Environment & Urbanization

World leading environmental and urban studies journal

Community-Based Urban Violence Prevention: Innovative Approaches in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Arab Region

Author(s): 
Kosta Mathéy, Silvia Matuk (editors)

Publisher: 
Transcript Verlag

Year: 
2015

As the process of urbanization across Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Central Asia unfolds, violence and the fear of violence are gaining currency as one of the major threats of urban life and quality of life. Acknowledging the contemporary situation of violence in the urban realm, the editors invited contributors to this anthology to critically reflect on the relationship between urban growth and the dramatic increase in the levels of urban violence and crime in urban centres across the world.   

The edited collection of 15 case studies shows the need for more holistic understandings that account for the multifaceted and interrelated nature of (urban) violence. Throughout each of the cases, the multiple factors that shape the different forms of urban violence are analyzed – e.g. situational, social and structural; economic, social and political; and perpetrators and victims. There is also a discussion of violence prevention strategies in the fields of urban design, development and planning. 

The book includes first-hand accounts on innovative experiences that challenge reductionist assumptions such as the linear correlation between poverty and violence – as the Nicaraguan case study shows.  Or that religion, traditions and spiritualities do not have a role to play in the reproduction of urban order in a modern, secular urban life – as the intertwining Muharram and Ganpati processions in the slum of Dharavi (Mumbai) as well as the “enchanted urbanism” of  Johannesburg’s case oppose.   

If urban design, development and planning are meant to be part of the equation to tackle urban violence, it is suggested that more integrated, transectoral and multi-level approaches be conceived in order to transcend the exclusive focus on situational violence, its physicality, and sectoral prevention strategies that only promote improvements to the built environment. There is consensus among the authors that social and institutional factors should be considered in the planning of urban centres to deal with high or increasing rates of violence and crime. The social factors include a recognition of the most vulnerable groups disproportionately represented in violence and crime statistics; the institutional factors include the role of security and justice institutions as well as religion, traditions and spiritualities. These are factors that should be considered. In line with this broader perspective, community-based approaches can offer an alternative for urban violence prevention.

The role of youths, not only as perpetrators or main targets of urban violence but mainly as key actors in this participatory governance prevention approach, gets a separate section of the book. The genesis and expansion of maras in the Northern Triangle in Central America and the less well documented experience of youths in refugee camps are among the cases analyzed.

Urban violence is a growing concern, although still not well understood. This edited collection, illustrated by photographs that depict the context-specific nature of the urban violence, is a novel contribution on “the entire mosaic of violence-free urban and social development strategies”.          

 

Further reading:  Those who are interested in this topic can also consult the two special issues of Environment and Urbanization on this topic:

http://eau.sagepub.com/content/26/2.toc

http://eau.sagepub.com/content/16/2.toc

 

Book note prepared by María Evangelina Filippi

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