From crime prevention to urban development

Abstract

This case study examines how CCTV is used in local politics as a vehicle for different actors with different agendas. In discussing an actual case from Hamburg, in which five cameras have been installed and removed within two years, the article will give an account of local politics, in which CCTV is used for various purposes and part of many different agendas. Most interestingly, the arguments' focus is usually on crime prevention, but here they are modified towards the issue of urban regeneration over the course of the cameras' lives. The analysis explains of how CCTV is used in politics, ultimately proving that the technology is more an instrument of politics than of actual crime prevention. And lastly the article will show how the changes of the arguments develop in the process of negotiating CCTV within local politics by local actors, thus making surveillance cameras less given and untouchable than they often seem.