Street Fear

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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For the Conference of Cultural Capital Cities Network,October 13 – 15, 2005

In recent days constant reminders about 'street fear' existing everywhere have brought our attention to what cities fail to acknowledge as happening every day in the streets and affecting people's behavior, way of thinking and above all how they relate to others.

There is nowadays 'street fear' in Baghdad. CNN interviewed there mid

September a man because he has decided to leave that city. Enough is enough. He had weathered the years under Saddam Hussein, he had endured the bombardment from the air as Bush senior decided to reverse Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and which Tritsis,then mayor of Athens, braved at that time by walking through the streets of Baghdad as sign of solidarity from one city to another. This man has now decided to move out even though he had braved everything that came with the invasion of Iraq as of March 21, 2003 when not war, but regime change was declared by the United States and Great Britain to justify missiles striking once again Baghdad before troops entered that city and toppled in a symbolic gesture the statue of the dictator. Now, two years later, this man has finally enough. The most telling reason is that he has become afraid to go out into the streets. The many car bombs but also the risk of being abducted have taken away his last positive feelings for the city. Life in the streets of Baghdad is no longer what it used to be even under all previous, indeed also very negative conditions but they were not as bad as it has become now. He has become a prisoner in his own house. As a doctor with three daughters who have all studied medicine he has realized 'street fear' has become so great that it is time to roll up the carpet, to take the vases off the shelves and to seek a safe haven somewhere else. But where shall he go. When the two planes struck the Twin Towers in New York on September 11th, 2001, it was realized that even America can no longer provide a safe haven. How many immigrants, among them Jewish people fleeing the Holocaust, breathed in the past a sigh of relief once the ship had passed the statue of Liberty? Over and again people found in America a different condition to work and to be free in their own peculiar ways. For many the American dream meant the myth of invulnerability. Since 9/11 that is no longer the case. The reactions of America since that fateful day tell what happens once the fact of being vulnerable strikes home but not in any humane way but as a victim wishing to strike back out of revenge for having lost that feeling of security linked to the illusion of invulnerability. Since then American actions have been aiming to ensure that street and sky fear merge. They declared the street around the corner to be a part of the 'home front' while security forces were beefed up under the Patriotic act as further indication what spin to things result out of induced or wrongly understood fears. Indeed the slogan 'Go Bomb Them' shouted at Ground Zero paved unfortunately the way for a wrong response: first the invasion of Afghanistan, then of Iraq. And 'street fear' follows all of these unjustified actions.

Since 'war against terrorism' has become the official terminology to justify

almost anything anywhere at all times and at all costs, insecurity not security has become the key issue. There are the train bombings of Madrid and then the explosions on July 7th in London to remind everyone in this 'war against terrorism' it was more than just a mistake by the Bush administration to think this war can be taken to the territory where the terrorists supposed to live in order to keep the home front safe and secure. Indeed this new, equally permanent war knows no territory. There are no declared enemies nor an army to be fought against as was the case in Second World War with a German army fighting against the allied forces or America GIs fighting the Viet Cong in Viet Nam. This war against terrorism is invisible and can take place suddenly anywhere, anytime. There is no place safe enough for it is a global war. It is a deeply tragic flaw in almost all political analysis offered through the media and various think tanks that everyone talks about this war in the absence of any peace dimension. This is because people do not expect any messenger to come to tell them the war has ended as was the case in 1945. There is no end to it. Instead 'street fear' will instead prevail more and more.

London celebrated one night the news of being the Olympic City in 2012; it got the bid on the basis of being the future model of cities insofar as London praised itself as being multi cultural and open to everyone. That illusion was shattered the next morning when three bombs went off in the underground and another one in a double decker bus. Immediately, as in Holland after the murder of film maker Van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic, the very premises of multi culturalism were questioned while the British way of life in defiance of all odds and dangers was praised. Cultural monolithic assertions mean resorting to basic survival instincts. Immediately linkages were made by politicians and the media to how the British braved as well the rockets of Hitler raining down on London during Second World War. As part of the sixty year celebrations since the end of the war the Imperial War Museum showed in a children exhibition how children survived then the Blitzkrieg. Still, the reunion plans of the 1970 class at London School of Economics were cancelled due to the advice of the

Metropolitan Police that further attacks were immanent and therefore it was not safe to go down town, at least not immediately. Still, in defiance of that fear the mayor of London, Livingstone took that following Monday as usual the tube to go to work.

Others prefer, however, to take the bike or a taxi if they can afford it or leave the city if possible, that is provided they find work elsewhere. In many of the discussions that followed the July 7th and July 22nd bombings in London the main topic is still being skirted, namely 'street fear'. For who can nowadays be trusted in public when anyone can carry something dangerous under a

heavy coat making it all the more suspicious because it is summer. How far such mythological speculation of mistrust can carry forces revealed the fateful event surrounding the shooting of that innocent Brazilian guy. It turned out he did not wear a heavy coat nor did he run down the stairs as the story was initially told but he had even time to pick up a free newspaper lying out at the entrance to the tube before descending in a very normal way down to the train platform. Still, even supposing witnesses told the official version, at least at first how he ran and later fell to the ground of the tube before being shot. However, once ITV showed footages of images of him wearing a light jeans jacket, that version of the heavy coat could no longer be upheld. This raises the question does it mean as long as street fear prevails, truth will always be told in a very distorted way so that people cannot recognize themselves in what is said about them? What then would streets look like if without people unable to recognize each other? Indeed, it is hard to imagine democracy to function if people can no longer give each other the recognition of being first and always human beings with the special needs to be respected and treated as human beings, that is with dignity?

'Street fear' is not new. Parents would not allow in the past their children to

play out in the streets after darkness had set in. They would say 'come home when the man lights the gas lamps in the streets' – a signal of those times. Now children cannot play in the streets even during day time. There is fear because of the cars. If Jack the Ripper was a figure to instill fear, it succeeded. Areas where prostitutes and thieves would mingle with gentlemen seeking unusual rendez-vous, they were shunned as much as sought out by those seeking pleasure mixed with fear to produce some powerful cocktails. Consequently 'street fear' in such a context suggests a taste of life comes with a heavy prize. It is important to remind also that everyone of us produces mental maps when walking through the streets of cities we don't know but are interested in. And even for the cities we grow up in, we produce maps subdividing streets we like, streets we never go through alone, streets reminding us too much of something and streets we love to be in.

Indeed, streets of cities make discovery a way of seeking an understanding the tide of change. A friend who loves Berlin speaks especially about the Kant street as the one going through many changes, for who opens a shop or restaurant, who closes, they reflect the coming of the Polish Importers and Exporters while the Iranians leave to go somewhere else. Such a street which goes through a lot of different lives means it is both unsettling and troubling to see so many new wounds being caused by these economic and social changes all while the old scars remain visible. Certainly cities have all their darker streets and terrible periods, including the pest, that all leave their mark. Some street are shunned thereafter once some workers were shot during a labor unrest linked to the 1st of May demonstration, or they will be remembered for ever when employees decide to move out. Fleet Street in London is now abandoned by all newspapers and the local pub no longer offers relief for the drunk journalists insofar as his pals phone up for him the editor to dictate thelatest story. Now everyone is and works much more alone, by himself, without that social net of support. Consequently 'street fear' is on the increase especially in areas where the whisper they are going to fire still more workers in the next round makes the round.

Pier Paolo Pasolini's films have been decoded according the anthropological

codes he uses repeatedly to tell his story. There are the scenes in which everyone is eating, but also the 'street of death'. For some it means definite execution as the Mexican rebel caught, but closer to the common ground it means workers are marching in protest of their unemployment into certain death as the cannons of the police are waiting for the command to open fire. Those romantic versions of barricades braving the power have lasted throughout the twentieth century and the message was quite clear that 'street fear' meant for those looking from their office windows down to the street where the masses were gathering a fear of those in power of the people. Yes, the masses were always in the streets; the wealthy and powerful ones hid behind curtains and dealt with business behind closed doors. Habermas calls it the structural change of public space and opinion that dictates what can happen in the streets down below.

A practical case of overcoming 'street fear' has been demonstrated by the Mayor of Palermo, Orlando, who together with courageous citizens and aldermen imposed one sensible law immediately after being elected: a building ban on the outskirts of the city. Too many resources had gone into these cheap building speculations at the expense of the historic centre so much neglected that it became the recruitment ground for the Mafia. No one dared to walk there in the streets during daytime, never mind at night. And even during the day when someone would dare to enter that area, especially ordinary tourists would experience someone attempting to pickpocket them or even worse drive past them at high speed on a scooter in order to grab the bag one was carrying. Orlando and the City of Palermo decided to get rid of 'street fear' in the historic centre by re-initiating the Festina festival celebrating Palermo overcoming the pest that a black ship had brought to the city back in time, many centuries ago. The festival is a huge street theatre spectacle with actors descending like devils turned angels down buildings to join a huge float parade to mark the city overcoming the pest.

As in Munich were overcoming the pest meant dancing again in the streets,

people need to feel that relieve from street fear. In the case of Palermo once people come down to the historic centre in huge numbers, they outweighed easily any fear an individual might have in hardly lit streets. Once the festina brought more and more people to enter again the historic centre, others began to notice a change. Here and there restaurants opened up, streets were cleaned and above all the cultural heritage of the historic centre rediscovered with the help of especially the architectural and urban planning departments. Everyone got involved, even youngsters just out of jail for delinquent acts; they went to Orlando and asked him for a job. He told them go clean up that church never completed in history so left standing there like a big ship with open roof and one big tree in the middle. The boys began the work and did an excellent job. After that success they continued as they qualified themselves forfurther restoration works. 'Street fear' receded from the historic centre of Palermo so that people could start to live a normal life. This condition prevails since 1997 – 1999 when Orlando was relieved to see the figures of people killed every year going down. It was furthermore an important signal to everyone that corruption and bureaucratic incompetence were overcome finally when the famous opera of Palermo was re-opened after twenty years of closure. This positive development will continue at least as long as the Mafia is kept if not in jail then out of sight. But the continuation of fear prevailing in the streets underlines that all problems have not yet been resolved.

Clearly when mentioning the possible fear instilled by Mafia or gangs as a

principle of intimidation and coercion, then not every street is save either to walk through, never mind to live in. But such fear is neither obvious nor will every person have the same mental map to help to distinguish which streets are safe only during the day but not at night and which streets should be avoided at all costs. It goes without saying that not only the difference between single streets matter. There are cities considered to be safer than others. It has something to do with how people live and move about. Take Los Angeles as prime example. There even at night policemen patrol the streets not on foot but only in their cars. They fear stepping out of their cars lest someone takes a pot shot at them. Such street fear means here gangs rule due to an abstraction of life since not police, but good neighbors can only bring back safety into the streets. There where only cars race through without stopping even if a person lies wounded in the street, then fear of involvement complicates the situation and makes that society less humane than what it ought to be from its own political proposition to be a democracy basing itself on the equality of everyone.

There are other examples of American cities having gone astray and 'street

fear' ruling more than any other force. For example, the burned out cities of the sixties have been followed by those who are ghettos at the core while the rich people live in the outskirts, in the plushy suburbs. Detroit is such a case where street fear means also a teenage girl not knowing when rape will lead to unwanted pregnancy and loss of school so that she ends up being caught in the endless cycle of poverty and misery for both herself and the kids. There are, however, also famous districts like Harlem that used to be different even if at times unsafe, that is before these strong community bonded places were broken up by all kinds of different interventions from police to investors. This meant not the outsiders coming in to make their business work had so much fear as those who had lived in that community. They had lost with these changes called often urban renewal their identity and with it the feeling for the community as a whole. Clearly a differentiated approach to 'street fear' is needed in order to tell the difference between the one having not today fear may tomorrow end up walking on the other side of the street because of no longer feeling to belong to that place. This fear goes with being alienated from the place one is in daily.

Obviously today in New York prevail many different kinds of street fear and

except what can be considered as aftermath to 9/11, there is today in the Bronx but elsewhere the obvious problems linked to crime despite of the so called 'zero tolerance' policy by the New York police. It seems that many American cities, and not only them, reproduce this 'street fear' due to the absence of life. People cannot be seen for the business buildings are empty after five, that is when everyone has gone home. Only the wind plays with the litter not thrown into the bin. Urban planners have tried many solutions among them mixed planning in an effort not to let a division of labor affect also how the various zones and areas of a city are used. Life is always complex and therefore people intermingle where different needs can be satisfied simultaneously. Nothing is more boring but also fearful if specialized areas develop the bad habits of holding monologues to which no one cares to listen.

Here then Athens can be cited as a counter example where many people are still out in the streets way after midnight and even women feel safe to walk home alone. They say in case of uncertainty they can always go to a kiosk and strike up a conversation until the seeming danger passes by. Street fear is in other words not something constant but is hidden in time flows out of which can burst like flames sudden acts of violence, in particular if the opportunity offers itself. When Athens hosted the Olympic Games, there was throughout those two weeks a wonderful international and very friendly atmosphere everywhere but then, when it became known Secretary of State Powell wanted to attend the closing ceremonies, a demonstration in protest against his visit gathered around Syntagma. There the police and on the other side of the street the demonstrators. They were not more than 1000 protesters but their presence affected the entire atmosphere. The fear that something worse could develop, lead to the cancellation of Powell''s visit. He was perceived as the one who had lied to the United Nations about the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein supposed to have and which was taken by the United States as justification to invade Iraq. People had not forgotten what fear they had of that war when it started in March 2003 and took to the streets to express their fears of the friendly Games being interrupted. That fear had already justified an enormous budget for security measures but no one would connect the reasons for such fear to the fact that the United States also declared at the beginning of the Olympic Games in Athens that they were not bounded to the Olympic Truce Resolution they had signed at the United Nations. It meant especially the war in Iraq would continue despite of the Olympic Games being held in Greece, the country were not only the Games were started but also the declaration of a Truce invented to give fighting parties a pause in the war.

Again reference to Iraq means that we are not talking about just any kind of

'street fear' but about something specific, something having to do with the time we live in. Anyone who has ever been in a demonstration that turns suddenly violent with demonstrators throwing stones and even Molotov cocktails while the police retaliate with tear gas and batons knows what ugly twists such sudden turn of events can entail. The wounded bystander, the burned out cars, the broken windows but just one part of the drama; the other is what Sartre would identify as the breaking into the present. Violence erupts where there is no mediation anymore possible. As parents fear cars for the safety of their children, they know when hit by a car the immediate impact can be anything from a bruise to death. The full scale of probabilities means such unmediated violence can be at any moment's notice lethal. The sudden but unexpected death brought about by a car or bomb does not differ that greatly, but as the man leaving now Baghdad says, once such street fear prevails, living in the city becomes impossible because then we are prisoners in our houses. In other words, once streets are not merely blocked but determined by fear due to invisible dangers looming everywhere and nowhere, people are prisoners. They fear already so much that the impossibility of stepping out into the streets robs them of their last possibilities to have their reality checks. It means if they cannot reflect what they imagine in what they see in the streets and discuss with others what they fear, then they are left terribly alone because only with their own fear.

It has been said streets are the arteries of cities. If clogged by too many cars, another fear will prevail and what the European Union is becoming very conscious of, there is the fear of air pollution cutting short people's life expectations. Mankind needs air to breathe and this air is physical as it is a kind of atmosphere that spells the difference between a life in freedom compared to life in fear. Anyone having visited Eastern European cities during the Soviet Union era knows what bleak streets meant in terms of suppression by a totalitarian force threatening to extinguish anyone's identity or how streets look like once martial law is declared with curfew imposed by soldiers in tanks. The outcome of such suppression is that it clears the streets of any sign of life and lets in turn only 'fear' rule in the streets. So the political and economic system can converge in cities' streets only if a warm and human atmosphere dignifies human existence. The district must not be luxurious but it must be authentic like Praga in Warszawa, a long neglected, run down quarter but now prized by everyone since there some identity can still be attained while elsewhere the city of Warszawa offers nothing but consumption and with it the

over commercialization of life. In the latter case 'street fear' does not even count anymore. For streets have become super highways with six lanes on either side while people get out of their car only in over crowded parking lots to be used solely by customers of the supermarket. So the life in streets has been replaced for lack of human contact by networks. As expressed by the philosophy of networking, it follows the principle of escaping. As suggested by Andre Loeckx, the 'fragmented city' means one bloc is still in perfect condition while just around the corner everything is down graded, redundant and abandoned. People prefer then not to stay near their home but rather drive two hours to a restaurant they like for one or another reason. They do not know anymore who lives across the street, never mind upstairs. It means the dialogue between the imagination and the reality in streets has been replaced increasingly by 'e-streets' of virtual reality with no one knowing anymore for sure 'how real is reality'.

Street fear leaves few options but cities will have to decide how to bring back

and retain life in the city so that people like to walk and not just drive through the streets. Unfortunately the usual pattern has become that cities export life as did Paris when Les Halles was demolished and the Great Market relocated to the outskirts of the city. Of interest is that this intervention into the heart and soul of Paris followed also another kind of fear, namely 'health scare' since that area was deemed unhygienic. More often political forms of suppression cite health reasons when justifying their interventions meant to disperse really life forms thought no longer under control of the city's administration. Jean Pierre Faye said about the Paris Commune it was brought to fall after the French Revolution not merely by internal quarrels but by introducing a 'health police' to cope with first hygienic problems but which became then the reactionary force driving out all progressive forces. So it is not so simple when 'street fear' is countered by 'health fear' and suddenly a dirty street looked upon like the beggar in need of being taken out of sight when the Pope comes for a visit. Such masking of reality does not dispel 'street fear' but instead tends to intensify these unsettling and difficult feeling.

Simply said, cities have the option whether or not they resolve that conflict

between the concrete and the not so obvious reasons of fear by other than police methods making life more abstract, not concrete. Police and other administrative efforts will not solve 'street fear' as exemplified by the futility of militarizing society as the case in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For once people are no longer neighbors enough to give each other protection, then lawlessness and anonymity rules. Nor will cities resolve these problems on how to let people live together by succumbing to mere image making policies and start believing that grand buildings would dispel daily worries.

No, cities must get to the core of the problem, namely that their officials are no longer talking to the people. We have seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina what it means not only to Americans but to the entire world what it means for a supposedly great democratic country when the storm reveals suddenly how many people are left behind. They are abandoned by the way the rest of society thinks to go on living without regard for others. This lack of solidarity and even systematic disregard due to structural reasons giving a lot of profits to very few while all others have live in fear due to constant uncertainties, makes it all the worse due to being at war.

As the 'war against terrorism' has been declared by the Bush administration

to be a permanent one, the continuous institutionalization of war goes hand in hand with the intensification of 'street fear' as embodiment of human vulnerability. Given the contradiction of only war with no prospects for an end means, it means street fear persists because there is no peace prospect either on the ground or in the air. Clearly the public diplomacy department of the United States wishes to make that war invisible as if people should go on consuming things in disregard of the fact that at the same time people die daily in the streets of Baghdad.

Consequently the existence of 'street fear' poses the crucial question but how

far can we go on pretending it is possible to bomb people out of their homes in

another city while going shopping in the own city as if nothing is happening

elsewhere? Somehow this reminds of how fateful it was when people in Germany ignored what happened to the others or what kind of society we end up living in once people allow themselves to be divided between the haves and have nots. Street fear draws then the dividing line and makes everyone not ready but subject to an arbitrary selection as to where the next bomb shall explode. We are all responsible for so many innocent victims because we let this arbitrary use of power proceed although there is no justification. Fear was and shall always be a nebulous reason at the best for doing things which should rather avoid.

At the very least 'street fear' underlines an open atmosphere cannot exist in

cities as long as life itself is being consumed by actions resting on wrong premises. The July 7th bombing in London speak that clear language for any city can become a part of the undeclared war zone as outcome of terror not being a real enemy but a tactic working with the fear people have when threatened by too many factors all at once and thereby depriving themselves and others of the only chance for peace, namely to talk in the street with everyone. Certainly human trust can reverse the negative trend to make the other into such a stranger that he or she can no longer recognize who she or he is in the eyes of the others. It would require, however, that more people get out of their imagined worlds loaded with images served by the media and step into the streets in order to really talk with the others.

 

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