Concentration of Urban Violence in Fortaleza and Strategies for Crime Prevention

Despite the continued prevalence of violence in Latin America, there is a relative dearth of research investigating both spatial patterns of violent crimes and the effectiveness of evidence-based crime prevention policies in Brazil. This study aims to address this gap in extant knowledge by creating a Spatial Violence Index and a Restrictive Ambient Index to investigate the spatial dynamics of violent crimes and urban vulnerabilities in Fortaleza. Both exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial regression models were employed to visualize the associative patterns and measure the correlation between the two indexes. The results demonstrate how locations characterized by high levels of violence are spatially correlated with more vulnerable locations in terms of both socio-economic-demographics and urban disorder. Overall, the study identified 124 vulnerable micro-territories that would benefit from the allocation of resources in an effort to reduce violence in the city by enhancing the efficiency of policing and prevention strategies.

Urbanization and Development of Market Spaces in Bafoussam, West Cameroon

Cameroon, like the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, is characterized by rapid urbanization. At the same time, the proliferation of commercial spaces continues to grow because they fulfill a crucial economic and social function. Their development leads to an explosion in the number of traders making the trading infrastructure insufficient. Wholesalers, retailers, lifeguards and other hawkers struggle to occupy spaces while local elected officials struggle to develop and organize them. The objective of this article is to describe the relationship between urbanization and the organization of commercial spaces. The hypothesis put forward poses that urbanization and underemployment lead to their saturation and overflow. To demonstrate this, a survey was conducted among 435 traders, 7 interviews were conducted with resource persons to whom observations were added. Statistical processing and data analysis made it possible to understand that the urban disorder in Bafoussam reveals the lack of infrastructure that can overwhelm traders. The operations of construction and rehabilitation of markets set up in a mode of regulation of the merchant space by the CTDs have not been able to solve the problem. This results in anti-social behavior, poor infrastructure maintenance and the poor image of retail spaces.

From Black Power to Broken Windows: Liberal Philanthropy and the Carceral State

During the 1960s, the Ford Foundation was one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States. This article examines the shifting strategies which Ford deployed in an attempt to tackle urban disorder in U.S. cities between 1965 and 1982. From 1966 to 1969, Ford engaged in a series of experimental projects which sought to dampen unrest through “community action” and grassroots mobilization, many of which required working with Black Power organizations. Yet, after this generated considerable political controversy, the foundation shifted toward funding liberal police reform, establishing the Police Foundation in 1970, a Washington-based organization whose research provided the intellectual underpinning for “Broken Windows” policing. Studying the Ford Foundation’s programming during this period can illuminate the understudied contribution of liberal philanthropy to the rise of the carceral state, as well as the connections between the grassroots antipoverty efforts of the 1960s and the punitive turn of the 1970s.

Urban Planning Challenges and Prospects in Nkambe Town, Northwest Region of Cameroon

For over three decades or so, urbanisation and urban development alongside urban planning have become a cardinal issue to urban dwellers, government institutions and professionals in the developed and developing countries. It is in this regard that this paper examines urban planning challenges and prospects in Nkambe town. The growing population of Nkambe like in other emerging Cameroonian towns suffers from the problem of socio-economic and environmental problems and need adequate urban spatial planning. Field surveys, observations, interview with the administration, questionnaire administration, interviews and on-the-spot appraisals constituted the main data sources. Three focus group discussions were carried out which was complemented by secondary sources. The results indicated that the driving forces of urban disorder were population increase manifested through inadequate enforcement of its plan, non-respect of building codes, poverty and limited houses with potable drinking water, business conflicts, inadequate health facilities, and increasing crime waves. The study recommended that there is a need for a change of mentality of the Nkambe man towards an awareness that the town has its carrying capacity and when overstretched could lead to devastating respond in an undesirable manner probably in future.

Urban overspill and its upshot to the Bafoussam Emergent Metropolis in Cameroon

Unbridled urban sprawl in Sub-Saharan African cities reflects an infirmity that warrants both vaccination and treatment to curb urban disorder and its costs. This article divulges that rapid population growth, spatial expansion and economic activities are responsible for the urban overspill and its upshot in Bafoussam. Unplanned settlement from the rapid growing population has led to the development of slumps and reduction of arable land. A multi-spectral Landsat satellite imagery of 1988, 2001 and 2016 was used to determine the spatial expansion of the town over a period of 30 years. Field observation and interview sessions were done to have information on the proliferation of economic activities to the expansion of the town. An in-depth secondary data collection was done to gather information on the rate of population growth of Bafoussam. The data was processed to generate maps through the ArcGIS 10.4 and Adobe Illustrator CS soft wares and tables through SPSS 17 for results and analyses. Results from findings propound a significant increase in the built-up area of Bafoussam of 19.34% in 1988, 50.30% in 2001 and 79.41% in 2016. This increase was accompanied by a drop in the vegetation of 78.64% in 1988, 48.50% in 2001 and 20.07% in 2016. The built-up increase was provoked by a persistent rise in the population of the city from 62, 239 inhabitants in 1976 to 112,681 in 1987 and 282,800 in 2010. Industrial and commercial activities developed in the course of the twin increase and unfortunately with no control triggered urban disorder. This article advocates for a mandatory implementation of the urban norms in Cameroon to liberate Bafoussam from the drowning overspill syndrome plaguing Sub-Saharan cities.

Dissecting Disorder Perceptions: Neighborhood Structure and the Moderating Role of Interethnic Contact and Xenophobic Attitudes

Although urban disorder has played a central role in neighborhood research, its impact may have been overstated in studies relying on the subjective perception of survey respondents only. Research on the “perception bias”—defined as the divergence between respondents’ subjective assessments and systematic observations of disorder—has revealed the ambiguous nature of disorder and opened a door to the analysis of the social construction of this environmental cognition. Using survey and observational data from 140 small neighborhoods in two German cities, we advance this research by focusing on the moderating role of residents’ interethnic contacts and attitudes. The results show that the effects of neighborhood minority concentration on the perception bias are conditional on the residents’ interethnic contacts and xenophobic attitudes. These findings highlight the subjectivity of disorder perceptions and caution against a naive understanding of Broken Windows theory.

Perspectives on the Militarization of Public Security in Contemporary Brazil

Brazil still has not fully accomplished procedural democracy, despite being a formal democracy funded on a federal constitution and on an organized judicial system. The country has not been able to foster the principles of justice, peace, development, and equity for most of the population, and the state apparatus is restricted regarding social control, transparency, and effectiveness of public policies. This scenario resulted in the rise of violence, criminality, organized crime, and urban disorder, which has led to the militarization of public security both with the improvement of the military police’s structure and with the presence of the armed forces performing public security activities. This process of militarization has increased in the last two years, and for the first time since 1985, the military managed to ascend to the most powerful positions in the Brazilian government. This article discusses the militarization of public security in Brazil, pointing to the risks of a new and enduring process of militarization of Brazilian society, which still suffers from limited rights and lack of constitutional guarantees. Brasil aún no ha alcanzado del todo la democracia procedimental, a pesar de ser una democracia formal fundada en una constitución federal y en un sistema judicial organizado. El país no ha sido capaz de fomentar los principios de justicia, paz, desarrollo e igualdad para la mayoría de la población, y el aparato estatal está limitado respecto al control social, la transparencia y la eficacia de las políticas públicas. Este panorama resultó en el aumento de la violencia, el crimen, el crimen organizado y el desorden urbano, lo cual ha llevado a la militarización de la seguridad pública, tanto con la mejora de la estructura de la policía militar como con la presencia de las fuerzas armadas en actividades de seguridad pública. El proceso de militarización ha aumentado en los dos últimos años, y, por primera vez desde 1985, los militares consiguieron alcanzar los puestos de poder más importantes en el gobierno de Brasil. El artículo se ocupa de la militarización de la seguridad pública en Brasil, apuntando a los peligros de un nuevo y duradero proceso de militarización de la sociedad brasileña, la cual aún sufre de derechos limitados y de una falta de garantías constitucionales.

Policing Reality: Urban Disorder, Failure, and Expert Undoings

This article intervenes in discussions about the circulation of policing knowledge and the politics of expertise. As part of a broader conversation about transnational reconfigurations of state power, critical scholars have drawn attention to the influence of global policing “models” and “private” experts in shaping policy. They show how such figures and forms of knowhow symbolically enforce urban order and dispossess marginalized communities under conditions of neoliberal crisis. While incisive, these approaches can unduly portray expert authority as boundless and unassailable. This article argues that a sustained theoretical engagement with questions about controversies and failure opens up fruitful avenues to unsettle the perceived smoothness, inevitability, and omnipotence of experts in relation to politics and governing. Drawing on insights from actor-network theory (ANT), it situates deference to global experts as interventions that seek to enact and police the terms of “reality” concerning urban order. This approach allows us to better understand how such interventions work but also how they misfire and come undone. These claims are developed through a close reading of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's attempt to solicit policy advice from renowned global “supercop” William Bratton in the aftermath of the 2011 England riots.