Urban Geography Plenary Lecture—Colored Rabbits, Dangerous Trees, and Public Sitting

Sidewalks, Police, and the City

Bibliographic Data

ID11670251
AuthorsNicholas Blomley (0000-0002-6882-9208, Simon Fraser University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume33
Issue7
Pages917-935
Publication date2012-09-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0272-3638 • E-ISSN: 1938-2847
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2747/0272-3638.33.7.917
OpenAlexW2065646663
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited30

Urban geographers would argue that cities are distinct spaces that need to be treated on their own terms. Yet I fear that we have not given the specificity of urban law its due. My aim is to give one crucial, yet easily overlooked urban legal practice, that of "police," more careful attention. By "police" I mean "the regulation of the internal life of a community to promote general welfare and the condition of good order" (Neocleous, 2000, p. 1). I focus on the sidewalk as a particular police space. I also wish to demonstrate the distinctiveness of police, particularly when compared with rights-based understandings of public space. Yet the two frequently collide, as we can see with reference to a constitutional challenge to a sit/lie ordinance in Seattle. Police won, as it usually does. But to accuse police of an assault upon rights is, in several senses, beside the point, for police operates in a different register. Police thus must be understood on its own terms and not reduced to other governmental logics

Business · Criminology · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Order (exchange · Political science · Public order · Public space · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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