Formal and ethical aspects of security in public spaces

According to John Habraken, there is today a tension between the planners´ tendency to expand public space and the citizens´ wish to extend their private control over that same space. Processes of appropriation and exclusion governing the public space geared by policies intended to increase security must therefore be concurrently informed to address the complexities of social reality. As far as architectural solutions and urban forms are concerned, the pattern of building placement, together with the size of the development and the grain of zoning of the area where it stands, are all major factors on the production of a spatially fit and a socially just hierarchy of territories.