Towards Safe City Centres?

'Gesa Helms' book provides a fascinating, theoretically and empirically rich analysis of the complex interactions between the processes of economic regeneration, local crime control and the new goverancne of urban safety. Focused on a case-study of the specific geo-history of Glasgow, Helms makes an original and provocative contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the contested politics of the "criminalisation" of urban and social policy.' Gordon Hughes, Cardiff University , UK 'Gesa Helms has produced a wonderful and path breaking account of the interrelationships between economic change, security, crime control, and the city. This book is organised with a clarity of communication and it powerfully conveys the contradictions of the regulation of city environments, and the limits of New Labour's social cohesion agenda. It makes significant contributions to the understanding of policing, security, and urban regeneration, and is a brilliant example of how to interconnect theory with empirical research, and it provides new and original insights into the regulation of city spaces.' Rob Imrie, King's College London, UK 'Overall, this book presents a sound analysis of the ways in which class and economic imperatives impact on safe-keeping strategies. In so doing, it offers insights into an aspect of safe-keeping which has remained overlooked in extant fear of crime studies.' Urban Geography Research Group '... Helm's book is a major achievement in at least three ways. It provides an unusually rich account of the interdependence of economic restructuring, crime control and issues of safety in Glasgow that may well inspire researchers interested in similar issues elsewhere in the UK and Europe. It also has much in store for students of governance processes more generally, especially because it offers a framework for analysing the complexity of converting the intentions expressed in policy documents and covenants in actual working practices at particular times and