Building a More Trusting and Caring Society : Surveillance and the Evolving Role of Architecture in Developing Positive Community Spaces

Sammanfattning: Our right to privacy is often taken as being an implicit right, one that is rarely questioned as we move about the city. However, standing in marked contrast to this right, is the government’s need to surveil and control society in delivering the narrative to provide security for its citizens. Over the years, the UK government have continued to increase both the number and use of surveillance cameras, with an estimated of 4.9 million cameras in comparison with previous years projections of 1.5 million. 1Now, in the name of security, we are being profiled, categorized, and our rights undermined. It is the purpose of this proposal to educate, disclose such facts whilst exploring a different, more empowering function for surveillance, as part of an effort to gain our rights over the city. London is the most surveilled city in the world, and it is here in the neighborhood of Bow, that I have attempted to explore the possibility of managing some of the footage from CCTV cameras for the public benefit. My thesis will propose to change the way surveillance is currently utilized. By re-appropriating these devices to a network of various community actors and collaborators, so they can be part of a self-managed, evidence building platform, fore fronting social values of the everyday city, rather than surveillance and control of a dominant entity. Towards this end, evidence of underused car park will be collected so that they can be argued as ineffective revenue generators towards public assets. The final goal being to generate safety through use, rather than employing more cameras or applying further measures of control. The method for implementing this proposal, will take the form of using an independent and self managed digital surveillance platform, to store evidence of use. Utilizing this process as a means of empowerment within the neighborhood.