scholarly journals Neue Sicherheitsstrukturen im »neuen« Berlin

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (110) ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Eick
Keyword(s):  
Homeless People ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Private Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
Private Control ◽  
Big Cities

In Berlin (and other big cities) private security agencies are growing rapidly. The expansion of their activity-fields, especially in public spaces, tends to transform the state monopol of legal power in a »private public partnership«. As a consequence public spaces get more and more under private control. Unwelcome groups like poor or homeless people are excluded from using these places.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

Complaint-Oriented “Services”: Shelters as Tools for Criminalizing Homelessness

2021 ◽  
Vol 693 (1) ◽  
pp. 264-283
Author(s):  
Chris Herring
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
Public Health Initiatives

This article argues that the expansion of shelter and welfare provisions for the homeless can lead to increased criminalization of homeless people in public spaces. First, I document how repression of people experiencing homelessness by the police in San Francisco neighborhoods increased immediately after the opening of new shelters. Second, I reveal how shelter beds are used as a privileged tool of the police to arrest, cite, and confiscate property of the unhoused, albeit in the guise of sanitary and public health initiatives. I conclude by considering how shelters increasingly function as complaint-oriented “services,” aimed at addressing the interests of residents, businesses, and politicians, rather than the needs of those unhoused.

The State Policy towards the Homeless in Moldova between the ‘Left Hand’ and the ‘Right Hand’. The Case of Chișinău Shelter

Südosteuropa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-195
Author(s):  
Petru Negură
Keyword(s):  
Homeless People ◽  
Severe Disabilities ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
Binary Approach ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract The Centre for the Homeless in Chișinău embodies on a small scale the recent evolution of state policies towards the homeless in Moldova (a post-Soviet state). This institution applies the binary approach of the state, namely the ‘left hand’ and the ‘right hand’, towards marginalised people. On the one hand, the institution provides accommodation, food, and primary social, legal assistance and medical care. On the other hand, the Shelter personnel impose a series of disciplinary constraints over the users. The Shelter also operates a differentiation of the users according to two categories: the ‘recoverable’ and those deemed ‘irrecoverable’ (persons with severe disabilities, people with addictions). The personnel representing the ‘left hand’ (or ‘soft-line’) regularly negotiate with the employees representing the ‘right hand’ (‘hard-line’) of the institution to promote a milder and a more humanistic approach towards the users. This article relies on multi-method research including descriptive statistical analysis with biographical records of 810 subjects, a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with homeless people (N = 65), people at risk of homelessness (N = 5), professionals (N = 20) and one ethnography of the Shelter.

Theorizing Regulation-in-City for Homeless People’s Subaltern Strategy and Informality: Societalization, Metabolism, and Classes With(out) Housing

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110205
Author(s):  
Mahito Hayashi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Housing Consumption ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Critical Urban Theory

This paper aims to expand critical urban theory and spatialized political economy through developing a new, broad-based theoretical explanation of homelessness and the informal housing of the deprived in public spaces. After reviewing an important debate in geography, it systematicallyreasserts the relevance of class-related concepts in urban studies and, mobilizing post-determinist notions, it shows how a class-driven theory can inform the emergence of appropriating/differentiating/reconciliating agency from the material bedrock of urban metabolism and its society-integrating effect (societalization). The author weaves an urban diagnostic web of concepts by situating city-dwellers—classes with(out) housing—at the material level of metabolism and then in the sociopolitical dynamic of regulation, finding in the two realms urban class relations (enlisted within societalization) and agency formation (for reregulation, subaltern strategies, and potential rapprochement). The housing classes are retheorized as a composite category of hegemonic dwellers who enjoy housing consumption and whose metabolism thus appears as the normative consumption of public/private spaces. Homeless people are understood as a subaltern class who lacks housing consumption and whose metabolism can produce “housing” out of public spaces, in opposition to a hegemonic urban form practiced by the housing classes. These urban class relations breed homeless–housed divides and homeless regulation, and yet allow for agency’s creative appropriation/differentiation/reconciliation. This paper avoids crude dichotomy, but it argues that critical urban theory can productively use this way of theorization for examining post-determinist urban lifeworlds in relation to the relative fixity of urban form, metabolic circuits, and class relations.

scholarly journals Smart air purifier suitable for small public spaces

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 01015
Author(s):  
Pawel Idziak ◽  
Michal Gojtowski
Keyword(s):  
Pressure Drop ◽  
Physical Model ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Pm 2.5 ◽  
Air Purifier ◽  
Arduino Uno

The article presents the concept and implemented, functional physical model of a mobile air purifier for small public spaces or apartments. The purifier is a compact, controlled by microcontroller of the Arduino UNO series. The model is equipped with a set of sensors allowing to determine the content of PM 2.5 contaminants. After exceeding the adopted threshold in the software, the system automatically starts the process of air filtering. The following factors are measured: solid contamination content, humidity and air temperature as well as pressure drop on built-in filters. The purifier absorbs solid pollutants and reduces VOC pollutants. The system has been equipped with a screen informing the user about air parameters and the state of the filter contamination.

scholarly journals Public Spaces Protection Orders: a critical policy analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Heap ◽  
Jill Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Local Council ◽  
Protection Orders ◽  
Starting Point

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically appraise the Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) policy that was introduced by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014). Within a designated area assigned by the local council, PSPOs can prohibit or require specific behaviours to improve the quality of life for people inhabiting that space. Those who do not comply face a fixed penalty notice of £100 or a fine of £1,000 on summary conviction. However, the practical and theoretical impact associated with the development of these powers has yet to be fully explored. Design/methodology/approach Using Bannister and O’Sullivan’s (2013) discussion of civility and anti-social behaviour policy as a starting point, the authors show how PSPOs could create new frontiers in exclusion, intolerance and criminalisation, as PSPOs enable the prohibition of any type of behaviour perceived to negatively affect the quality of life. Findings Local councils in England and Wales now have unlimited and unregulated powers to control public spaces. The authors suggest that this has the potential to produce localised tolerance thresholds and civility agendas that currently target and further marginalise vulnerable people, and the authors highlight street sleeping homeless people as one such group. Originality/value There has been little academic debate on this topic. This paper raises a number of original, conceptual questions that provide an analytical framework for future empirical research. The authors also use original data from Freedom of Information requests to contextualise the discussions.

Rethinking Homeless People’s Punishments

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
Terry Skolnik
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
The State ◽  
Property Right ◽  
Public Property

This article argues that we should rethink homeless people’s punishments for violating quality-of-life ordinances. Those ordinances prohibit acts that are deemed to constitute urban nuisances—urban camping, public urination, and sleeping on sidewalks among them. Violating quality-of-life ordinances can result in expensive fines, administrative fees, and civil consequences for unpaid fines. In line with other scholars’ work, this article demonstrates how our current punishment scheme entrenches individuals in homelessness and operates like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lacking a private property right and stuck in a cycle of homelessness, homeless people will continue to alleviate their needs on public property and be subject to further coercion and punishment. Homeless people’s punishments for violating quality-of-life offenses are also objectionable because they violate three types of proportionality constraints: the gravity of the prohibited conduct, the homeless person’s moral blameworthiness, and their personal situation. This article proposes an alternate punishment scheme that minimizes the prospect of entrenchment in homelessness and remedies those three proportionality concerns. It argues that the state should adopt a day-fine model for financial penalties, implement criminal justice debt absolution frameworks, and rethink the civil and criminal consequences associated with unpaid fines. A more proportional punishment scheme is neither a solution to the reality of homelessness nor a substitute for the state’s responsibility to ensure better access to housing. However, this article’s proposals can mitigate the gravest consequences associated with homeless people’s punishments, prevent entrenchment in homelessness, and ensure homeless people are treated with greater respect.

SIGNIFICANCE AND PECULIARITIES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

2019 ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Žemčiugov
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Fundamental Values

The meaning of the Constitution is significant in our society life given it is the supreme law of the country, regulating the most important relations between the Human Being, the Society and the State. This can be define as an agreement of the society, coordinating different interests. Therefore, in the article, the significance of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania as well as its peculiarities are analysed. The peculiarities of the Constitution revealed through its mandatory nature for all the entities of the legal relationship, through its stability, the supreme legal power, consistency, consolidation of the fundamental values, etc.

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