Research topic : Security territorialization in urban planning : "Big brother" or the "large malicious wolf", a CCTV dilemna.

This research program involves three European teams and an American team. It is an expression of the international network "Alarm procedures and hazard mitigation in urban areas" created within PACTE. Four teams are:

• France : PACTE Territoires - CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier Grenbole 1, (François Mancebo (resp.), Lauren Andres (co-resp.), Sebastian Roché).
• Italie : Istituto Superiore sui Sistemi Territoriali per l'Innovazione (SITI ) du Politecnico de Torino (Giulio Mondini (resp.), Sergio Olivero, Claude Raffestin).
• Suisse : Laboratoire Chôros, Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL), (Valérie November (resp.), Francisco Klauser (co-resp.), Jean Ruegg).
• USA : Institute for Crisis Disaster and Risk Management (ICDRM) de la George Washington University (Irmak Renda-Tanali (resp.), Claire Rubin).

Scientific context and objectives

Within the last two decades our societies grew more violent, or at least they see themselves as such, due to increased sensitivity toward terrorist hazard, incivilities or tension between antagonistic social bevies. Consequently, the query for security of persons and properties becomes a priority stake. It spreads from local scale to the planet as a whole, and leads at one territorialization of security process. This territorialization we have to fathom out, as the main target of the ALARM 1 program, which groups several teams (France, Switzerland, Italy, USA) members of the international network " Alarm procedures and hazard mitigation in urban areas ; linking hazards mitigation to sustainable development " from the UMR 5194 PACTE..

The ambition of this cross-disciplinary blueprint is to understand how security representations appear and interact one with the other. The idea is that any place where power is exerced (here CCTV) is at the same time a place where social knowledge and experience form. It facilitates territorial transformation as such. To understand it we have to question linked fears, since they act here as pressure and constraints, but as resources as well : more accurately we'll question various personal and social "figures of the fear" .

Description

This program compares the urban alpine territories, in a context of international bumper events : Turin (organizing city of 2005 winter OG), Geneva (entrant in 2008 Eurosoccer), Grenoble (candidate to 2018 winter OG) . Thanks to the joint involvement of all research teams of the international network " Alarm procedures and hazard mitigation in urban areas ; linking hazards mitigation to sustainable development ", findings of ALARM 1 will be integrated in theoretical studies concerning a much wider area including England with London (organizing city of 2012 OG) and the United States with Atlanta 1996 OG and Philadelphia (candidate to 2016 OG).

For each fieldwork our research program attempts an answer to four questions :

• What territorial processes are induced by actors systems here ?
• Can any singularization or standardization in the organization CCTV security systems be found ?
• What may become personal urban position for somebody with regard to the kind of technologies used to prevent or at least mitigat risk ?
• What is the influence of the media and communications sphere (both speech and visual) on "safer society" procedures ?

In an early stage, we shall try to decypher CCTV system, on the one hand and interpret security hazards related with bumper events on the other sides. From which it will be made possible to identify collective and individual representations as far as CCTV is concerned.

In a second stage territorial inscription of fear representations will be dealt, that is to say : how fears contribute to space territorialization on the occasion of big international events via CCTV systems.

Finally, scenarios identifying residents adaptative strategies and acceptability of CCTV systems will be drawn up. Putting in place of these scenarios induces formalization in order to general use to any similar places. This late step looks for pertinent territories in public policies. It also questions public-private partnership and the connection between class action and mental territories.

Expected results

As a conclusion of the first stage, productions will be (1) a research report for each worksite plus a synthetic one, all these documents will be online via an electronic bulletin board, to the use of the public, researchers and decision-makers (2) a paper in an international review (possibly " Journal of Homeland Security ").

At the end of the second stage productions will be (1) a document reporting about discourse analysis to identify representative figures on which public action is based, called "figures of the fear" (3) a graphic representation of induced territorial reconstruction mechanisms.

Finally, the outcome of the whole program will consist in (1) a report presenting the various possible scenarios (2) a paper in an international review sresuming major upshots of the whole job (3) an international conference in Grenoble, ending this four year program (4) forums and public meetings in order to popularize the findings and results within cities concerned by the year 2011 (Grenoble and London). A theoretical refererence book resuming our work (possibly French publishers Armand Colin or Belin) will close the term.