The potential for urban surveillance to help support people who are homeless: Evidence from Cairns, Australia

Andrew Clarke and Cameron Parsell
Additional contact information
Andrew Clarke: University of Queensland, Australia
Cameron Parsell: University of Queensland, Australia

Urban Studies, 2019, vol. 56, issue 10, 1951-1967

Abstract: Numerous studies have documented how surveillance practices, such as CCTV, are deployed to support ‘revanchist’ responses to homelessness wherein punitive policing and urban design practices are used to exclude people who are homeless from prime urban areas. However, few studies have considered the capacity of surveillance to facilitate supportive responses to homelessness. In this paper, we explore this supportive capacity through an ethnographic case study of responses to homelessness in the regional Australian city of Cairns. We demonstrate that, whilst surveillance is deployed to police the homeless in Cairns, it is also used to facilitate social services to access and engage with them, for example by using CCTV as a means to coordinate supportive street outreach activities. We conclude from this that there is no necessary relationship between surveillance and punitive/revanchist responses to homelessness, therefore efforts should be made to document and promote its positive uses alongside critiquing its punitive ones.

Keywords: exclusion; governance; homelessness; housing; poverty; public space; social justice; surveillance; 排斥; æ²»ç †; æ— å®¶å ¯å½’; ä½ æˆ¿; è´«å›°; 公共空间; 社会正义; 监控 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098018789057 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:56:y:2019:i:10:p:1951-1967

DOI: 10.1177/0042098018789057

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().