities in the ways public disorder is con-structed as problematic to the health of urban public spaces have uncanny resemblances between the two texts. What is common and underpins both texts are the concerns about the visibility of public problems posed directly by the absence or deterioration of civility. While the similarities are unmistakable, the points of departure are illuminating and informative regarding the normative engagement of both sets of writers, which I explore as well. Finally, I try to make sense of how Jacobs’ ideas can have such a wide appeal to a variety of people, including the authors of ‘broken windows’.3

‘Broken windows’

‘Broken windows’ is a ‘warning’ about public disorder and its deleterious, often ‘crip-pling’, consequences on community life. By public disorder Wilson and Kelling refer to matters which are visible and public and pose concerns to the public at large, such as panhandling, public drinking, loitering and rowdy teenagers, for example. Wilson and Kelling begin by locating and contextualizing the concerns about public fear, suggesting that it is not simply linked to crime and violence, but also to ‘the fear of being bothered by disorderly people’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 29–30). In so doing, public disorder is unequivocally constructed as problematic because it is a source of fear. Wilson and Kelling take the argument further and develop a sequential model of disorderly behav-iour, varying over time and space, culminating in serious violent crime (1982: 31). In the same way that ‘Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun and plunder’ they write, ‘“untended” behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls’ (1982: 31).4

The ‘road’ to ‘broken windows’

Wilson and Kelling’s ‘journey’ to ‘broken windows’ originated from different paths, though given their similar research interests, it is not surprising that their paths would eventually meet. Well before the publication of ‘broken windows’, Wilson had, as his co-author would later note, ‘an ongoing interest in policing and public order’ (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 19), the two core issues which were explored in the article and its sub-sequent follow-up (Wilson and Kelling, 1982, 1989). Varieties of Police Behavior (Wilson, 1968) for example, highlights Wilson’s curiosity about the nature and work of the police, in particular, patrol units. His other works, notably his essay on the ‘urban unease’ (1969 [1968]), examined the deterioration or absence of civility in public spaces, in the same ways that his colleague Edward Banfield (1974 [1970]) and others (see, for example, Zimbardo, 1970 [1969]) were in the process of exploring, or as in the case with Jacobs (1961), had already done.

The concerns about the ‘urban unease’ were the precursors for what would be fully fleshed out as a problem of public disorder. Echoing similar reservations about the ‘expert’ as Banfield (1974 [1970]: 274, 285), Wilson notes that the problems which made up the urban crisis had little to do with what ‘experts’ believed them to be—such as inad-equate transportation or poor housing—and more to do with what citizens themselves




had to say. Drawing on and summarizing the results of various opinion polls conducted in the mid-to-late 1960s, Wilson (1969 [1968]: 456) argues that what people considered to be problems of the urban crisis can be generalized as ‘a concern for improper behavior in public places’, which he links directly to the failure—or concern—of community (see also Garofalo and Laub, 1978: 248–251). The concern for community, Wilson (1969 [1968]: 457, emphasis added) notes, is a concern about the deterioration or absence of the ‘observance of standards of right and seemly conduct in the public places in which one lives and moves, those standards to be consistent with—and supportive of—the val-ues and life styles of the particular individual’. In other words, what was in need of resuscitation were the ‘values’ of the days of the past (Wilson, 1969 [1968]: 471).

The theme of right and seemly conduct can also be found in many of Wilson’s other works, such as Varieties of Police Behavior (1968: 16 and 22), as well as his seminal Thinking about Crime (1975: 24) and the even more influential and controversial Crime and Human Nature (Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985). This theme would be subsequently developed in ‘broken windows’. In particular, Wilson explored how the police could return order and civility to public spaces (for further discussion of Wilson’s criminologi-cal writings, see Delisi, 2003). It is in this vein that Wilson made an offer of co-author-ship to Kelling (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 319), who was working on directly relevant inquiries at that time.

There is no evidence that Jacobs’ book either influenced or inspired any of the ideas and concerns that Wilson was grappling with at that time. However, there is no doubt that Kelling was both influenced and inspired by Jacobs’ work. In reminiscing on the popu-larity of ‘broken windows’, Kelling writes that his initial foray into ‘minor offences and disorderly behaviour and conditions’ was ‘inspired by a rereading of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ as well as Egon Bittner’s (1967) classic essay on order maintenance (Kelling, 2001: 125, emphasis added). The significance and impor-tance of Jacobs’ text to Kelling’s ideas is also evinced in the following comment he made to me: ‘I know that I was influenced by Jane Jacobs in my overall thinking once I read “Death and Life” [sic]’ (emphasis added), which is perhaps why Kelling views it as ‘a remarkable book’. Thus, the related concerns about public disorder and the role of the police in restoring order on the streets, even evident in Kelling’s early writings (see, for example, Kelling, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1987), was influenced, among others, by Jacobs’ classic text.

Unlike Wilson’s work, and unsurprisingly given where Kelling drew (at least some of) his inspiration from, there are more direct similarities in Kelling’s earlier writings with Jacobs. Kelling’s (1978: 174) initial concerns were about the changing ‘faces’ of public policing and its impact on crime control. Given his findings of the lack of success of the police in curbing crime (Kelling et al., 1974), he was ‘struggling with the issue of the police impact on crime’, and was ‘skeptical’ and cautious of the possibility of crime reduction through these means, or at least, through these means alone (see also Kelling, 1978: 183–184). This was especially so given that he saw ‘the police [as] contribut[ing] significantly to both the solution and the exacerbation of social problems’ (Kelling, 1978: 173). This, as will become apparent, parallels the concerns raised by Jacobs, espe-cially her scepticism and suspicions about institutions and the effects of institutionaliza-tion on organizations. Thus, in the same vein as Jacobs, Kelling’s earlier writings show



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concerns about the police and its appropriate role in addressing crime and disorder (Kelling, 1978: 183).

These concerns however, would slowly disappear over time given that Kelling’s posi-tion ‘was evolving at the time and continued to evolve afterwards’. One key ‘episode’ that sparked this change was The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment (Kelling et al., 1981), which found that ‘while foot patrol does not have a significant effect on crime, it does affect citizens’ fear of crime’ (Kelling, 1981: 124). Kelling was thus grappling with how, on the one hand, reactive policing appeared to have little or no effect in reducing crime and disorder, while on the other, proactive methods, though having little effect on crime rates, nevertheless had marked effects on citizens’ fear and perceptions about crime and disorder. It was at a seminar that Kelling received insightful feedback from Egon Bittner which helped him attend to this problem, leading ultimately to the concluding chapter in The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment (Kelling, 1981). As Kelling explains: ‘[that] chapter grew out of a brown bag lunch when I was at Harvard to which … Bittner was invited. As I puzzled about why foot patrol had such an impact on fear, Egon kept prodding me: “go back to your field notes—what did police officers do?”’ (emphasis in original). It was at this point that Kelling began to identify the importance and impact that proactive policing, in particular, of the kind foot patrol had to offer, could have in addressing public fear (see Kelling, 1981), and is indicative of this gradual, but nonetheless significant, shift in his thinking. (Interestingly however, ‘It wasn’t until the NYC subway experience in the late 1980s and early 1990s’ that Kelling ‘start[ed] to believe that police could pre-vent crime by means other than reactive law enforcement … It wasn’t until the 1990s, that I really firmed up my position’ (emphasis added). In other words, even during the time of ‘broken windows’, Kelling was still somewhat ‘skeptical’ of the role of the police.) The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment is significant for another reason as well. In particular, the concluding chapter in that Report, was what ‘stimulated Wilson to contact me [Kelling] and suggest we do an article together’.

Wilson and Kelling therefore were addressing related concerns which would lead to their collaboration on ‘broken windows’, that is, concerns about order in public spaces and the role of the police in attending to this issue. At least for one author, the inspiration for these ideas and concerns can be found, among other places, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, an influential text that is important to fully understand, appreci-ate and locate the history of ‘broken windows’. As Kelling put it to me: ‘My own view is that Broken Window[s] stands in a historical train of thought, the indebtedness of which to Jacobs becomes more clear over time’ (emphasis added)! This ‘indebtedness’ is what I seek to explicate in what follows.

Planning the healthy city

The Death and Life of Great American Cities can be read as a response to the urban crisis that had enveloped US cities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it proffered important solutions that (the revamped practice of) city planning could provide. Specifically, it was ‘part of a backlash against the anti-urbanism bias of architects, town planners, and social scientists’ (Mawby, 1977: 170), who had failed to come to grips with the realities of what constituted the urban crisis. Jacobs was writing against two extremities. The first was a




concern about the effects of institutionalization—of planning on planners—which cre-ated restrictive rules and dulled the creative capacities of planners. The ‘pseudoscience of city planning and its companion, the art of city design’ Jacobs (1961: 13) writes, ‘have not yet broken with the specious comfort of wishes, familiar superstitions, oversimplifi-cations, and symbols, and have not yet embarked upon the adventure of probing the real world’. Planning (and planners) therefore, were stuck, and dogmatically so, with(in) the past, especially its core assumptions and premises, reminiscent for example, in the ways ancient techniques such as bloodletting once were (Jacobs, 1961: 12–14). As unimagina-tive as planners may have been, Jacobs was also cautious of what creativity without boundaries would lead to. In particular, she derided the naivety of utopian thought. Planning, as she saw it, could not be a useful tool to redress the urban crisis if its goal was to turn life into art (Jacobs, 1961: 12–14, 428–439). She writes thus, that ‘modern city planning has been burdened from its beginning with the unsuitable aim of converting cities into disciplined works of art’ (1961: 375). ‘A city’ she opines, ‘cannot be a work of art’ (1961: 372, emphasis omitted). Her focus thus, was to promote a vision of planning within these two extremes.

Perceptions of order and safety

The scepticism towards institutionalization perhaps explains the form of Jacobs’ prose, unpretentious in its scientific claims—if anything, containing a hint of disdain towards it—and based more on ‘hearsay, personal experience, and glib anecdotes’ (Mawby, 1977: 169). In that sense, it is quite ironic that Jacobs draws heavily upon biological analogies, in itself a nod to the natural sciences, to paint a picture of the late 1950s and early 1960s US cities overcome by the urban crisis as inherently unhealthy. One important, though by no means the only, aspect of the health of a city, Jacobs suggests, concerns order and safety, and in particular, the perceptions about them, a point that ‘broken windows’ would later heavily underscore. In Jacobs’ picturing, the streets and sidewalks of the city are paramount to the perceptions of order and safety. The ‘Streets in cities’ she writes,

serve many purposes besides carrying vehicles, and city sidewalks—the pedestrian part of the streets—serve many purposes besides carrying pedestrians. These uses are bound up with circulation but are not identical with it and in their own right they are at least as basic as circulation to the proper workings of cities. (Jacobs, 1961: 29)

‘Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city’ she elaborates, ‘are its most vital organs’ (1961: 29), because they ‘provide the principal visual scenes’ (1961: 378, emphasis added). ‘Think of a city and what comes to mind?’ she asks. ‘Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull’ (1961: 29).

A city’s streets and sidewalks thus, are crucial to enhancing circulation, in itself an important aspect in maintaining a healthy city. Good circulation however, hinges directly on perceptions of order and safety, and these perceptions are further related to the aes-thetic appeal of a city’s streets and sidewalks, evident for example, when she speaks about a city looking dull or interesting. In relation to aesthetic appeal, and in particular



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to the aesthetic norms that Jacobs speaks of, it is not just the material conditions, such as the height of buildings, that make a city look dull or interesting. Rather, it is the very activities in these spaces that are important to consider. ‘When people say that a city … is dangerous or a jungle’ she writes, ‘what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks’ (1961: 30). This perception of order and safety is a product of a culling, often contested and negotiated, of the myriad signs and cues, inclusive of, but not limited to, aesthetic norms. In other words, ‘sidewalks and those who use them are not passive beneficiaries of safety or helpless victims of danger. Sidewalks, their border-ing uses, and their users, are active participants in the drama of civilization versus barba-rism in cities’ (1961: 30). As Jacobs sees it then, the sidewalks of streets have three key uses, one important aspect pertaining to perceptions about order and safety (1961: 29–54), the other two pertaining to contact—an important point in its own right, which I take up later—and the assimilation of children (1961: 55–88). For Jacobs thus, order and safety are tied heavily to, in fact, dependent on, aesthetic norms.

Barbarism vis-à-vis order and safety

The problem for Jacobs however, was that the streets and sidewalks of cities had lost not just their aesthetic beauty, but also any semblance of order and control, leading people to perceive that cities were inherently unsafe and disorderly; one such example, though it would only take full shape during the late 1960s and 1970s, is the ‘urban flight’ syn-drome which enveloped many an urbanite (see, for example, Galster, 1990). As Jacobs (1961: 30) puts it: ‘The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among … strangers. He must not feel auto-matically menaced by them.’ The primary reason for the perceived lack of order and safety can be chalked up to the rise or growth of ‘barbarism’ (1961: 56–72), a term that is not precisely defined, though it appears to speak to both the rise in violent episodes—for example, muggings or riotous behaviour—and more importantly, the deterioration of civility.

By civility, Jacobs refers to particular dispositions—for example, etiquette, manners, decorum, politeness, propriety and comportment—that lay the groundwork for regulat-ing everyday face-to-face encounters between strangers (see Elias, 1978 [1939]). ‘[T]olerance, the room for great differences among neighbors …’ she writes, is ‘possible and normal only when streets of great cities have built-in-equipment allowing strangers to dwell in peace together on civilized but essentially dignified and reserved terms’ (Jacobs, 1961: 72). One aspect of this built-in-equipment is civility. Civility functions as a means of informal social control, subject little to institutionalized norms and processes, such as the law, but rather maintained through an ‘intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among people … and enforced by the people them-selves’ (1961: 32).

Civility is the concept that links the work of Jacobs with ‘broken windows’. Picking up on Wilson’s (1969 [1968]: 457) discussion about the absence of ‘standards of right and seemly conduct’ and its relation to the urban crisis, ‘broken windows’ laments the deterioration of civility in public spaces, as evinced for example, when the ‘breakdown of community control’ is cited as an important reason for the rise of public disorder




(Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 31). Thus, in explaining why vandalism had spiralled out of control, Wilson and Kelling point out that the ‘communal barriers—the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility …—[have been] lowered’ (1982: 31, emphasis added). This is also evident in the way the ‘characters’ associated with public disorder—the panhandler or the loiterer, for example—are labelled as ‘disreputable’ or ‘obstreper-ous’ (1982: 30).

The focus on civility also highlights the nostalgia for the ‘good old days’, when things were better and perhaps, simpler. This is evident in Jacobs’ reminiscing, especially in the ways children played in the streets while mothers attended to household chores (Jacobs, 1961: 83–84), something that she believed to have been slowly disappearing. Wilson and Kelling’s discussion too, invokes the ‘good old days’, the days where ‘standards of right and seemly conduct’ were the norm and where public disorder, if existent, was limited to particular spaces and thus invisible to the ‘law-abiding’ (see Bittner’s (1967) discussion of policing on skid row).

Civility then—or more precisely, the absence of civility—is the common framework employed by both sets of authors to narrate the problem facing urban public spaces (compare with Banfield, 1974 [1970]; Zimbardo, 1970 [1969]).5 It is when viewed through the prism of the concern about civility that the significance of Jacobs’ text in relation to many of the key tenets of ‘broken windows’ can be fully appreciated, and equally important, the points of departure can be brought to light. In what follows I attempt to further tease out these (dis)similarities and (dis)connections.

Barbarism, public fear and the health of cities

Like ‘broken windows’ would later do, Jacobs places great emphasis on the trepidations of the everyday person interacting with strangers in public (though—and this is the crucial point to stress, a point that I will return to later—her conceptualization of the stranger and strangeness, is markedly different from that of Wilson and Kelling’s). Public fear bodes poorly for the health of cities, Jacobs (1961: 30) notes, because people, out of fear, will either resist venturing into public, or when they go out, avoid contact with strangers:

Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to much the same thing in the end … It does not take many incidents of violence on a city street, or in city district, to make people fear the streets. And as they fear them, they use them less, which makes the streets still more unsafe.

For Jacobs, one of the uses of sidewalks is that it fosters contact between strangers and therefore, is crucial to a healthy city (Jacobs, 1961: 56). ‘Sidewalk public contact and sidewalk public safety, taken together’ she writes, ‘bear directly on our country’s most serious social problem—segregation and racial discrimination’ (Jacobs, 1961: 71). While citizens avoiding contact might speak indirectly to racial discrimination or segregation, what is also important is that the purposeful lack of contact is a product of, and tends to further substantiate, mistrust between people. Public contact thus becomes crucial to a healthy and vibrant city life. This relates partly to what large crowds can do to calm fear.6 For Jacobs, the more people are in public, the opportunities for crime and disorder are



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drastically reduced, given that people act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the street. In other words, natural surveillance is increased when people take to the street (1961: 34, 74). Thus, a city that is perceived as safe would draw large crowds, thereby further increasing the perception that the city is safe, which in turn, might actually make the city safer.7 Where such is not the case, natural progression towards chaos and disorder is more likely.

The concern about public fear is not just an important plank in Wilson and Kelling’s theory, but it is crucial to it, in that it forms the bulwark of their entire thesis. In similar vein to Jacobs’ model, they argue that where public disorder takes hold of the neighbour-hood, urban decline is more likely than not (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 31–32). How similar their words are to Jacobs’ conceptualization of this problem is evident in the fol-lowing, where they explain, that given the growth of public disorder, ‘many residents … will modify their behavior … [and] will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps’ (1982: 32). That citizens, as Wilson and Kelling say, will so move, speaks specifi-cally to Jacobs’ concerns that public fear will erode contact between strangers.

Both Jacobs and Wilson and Kelling focus heavily on the perceptions of order and safety, and the ways in which these perceptions impact public life. In this sense, Jacobs’ work was significant for it was a harbinger of sorts for what was to come in criminologi-cal analyses, where the fear of crime was taken as an important unit of analysis in its own right, beginning in the 1970s (see, for example, Garofalo and Laub, 1978; Kelling, 1981; Lewis and Maxfield, 1980; Maxfield, 1984; Skogan, 1976; Wilson, 1969 [1968]).

There is however, an important aspect in which ‘broken windows’ departs from Jacobs’ conceptualization of the problem. For Jacobs, the perception of order and safety amounts to essentially the same thing as the reality of the situation, that is, for example, based on crime statistics. This is evident in her conflation of a problem such as the streets being overcome by barbarity with the perception of it, which she says ‘comes to much the same thing in the end’ (Jacobs, 1961: 30). ‘Broken windows’ however, following the groundbreaking criminological analyses of that time (Garofalo and Laub, 1978; Lewis and Maxfield, 1980; compare with Wilson, 1969 [1968]), sees it as crucial to separate the fear of crime from actual incidents of crime. ‘Broken windows’ in other words, strives to highlight how perceptions of fear, regardless of whether a city is, or is not, safe, can lead to its deterioration (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 29). It is in this way that Wilson and Kelling can pay heed to the importance of public disorder as the major concern facing citizens—in the same way that Wilson (1969 [1968]) had done some 10 years before. This is why they write that ‘The prospect of a confrontation …’ with disorderly people ‘can be as fear-inducing for defenseless persons as the prospect of meeting an actual rob-ber; indeed, to a defenseless person, the two kinds of confrontation are often indistin-guishable’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 32).

There is another point of departure as well. Wilson and Kelling see the stranger—and in that sense, strangeness also—as a source of concern, because the stranger is dangerous and problematic. The stranger is to be removed from the visibility of the public and con-tact with him or her limited. Jacobs however, is more embracing of the stranger and strangeness (though as I will explain later, within certain limits). Strangeness alone is not dangerous. In fact, she sees the stranger as part and parcel of everyday city life, its




anonymity, as one of its charms. Thus, the stranger is to be embraced and incorporated into the milieu of city life. This crucial difference plays significantly in the ways that both sets of authors come to explore the reclamation of civility as the solution to the urban ills, one pinning its hopes on ‘natural’ policing, and the other on a more organized and institutionalized form.

The reclamation of civility

The fundamental point of departure between Jacobs and Wilson and Kelling revolves around the reclamation of civility. Recall that Jacobs sees civility as an informal means of control. Formal—that is, institutionalized—tactics and interventions are futile and she is very clear about this: ‘No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down’ (Jacobs, 1961: 32). That Jacobs resists bestow-ing to the police this important function is a reflection of two related concerns. The first speaks to her trepidations about institutions and institutionalization, the same issues she raised about planning and planners. Jacobs, therefore, is sceptical that the police can reclaim order and civility. This is especially so given her other concern about the fragile nature of police–citizen relations during the 1950s and early 1960s, which were, if any-thing, far from civilized (Taylor, 2006: 104; Walker, 1984: 83–86). The very effort to restore civility by a group who was accused of being uncivil is an irony that Jacobs was more than mindful of.

Wilson and Kelling (1982: 33) are more than mindful of this fragile relationship, but are of the opinion that it can, and indeed ought to, be repaired. They believe that the reclamation of civility ought not be left solely in the hands of citizens, which is to say that some form of organized and institutionalized intervention is deemed necessary. For Wilson and Kelling, institutionalization itself is not the problem. The problem is that the institutionalization of the police—in the form of professionalization—significantly reor-dered and restructured its focus and mission. Beginning in the early-to-mid-20th-century the police began to shift their focus from order maintenance to crime control, and this had the effect of changing not only the mission of the police, but also the way the police went about their business. What resulted was not only that the police failed to keep order on the streets, but also lost contact with citizens (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 71–107; Kelling and Moore, 1988; Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 33). What Wilson and Kelling (1989: 48) advocate therefore, is a ‘significant redefinition of police work’, one focused on, and attuned to, the needs of the community, where these needs are to be determined and driven by the community, however defined, and not solely by the police. Community policing is lauded as the best model for this task (see however, Walker’s 1984, critique of Wilson and Kelling’s historiography of the police and their practices during the 19th and early-to-mid-20th centuries).

It is true that Wilson and Kelling provide a nuanced analysis for their model of polic-ing, locating the necessity of police resources and practices with the type of community involved and the degree of public disorder in that community. Thus, after posing the question of how a police chief ought to deploy his forces to address problems of disorder, Wilson and Kelling (1982: 36; see also 1989: 52) go on to say that the ‘answer is that nobody knows for certain, and the most prudent course of action would be to try further



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variations … to see more precisely what works in what kinds of neighborhoods’. This statement suggests that community policing itself might not be the answer to order main-tenance, and this would be the case, for example, if a community is sufficiently orga-nized and capable of addressing these issues. In these instances, Wilson and Kelling (1982: 36, emphasis added) write, ‘many aspects of order-maintenance in neighborhoods can probably best be handled in ways that involve the police minimally, if at all’. Yet, not all communities are equipped to address these problems on their own. In these instances, Wilson and Kelling (1982: 36, emphasis added) write: ‘Though citizens can do a great deal, the police are plainly the key to order maintenance’. It is in this way that Wilson and Kelling construct and further solidify the importance of the police in the mainte-nance of order and the reclamation of civility.

What emerges out of Jacobs’ work is the distinction between policing and the police. That is, that matters of policing need not, and perhaps ought not, be left in the hands of the public police, and that other forms of policing, for example, natural surveillance, can work well to reclaim order on the streets. This is a significant departure from the model Wilson and Kelling advocate, one which conflates policing with the police. Jacobs’ model derives directly out of her quest and desire to promote diversity. Yet, her model of natural policing is not as organic as it appears, which is to say that she is not necessarily willing to let anyone ‘police’ conduct in public. Rather, she too has specific ‘public char-acters’ in mind who have an important role to play. To delve further into this, I explore the importance that Jacobs places on diversity, which while on the face of it, appears to depart markedly from the proposals that Wilson and Kelling offer, seems to bear close resemblances upon further examination.

Maintaining health through diversity

The key recommendation that Jacobs offers throughout her work is the promotion of diversity (see, for example, Jacobs, 1961: 143–144; 150–151; 223–231). Jacobs’ starting point is the simple, but often overlooked, premise, that ‘Diversity is natural to big cities’ (1961: 243), and therefore, it only makes sense to foster, rather than stifle, it. The first step in this process is to ensure diversity of land-uses which are supported by a mixture of different material conditions, such as buildings which are old and new, tall and short, in good condition and those that are dilapidated (1961: 150–151). This will promote and enhance a diverse population who lives, works and plays in these spaces. For example, older buildings will demand cheaper rent, thereby allowing those who are otherwise unable to afford high rents to live in the city (1961: 187–199). What is called for, in other words, is diversity of uses and users:

[The] ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they must supplement each other in certain concrete ways. (1961: 14)

Thus, diversity is promoted as the natural remedy to the myriad urban ills. Diversity forms the foundation for Jacobs’ model of reclaiming civility, which is, if anything,




anti-police (in the institutionalized sense), not anti-policing. This is more than a semantic distinction: one speaks to the potential for change through natural, and diverse, condi-tions. The potential for change is said to lie with people, not institutions, especially where people are left free to flourish among differences, which are to be embraced, rather than shunned. The other speaks to contrived efforts—at least from the vantage of nature—to fix problems that themselves are a product of the desire to circumscribe diver-sity (see, for example, the discussion in Kelling and Coles, 1996: 38–69).

Facially then, Jacobs’ offerings depart markedly from those of Wilson and Kelling’s. It is fair to say that ‘broken windows’ has little tolerance for particular ‘problematic’ behaviour, especially when tied to marginalized and indigent groups—this is so regard-less of that fact the reasoning is couched in action-oriented rather than status-oriented language, so that for example, it is not homeless people, per se, who are of concern, but their ‘problematic’ behaviour (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 40; Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 35). Yet, as Bernard Harcourt (2001: 16–20) has argued, the boundaries between ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ are slippery, unclear, and drawn from privileged vantage points which are themselves inherently biased towards, and intolerant of, particular eccentricities. If this is so, then it is also fair to say that ‘broken windows’ fails to locate the importance of diversity in communities, insofar as the vision of diversity that is promoted has a particu-lar look and feel to it.8

While Jacobs wholeheartedly advocates diversity, even her vision of it, I suggest, has a specific feel to it, and is not as diverse as appears at first glance. This should not come as a surprise; in fact, it is a direct product of her thinking, which for example, puts par-ticular restrictions on the creativity of planners (and planning in general), for the lack of boundaries, she believes, is dangerous. Thus, she repeatedly states that diversity is cru-cial to the health of a city, but also suggests that it needs to be tempered with certain checks and balances. In other words, she promotes forms of diversity which are ‘healthy’, rather than call for diversity without restrictions, in the truest sense of that term. It might not be such a far stretch to say, that of the two types of diversity, ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’—as Wilson (1969 [1968]: 461–462) labels them—only the former is to be tolerated and cel-ebrated. Yet, what counts as ‘unsafe’ diversity, and perhaps more importantly, who con-structs it as such, is an issue that Jacobs fails to grapple with, which means that even her vision of diversity can be subjected to the same type of analysis and criticism that ‘bro-ken widows’ was subjected to by Harcourt.

To put this into perspective it is worth returning to the ‘public characters’ that Jacobs sees as important in maintaining intact a civilized public and space. Jacobs (1961: 68–71) argues that the social structure of sidewalk life depends upon the presence of ‘self-appointed public characters’, for example, storekeepers, barkeepers or pastors. The familiar faces of these characters ease the burdens posed by the anonymity of city life. It is precisely these characters who play an important role in enhancing circulation by building trust. ‘A public character’ Jacobs (1961: 68, emphasis in original) states,

is anyone who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character. A public character need have no special talents or wisdom to fulfill his function—although he often does. He just needs to be present, and there



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need be enough of his counterparts. His main qualification is that he is public, that he talks to lots of different people. In this way, news travels that is of sidewalk interest.

The public characters that Jacobs describes are well respected, trusted and perhaps, ‘clean-cut’ individuals, the very persons that ‘broken windows’ both lauds and portrays as victims of public disorder, who are ‘forced’ to take flight to more orderly locales. They are, in other words, important because they perform services that are normalized in everyday life. All that is required for the post of a ‘public character’ is that he or she be ‘public’ and ‘self-appointed’. Yet, particular groups, especially the visibly poor, are never mentioned, and it is difficult to believe that Jacobs would recommend them for such a post. Yet, many of these visibly poor—the homeless for example—would be ideal to play this role for they are more ‘public’ than any of the characters Jacobs mentions. I raise this point only to highlight the fact that the importance Jacobs places on diversity has a par-ticular face, which a priori eliminates particular groups and people. In other words, her vision of diversity has a particular feel and look to it, that draws on and further solidifies the already normalized aspects of ‘respectable’, ‘orderly’ and ‘trustworthy’.

Thus, there are many similarities in Jacobs’ work, especially her vision of diversity, to the ‘broken windows’ theory. This is perhaps difficult to appreciate at first glance because Jacobs has often been portrayed as the saviour of marginalized groups, an outspoken critic of large corporations, and liberal in her political and social values. David Halle (2006: 238) for example, echoes these sentiments when he states that:

The image of … [Jacobs] as a conservative could not survive a basic reading of … [The Death and Life of Great American Cities] and I have long concluded that many of those who cite Jacobs in this way have not read her, or never got beyond a cursory reading of the first chapters on sidewalks.

In stating that the image of Jacobs is ensconced within such a liberal perspective, I am stating that there is a perception that The Death and Life of Great American Cities equates a type of liberalism—individuals left to their own accord—with a successful urban life and space, which is exactly what Halle seeks to remind readers. To an extent this is cor-rect. However, as I have also sought to demonstrate, Jacobs’ work, especially her pre-scriptions for diversity, are filled with particular rigidities (in fact, even according to Halle, who seeks to dispel the conservatism in Jacobs’ work, it would appear that Jacobs’ narrative on sidewalks—an important, if not the most important, part of her book—is somewhat conservative, or at least, can lend itself to such a reading).

This can be further explored by paying attention to Jacobs’ upbringing, which bears heavily on her vision of diversity. According to Herbert Gans, what ‘may have led to … [Jacobs’] celebration of white working class neighborhoods which became the underly-ing theme in her work’ (2006: 213) and ‘blossomed into the urban ideal and the urban policy themes she advocated’ (2006: 214), was her ‘youthful experiences in Scranton [Pennsylvania] and in the West Village’ (2006: 213), especially her ‘romance with, and romantic image of, these neighborhoods’ (2006: 214). For example, the public characters that Jacobs praises, and in particular, the specific face of these characters, is driven heav-ily by these experiences. Thus, while on the one hand Jacobs upholds the virtues of




merchants as important public characters, Gans notes that Jacobs ‘may not have seen that sometimes merchants have to participate in crime in order to survive’ (2006: 214). Equally important in Jacobs’ vision is that she ‘brought a woman’s, and especially a mother’s, point of view’ (Zukin, 2006: 224), which is quite visible in the space she devotes to the assimilation of children in cities (Jacobs, 1961: 74–88). Writing from the point of view of a white, working-class mother means that Jacobs failed to explore other lenses through which to view cities. One example is the use of a hyperbole—‘barbarism’—to describe the deterioration or absence of civility in public spaces, a usage that was, perhaps, driven by her concerns as a mother.9 Thus, it was precisely these experiences and images which led to the celebration of particular types of neighbourhoods, and by extension diversity, at the expense of others.

Another example can be seen in the activist work she championed between the late 1960s until her death in the mid-2000s in Toronto, which she had called home since 1968. Her efforts led to many significant changes including halting the proposed Spadina Expressway—which would have built a highway through many small neighbourhoods—as well as successfully objecting to many big-scale developments such as high rise con-dominiums. It is true that in these efforts Jacobs was fully on the side of the everyday person, focusing her criticisms against large corporations. It is also true however, that in many instances, her visions were somewhat narrow-minded, because in focusing her attention so parochially, she failed to appreciate how some of these projects would ben-efit the city as a whole. Thus, while on many an occasion she spoke out against NIMBYism (Not in My Back Yard), she was also in some ways not just sympathetic towards these plights, but fully in support of them, as when she once stated that: ‘It’s true that people don’t want certain things in their backyard. But they’re usually right’ (Toronto Star, 2005: A1). Ideas such as these, I suggest, are what leads many to see the conservatism in Jacobs’ work, which also explains why many so-called progressive conservatives, including the former Toronto Mayor David Crombie, ‘cherished her so’, or why many of her ideas can be ‘found in any progressive conservative handbook’ (Toronto Star, 2006: B5). It is these rigidities in Jacobs’ work, I am suggesting, that align it closely with the visions espoused in the ‘broken windows’ theory. This, as I have sought to demonstrate here, should not come as a surprise, given the many similarities between the two texts.10

Conclusion

In this article I have suggested that Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a significant text that is important to understanding the history of the ‘broken win-dows’ theory. In particular, I have shown that the concern about civility and what its absence or deterioration would mean to the vitality and health of urban life, was the focal concern for both sets of writers and formed the starting point of their analyses. Unsurprisingly, the reclamation of civility weighs heavily on the minds of both sets of writers, and it is here that important points of departure in their respective normative paradigms are readily visible. One locates the potential for change in, and through, diversity—that differences are to be embraced and incorporated rather than excluded. Diversity thus serves as the natural solution to the urban ills. The other locates change within institutionalized and organized forms of policing, that is, the public police; and



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while there is an acknowledgement that this mandate is to be driven by the community, the onus and responsibility, it would appear, is said to lie with the police. Specifically then, the two part ways in that where one sees diversity as a potential solution, the other sees it as one possible reason that order and civility have been jeopardized. However, often overlooked is the fact that there are particular rigidities that encompass Jacobs’ prescriptions. One important example is the closely guarded vision of diversity which lauds white working-class neighbourhoods at the expense of others as the panacea for urban ills. It is precisely these visions that align Jacobs’ work with the ethos of ‘broken windows’. In many ways, this not surprising given the influence and inspiration that her work had on at least one author of the ‘broken windows’ theory, the end result being that ‘broken windows’ bears important (dis)connections and (dis)similarities to Jacobs’ semi-nal work. These (dis)connections and (dis)similarities, as I have sought to demonstrate here, are important to understanding the production and the history of criminological thought.

Notes

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Discussions with Joe Hermer and Mariana Valverde were invaluable in working through many of the ideas found here. I am grateful to Nicholas Blomley, Melanie Knight, three anonymous reviewers and Professor Simon Cole, the Editor-in-Chief of Theoretical Criminology, for provid-ing very helpful comments and suggestions as to how this article can be improved. Last, though certainly not least, I am extremely grateful to Professor George Kelling who was generous enough to read and comment on this article and also respond to additional queries that I posed to him, this especially so given that I was not familiar to him, and he was kind enough to respond to an e-mail that I had addressed to him.

1. I say re-emerged because in many ways these were not ‘new’ problems. One need only turn to history to find similar concerns about urban spaces.

2. This is also true of Kelling, who either devotes a sentence or two to Jacobs’ work without exploring the linkages, connections and points of departure (Kelling, 1997–1998: 14, 2001: 125; Kelling and Coles, 1996: 8–9, 14–15, 135–136; Sousa and Kelling, 2006: 79), or makes no mention of her or her work, despite closely working with her ideas (Kelling, 1987: 92).

3. A minor ‘methodological’ note is in order. This article benefited immensely from the per-spectives and comments of Professor George Kelling, many of which have found their way into the article. For the sake of simplicity, I refrain from systematically referencing these comments, and this is especially so when I quote him directly. Thus, whenever a quotation of Kelling is not followed with a reference, it should be inferred that this is in reference to the comments that he provided me with.

4. This is, albeit, a rather crude summary, though this initial foray is merely meant to high-light the key tenets of the theory. These are fully developed in what follows. It is crucial to stress that the model developed in ‘broken windows’ is hypothetical and exploratory in nature, and was never meant to be read as ‘fact’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 31–32, 34). In fact, when originally formulating these ideas, both Wilson and Kelling were quite cautious in their endeavour to connect disorder with crime. As Kelling explains: ‘When Wilson and I extended the linkages from disorder to fear of crime to breakdown of neighborhood control to serious crime, we were aware that we were challenging such assumptions [that crime was




caused primarily by macro-social problems] and at one point we discussed how strongly we wanted to put forward the disorder–crime linkage.’ And for that reason, he further opines: ‘The disorder–crime linkage of broken windows was a hypothesis about which I remained very uncertain.’

5. In the wake of ‘broken windows’ there has been a tendency to conflate public disorder, both social and physical (Skogan, 1990: 4) with the term ‘incivilities’ (see, for example, Hope and Hough, 1988; Robinson et al., 2003; Taylor, 2001: 5–6, Taylor, 2006; Taylor and Hale, 1986). I however, read ‘broken windows’ as stating that the problem of public disorder, especially in its social manifestations, is a product of the deterioration of civility, and therefore, see fit not to conflate the two (see Hunter, 1978). When viewed along with other writings which pre-dated ‘broken windows’ (for example, Banfield, 1974 [1970]; Hunter, 1978; Jacobs, 1961; Wilson, 1969 [1968]; Zimbardo, 1970 [1969]), this appears to be a fair claim to make. In fact, a close reading of the article shows that the two terms—‘disorderliness’ and ‘incivility’—are used separately and meant to capture two different things (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 32; compare with Taylor, 2001: ch. 3, for a historical discussion of these terms and their subse-quent development).

6. Whether Jacobs is overplaying and exaggerating the lack of contact between strangers is an important point to consider. For example, Louis Wirth (1938) had highlighted key charac-teristics that were part and parcel of city life, including but not limited to, anonymity, which would mean that the lack of contact among strangers is a ‘fact’ of city life. Equally, for many, large crowds can be a source of trepidation, and many tend to avoid large gatherings for this very reason.

7. This line of reasoning was later elaborated by Oscar Newman (1972), whose ‘defensible space’ has been influential in crime prevention tactics. Newman argues that crime can be prevented through the architectural design of (residential) buildings—examples include: accounting for the height of buildings; ensuring sufficient lighting; having buildings face one another; and clearly demarcating public from private spaces, all of which can be found in Jacobs’ (1961: 35, 129) work. Though not fully pertinent to the discussion here, it is important to note that there are important points of departure as well. In particular, while Jacobs sees fit to incorporate the stranger into city life, Newman (like ‘broken windows’) sees the stranger as a source of concern, often requiring exclusion (see, Hillier, 2004: 31–32; see also Currie, 1988, who distinguishes between the two crime prevention tactics, based on these models). Another example of the influence of Jacobs’ work is the birth of ‘environmental criminology’ (see, for example, Brantingham and Brantingham, 1981: 7–26).

8. One reviewer commented that this passage (and the general tone of this section) is not ‘com-pletely fair to “broken windows,” its original authors, or its current researchers’. According to the reviewer, the original article was deeply concerned with the issue of diversity and to demonstrate this fact, the reviewer alerted me to a passage in the original article which reads as follows:

[H]ow do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure … that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry? (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 35)

This passage (and the passages immediately before this—which I have not reproduced here), does show a commitment to diversity, and the reviewer is right to point this out. However, I am not making the claim that Wilson and Kelling are uncommitted to diversity; I am only suggesting that this appears to be a weak commitment. It is worthwhile mentioning Wilson and Kelling’s (1982: 35, emphasis in original)



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immediate follow-up to the above quotation (which, in fairness to the reviewer, is also men-tioned in the comments provided) which reads as follows:

We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer, except to hope that by their selection, training and supervi-sion, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority.

This however, appears to be more of an excuse rather than a deep-seated commitment to safeguard diversity. Even if there is no satisfactory answer to this difficult question, it is still rather alarming that Wilson and Kelling see fit to leave the resolution of this important issue to the police, an institution (and its practices) that was said to be in need of serious overhaul and reform, even according to Wilson and Kelling themselves. For this reason, whatever the com-mitment Wilson and Kelling appear to have towards diversity, I read as a weak commitment.

9. It is worthwhile comparing Jacobs’ use of the term ‘barbarism’ with that of Cesare Lombroso’s (1968 [1899]: 43–58), who warns that it deadens the moral senses. Both narratives hint at the decline of humankind and their surroundings.

10. One reviewer as well as George Kelling were critical that I was dis(connecting) The Death and Life of Great American Cities and ‘broken windows’ on, among other aspects, political lines, that is, between liberalism and conservatism. As Kelling put it to me: ‘is order and the demand for order really a liberal/conservative issue?’ He twice cautioned me of the futility of such a characterization or distinction, at one point writing, that: ‘Couching it … [as such] needlessly confuses a lot of issues’ given that the ‘world is far more complicated’ than this distinction would suggest. With the most respect however, I am unable to be in full agreement with his propositions. It is true that the demand or quest for order is not, or at least, need not be, a liberal and conservative issue, in that all of us, regardless of our ideological position, desire some sort of order. Yet, the very notions of order (and disorder), as I have suggested above, are fluid, ambiguous and only meaningful depending on the lens from which they are viewed, so that what I envision as order might not be what others have in mind (see, for example, Harcourt, 2001: 16–20). In other words, the meaningfulness of terms such as order and disorder are derived from their constitution, and in this case, they are constituted by myriad factors, one being the social and political ideologies, which, in addition to their constitutive effect, also play a role in shaping particular responses. For these reasons, while I do not claim that the terms order and disorder are themselves a priori liberal or conservative, it is this very distinction that plays a role in both the constitution of these terms and the tactics that are deployed in response to particular problems, which ironically, is more than evident when exploring the particular types of solutions that are promoted, and others castigated, in ‘fighting’ public disorder (for example, ‘law and order’ versus ‘welfarism’).

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Prashan Ranasinghe is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa. His research interests are in the sociology of law, focusing specifically on the relation between law and space.



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