Ordering the city: land use, policing, and the restoration of urban America

摘要

In this new history of land use and policing, law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett examines how cities in the USA are 'ordered' not just by law enforcement but also by less-often considered zoning laws. Garnett explores the intersections between policing and zoning by testing two key perspectives on 'ordering the city', namely Jane Jacobs' advocacy of mixed use, and James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling's 'broken windows' concept. As readers may already know, Jacobs contended that in mixed-use neighbourhoods like Greenwich Village in New York City, shopkeepers, parents, and others kept eyes on the street and hence kept it safe. Wilson and Kelling, meanwhile, posited that if a neighbourhood looked like no one cared about it - if the window stayed broken - it would increasingly attract criminals, because they would realize nobody cared. Garnett amply documents her central argument that both the mixed-use and broken-windows arguments contain kernels of truth but not the whole story, and she concludes with some demonstrably promising policy lessons for making our cities safer and more economically viable.