One of the most pressing social issues today is “civility,” which means much more than good manners or breeding. It names the capacity of people to live together, beyond legal dictates or police coercion to behave well. Civility is a particular concern in cities, because of the density and diversity of urban places; only the most elaborate laws, the most intrusive policing can control behaviour in the complex society of the city. Such total control is hardly a desirable social ideal. In the end, getting along well with foreigners, people who are richer or poorer or of a different race, are all matters which should be engrained into everyday life.

Much current urban policy has given up, however, on civility. The 'zero-tolerance' approach to policing assumes that unless every small offence against public order is punished, larger offences will ensue; society cannot steady itself without the draconian threat of daily, detailed punishment. The emergence of gated communities is based on a kindred premise; to be safe, urban enclaves have to be rigidly regulated; open communities will degrade into disorder. These new practices join classic means of social control such as racial and religious segregation and ghettoisation, which established forbidden territories -- on the premise that people who differ cannot and should not live together.

How then can civility be restored to the city? That broad question has a physical, and indeed architectural, dimension. We can design spaces and buildings which encourage people to behave well toward one another. The different histories of London and New York support this assertion. The continuous street-walls throughout New York, for instance, contained people's activity in public, and made public behaviour visible -- the phenomenon Jane Jacobs once called 'eyes on the street.' Gap-tooth streets of isolated buildings do not, by contrast, form such a visible container for civility. London parks have worked to the same end by a different means, when, as in Hyde Park, large stretches of lawns dominate over plantings of trees. Again, the spreading of housing estates for the poor throughout London meant that rich and poor became accustomed to one another, and adjusted to one another, with a relative minimum of police enforcement; when London began building huge housing estates, warehousing the poor, the police had to take the place of social habits.

Author: Richard Sennett