Towards Safe City Centres?

Book excerpt: Examining the rising interest in quality-of-life offences, anti-social behaviour and incivilities in urban public spaces, this study explores the rising importance of policing, crime control and community safety policies in the context of the ongoing urban restructuring in old-industrial cities. This is achieved through an extensive exploration into the making and remaking of urban spaces in the city of Glasgow. In so doing, this book puts forward a strong and innovative theoretical argument. Framed in a critical Marxist perspective that draws on debates within German-speaking critical theory and Marxism, this study argues for the centrality of human social praxis in our understanding of contemporary cities. It engages with questions over the production of social space, a (fragmented) social totality and human agency, which so far have only received limited attention in Anglo-American debates.