Social & Cultural Geography

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Scary cities: urban geographies of fear, difference

and belonging

Marcia R. England & Stephanie Simon

To cite this article: Marcia R. England & Stephanie Simon (2010) Scary cities: urban
geographies of fear, difference and belonging, Social & Cultural Geography, 11:3, 201-207, DOI:
10.1080/14649361003650722

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Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 11, No. 3, May 2010

Editorial

Scary cities: urban geographies of fear, difference

and belonging

Marcia R. England1 & Stephanie Simon2

1
Department of Geography, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA,
m.england@muohio.edu and 2Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
40506, USA

Introduction affective spatialities amongst geographers.

The city can evoke a multitude of images
ranging from skyscrapers to crowds, from
crime to pollution. These images can affect our
everyday geographies and our interactions
with the city. We often choose our daily paths
(to work, to home, to school) based on our
mental maps and urban understandings.
Whether we live urban, suburban, exurban
or rural lives, we understand the urban based
on a composite of images and experiences.
Some of these are negative, some of them
positive.
This Special Issue results from a series of
sessions on ‘Scary Cities’ organized for the
2008 meeting of the Association for American
Geographers held in Boston, Massachusetts.
We initially became interested in organizing
these sessions based on a common interest in
fear and/in urban spaces and a desire to
explore these connections in the context
of burgeoning interests in emotional and
Our three sessions focused on ‘Fear and public
space,’ ‘Fear of the Other,’ and Fear and
(in)security.’ The papers of all three sessions
addressed ‘scary’ cities in diverse ways, and we
felt that they presented a glimpse into an
important aspect of urban geography—that of
the range of fears experienced and produced
in/through the city that are as diverse and
multiple as the persons and spaces that
compose the urban fabric. We decided that
this subject needed further exploration and
hence, this Special Issue was created.
Connections between fear and the city are
certainly not new. Indeed, others before us
have explored this relationship. Taking
up where the 2001 Urban Studies Special
Issue on ‘Fear and the City’ and the 2003
Capital and Class Special Issue on ‘The
Geographies and Politics of Fear’ left off, we
explore the issue of fear and the city from a
slightly different perspective. Whereas these
issues focused on fear of crime and the politics

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/10/030201-7 q 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14649361003650722
202 Marcia R. England & Stephanie Simon
of fear, this issue looks at a variety of fears
(economic, political, social, and cultural). The
articles within this Special Issue address fears
associated with one’s identity and the fears
associated with the identity of others.
Drawing as they do from case studies that
span the globe—from Toronto, Seattle, Bel-
gium, to Dubai—the articles within this
Special Issue take on the theme of ‘Scary
Cities,’ but just what constitutes a scary city is
shown to be contingent upon a range of
factors. Following Shirlow and Pain’s (2003:
18) discussion of fear of crime, we similarly
believe that we must ‘begin from the under-
standing that fear is not known, nor wholly
measurable . . . [it] is diverse, dynamic and
open to interpretation.’ With cities ranging
from Seattle to Dubai, the fear factor is often
based on one’s identity—whether it be based
on race, class, ethnicity, or gender—though,
importantly, the relationship between identity
and fears is not a precise cocktail that can be
simply parsed and located (see Smith in this
issue). For decades, urban and feminist
geographers have been contemplating the
relationships between social markers and the
city. These markers affect mobility, housing
access, employment and general feelings of
belonging within the city. It is with these social
effects that this issue is concerned.
Geographers have shown repeatedly how
race, gender and sexuality become markers in
the construction of the ideal urban citizen.
Racialized and gendered bodies have histori-
cally not been allowed to be part of the
citizenry, nor has race or gender been included
or recognized as a characteristic of the ideal
citizen (Domosh and Seager 2001; Doyle
1994; Marston 1995; Massey 1994; McDo-
well 1999; Rose 1993; Staeheli 1996; Warner
2002; Wilson 1998). Additionally, geogra-
phers have shown how other social groups
have experienced fear or have been the targets
of fear. Social & Cultural Geography has been
an outlet for such work. For example,
Johnsen, Cloke, and May (2005) explore
how day centers, which provide much-needed
services for homeless people are spaces or care
or of fear. Mei-Po Kwan (2008) illuminates
how racism, rooted in fear, affects the lives of
Muslim women in a post-9/11 USA. In their
study of how fear affects mobility and use of
public space, Sandberg and Tollefsen (2010)
analyze gender differences in reactions to the
Haga Man, a serial rapist in Sweden.
Urban geographies of fear
Feminist geographers have examined geogra-
phies of fear for decades, but increasingly
urban scholars are noting how fear shapes
cities and those within them (Davis 1992,
1999; Hubbard 2003; Pain 1997, 2000;
Sparks et al. 2001). Looking at aspects such
as gendered, aged and sexualized geographies
of fear, urban researchers have noted that fear
of the city is often related to discourses
surrounding those who are seen as different in
social contexts (Madge 1997; Pain 2001;
Shirlow and Pain 2003; Valentine 1992).
Geographies of fear are often based on
social perceptions of threat (Herbert and
Brown 2006). In urban spaces, boundaries
can be challenged and unease can occur
(Cresswell 1996, 1997; Douglas 1984; Hub-
bard 2002; Kristeva 1982; Miller 1997; Sibley
1981, 1995). Fears manifest themselves in a
number of ways. For many people, fear often
shapes their mental maps and hence, their
everyday geographies. These mental maps of
fear, accumulated throughout a lifetime, are
constructs that one uses to make daily
decisions. These maps are informed in any
number of ways, but especially through
everyday contact with people and the media

(Gordon and Riger 1989; Stanko 1993).
Stanko (1993: 159) argues that: ‘Direct
involvement with violence; the “but-nothing-
happened” encounters; . . . the impact of the
media . . . ; and shared knowledge of family,
friends, peers, acquaintances, and co-workers
all contribute to assessment of risk and
strategies for safety.’
The way in which people spatially express
their mental maps of fear and anxiety is often
through their paths and actions. They may
avoid certain neighborhoods or areas that are
perceived as threatening (Koskela 1997;
McDowell 1999; Valentine 1989, 1991,
1992; Wekerle and Whitzman 1994). Per-
ceived safety of spaces can be contingent upon
time of day and whether one is alone or not.
Spaces that can be entered in daylight would
not be ventured into at night and especially if
on one’s own. These places typically include
those in which there are not many people
about or those which are dark or dimly lit or
areas which are known or perceived to have
high crime rates (Ardener 1993; Baumer 1978;
Burgess 1996; Day 1997, 1999; Pain 1991;
Smith 1987; Stanko 1990; Valentine 1989,
1992; Wilson 1990). Stanko wrote:
Generally speaking, researchers and policy-makers
alike characterise the fear of the city as a destructive
force, interfering with full participation in everyday
life in a civilized society. Many people, for example,
avoid certain sections of a city or a neighborhood,
hesitating to frequent shops, theaters, pubs, or
sports events because they are anxious about their
personal safety. (1990: 5)
Importantly, though, geographies of fear are
bound to differential notions of safety. The
people one sees when in urban space can affect
perceptions of safety (or lack of). Kilian (1998:
118) wrote: ‘Cultural identity, including who
is safe and who is part of one’s community, are
Editorial 203
also deeply affected by who appears in public
space.’ Feelings of fear and safety shift based
on one’s social and spatial position (Madge
1997). Urban space can been seen as a space of
fear for many and those fears are not restricted
to any one age, class, gender or race, although
those social markers can play a role in
geographies of fear.
Absence of feelings of safety and security
can be rooted in fear of difference. Fear of the
Other can lead to exclusion from public space
of those who are seen as threatening (see
Herbert and Beckett in this issue). Sibley
(1995: 69) states, ‘Feelings of insecurity about
territory, status and power where material
rewards are unevenly distributed and con-
tinually shifting over space encourage bound-
ary erection and the rejection of threatening
difference.’ This process of othering, then,
renders ‘fear as an arena of conflict,’ which
‘needs to be conceived as activity, practice and
process rather than object’ (Gold and Revill
2003: 34).
Thinking, in this sense, of fear as ‘an arena
of conflict’ or fear as something that is utilized
for particular purposes, a number of recent
authors have explored the political utility of
fear (Macek 2006; Robin 2004; Shirlow and
Pain 2003). Pain (2000: 367) noted that
researchers are giving increasing attention to
‘fear discourses.’ ‘Fear discourses’ are what
Pain defines as ‘the notion that . . . the
problem of fear of crime [is] frequently used
for political ends by certain groups and
individuals’ (2000: 67). Fear discourses—in
this context that fear of crime and disorder
may ‘keep people off the streets’—have been
used to influence public policy, urban (re)de-
velopment, and the accessibility and tenor of
public space (see Kern, Herbert and Beckett,
and Schuermans and De Maesschalck in this
issue). That is, the urban geographies of fear
discussed above have implications beyond the
204 Marcia R. England & Stephanie Simon
personal, emotional landscapes and paths of
individuals.
Thus, fear discourses are power-laden as
they work to define and maintain the shifting
boundaries between deviance and belonging,
order and disorder that are instrumental to the
ways in which cities are lived and built. The
now familiar socio-spatial control tactics
associated with urban revanchism, neoliberal
redevelopment, and gentrification are often
tightly linked to notions of ‘remaking’ and
‘reclaiming’ cities from the grips of disorder
and perceptions of fear (Belina and Helms
2003; Doel and Clarke 1997; Ross and
Mitchell 2004; Smith 1996, 2002)—percep-
tions that are thought to keep certain people
from traveling through, shopping and living
in, identifying and associating with certain
areas of the city. Under these rubrics,
uncontrollable or uncomfortable aspects of
city life are instrumentally designed and
written out of urban centers (Atkinson 2003;
Christopherson 1994; Davis 1992; Gibson
2003; Mitchell 1995, 1997; Papayanis 2000;
Raco 2003). Geographies of urban fear have
been utilized to smooth and gloss anxieties
that are thought to prevent certain kinds of
urbanity from materializing.
Situating ‘scary cities’
Leslie Kern, in her work ‘Selling the “scary
city”: gendering freedom, fear and condomi-
nium development in the neoliberal city,’
advances the work of feminist geographers
through her examination of the use of fear in
condominium advertising in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada. Kern explores the effect of
a neoliberal agenda on fear and freedom,
which has led to a boom in securitized spaces
in the form of condominiums. She argues
that urban revitalizations are feminized and
eroticized, playing into gendered ideologies
regarding the city. Looking at the body, the
city, and the tensions between fear and
freedom, Kern provides a case study that not
only furthers work on the nexus between
feminist and urban geography, but on neolib-
eral urban development as well.
Throughout ‘“This is home for us”: ques-
tioning banishment from the ground up,’ Steve
Herbert and Katherine Beckett look at the
effects of zones of exclusion on the geogra-
phies of those who are banished. Using Seattle
as their empirical example, Herbert and
Beckett examine how banishment as a form
of socio-spatial control affects attachment to
place. The fear in this case comes from
violation of banishment orders and the
repercussions that violation may have. It also
signals a ‘scary’ turn in socio-spatial control—
the ability to make large areas of the city
unavailable to the already vulnerable.
In their article ‘Fear of crime as a political
weapon: explaining the rise of extreme right
politics in the Flemish countryside,’ Nick
Schuermans and Filip De Maesschalck con-
tribute to recent work analyzing the ways in
which fear is wielded as a political tool
(Macek 2006; Robin 2004). In the Belgian
context, Schuermans and De Maesschalck
analyze the recent success of the extreme right-
wing party, the Vlaams Belang, in rural and
suburban areas and argue that these spaces are
crucial to understanding interlinked geogra-
phies of fear and racism associated with urban
areas. Here, tensions crackle between the
perception of dangerous city centers of
racialized strangers and an imagined Flemish
countryside of whiteness and safety. Schuer-
mans and De Maesschalck’s analysis reveals
an intertwining of racist spatial imaginaries
and political mobilizations that exploit fears
of difference.

Benjamin Smith explores the complex
geography of fears that converge upon Dubai’s
many and various imaginaries, insecurities,
and contradictions in his article ‘Scared by, of,
in, and for Dubai’. Smith mobilizes a dynamic
framework for studying fear in and through
landscape—offering that ‘acting through fear’
is a key component of landscape. By asking
after other ways of framing fears besides
binary relationships along the lines of self/-
other, Smith touches upon the difficulties of
locating and writing about the ceaseless
production of fears/anxieties and their articu-
lations being, as they are, deeply personal,
subconscious and shot through with ambi-
guity and slippery contradiction.
Jeff May further destabilizes the ‘illusory
construction of otherness’ in his paper
‘Zombie geographies and the undead city.’
May urges us to think of ‘scary cities’ in terms
of their representation in zombie films, in
particular, May uses these films to explore
the mutual constitution of bodies and cities.
The idea of ‘blank space’ is introduced in the
making anew of urban space following a
zombie outbreak. The bodily ambiguities of
zombie/living are negotiated through the
reinterpreted urban spaces of difference and
otherness. Blank space becomes a realm of
potentiality for negotiating the never clear
relationships between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ ‘public’
and ‘private,’ and ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’
The empirical examples and theoretical
considerations of this Special Issue bring
about new ways of understanding the benefits
of fear (for some) and the repercussions of fear
(for others) and the ways in which fear can
affect mobility, both physical and social, and
changes the geographies of the city. Through
an examination of the economic, political,
social and cultural underpinnings and con-
sequences of fear, the authors within this issue
address contemporary and controversial
Editorial 205
topics. The ‘Scary Cities’ represented in this
issue are necessarily partial and selective. No
one rendering could hope to encapsulate what
is, so often, an elusive, deeply personal, and
contingent process. Rather, with this issue we
wish to illuminate some of the ways in which
this affective realm of urban life, at once
spectral and embodied, can be thought and
written. Our hope in publishing these articles
is not only to illuminate fear and the city, but
to ask for more critical examinations of how
fear is mobilized and understood.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the authors who
contributed to this Special Issue and all the
participants in the 2008 AAG sessions. We
also are indebted to Michael Brown and Phil
Hubbard who made this issue possible.
Thanks to all the reviewers for their thought-
ful comments. We would also like to thank the
Georgetown, Kentucky Fire Department for
reasons we choose not to disclose.
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