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Crime and the city

Offer semester
2nd semester

Lecture time
Tuesday 1.30pm – 3.20pm

Lecture venue

Course description

How do cities produce and respond to criminality and transgressions in the everyday context? Why do some people retreat into fortified enclaves for protection while others derive excitement from doing edgework in the city? This course examines key questions and debates about crime, disorder and social deviance in city landscapes. It focuses on three broad issues: different meanings and dimensions of the crime problem (the ‘what’ and the ‘who’ questions); the relationship between crime, space and place (the ‘where’ and the ‘how’ questions); and the complex mix of informal and formal social controls that influence different types and levels of crime and the urban imagination. Its overall objective is to provide students with the criminological knowledge and conceptual tools to think critically and comparatively about crime and social order in an increasingly globalizing and polarizing world.

Course learning outcomes

  • An ability to understand main criminological concepts and debates and associated key works.
  • An ability to assess competing assumptions and rationales in the study of crime, transgressions and the city and their relevance to social (dis)order and citizenship in the local and global context.
  • An ability to develop a reasoned argument and to present ideas in a clear and concise manner in oral presentation and in written work.


Individual portfolio30%
Group project and presentation20%

Required reading

Graham, P. and Clarke, J. (2001), ‘Dangerous Places: Crime and the City’ in Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (eds.) The Problem of Crime, 2nd ed. (London: Sage).

Wacquant, L. (2008), Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Young, A. (2014), Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime, and the Urban Imagination (New York: Routledge).

Course co-ordinator and teachers