The city, built originally for the sake of security – to protect residents inside the city walls against malevolent invaders always coming from outside – in our times ‘has become associated more with danger than with safety’ – so says Nan Elin. In our postmodern times ‘the fear factor has certainly grown, as indicated by the growth in locked car and house doors and security systems, the popularity of “gated” and “secure” communities for all age and income groups, and the increasing surveillance of public spaces, not to mention the unending reports of danger emitted by the mass media.’ Contemporary fears, the typically ‘urban fears’, unlike those fears which led once to the construction of cities, focus on the ‘enemy inside’. This kind of fear prompts less concern with the integrity and fortitude of the city as a whole – as a collective property and a collective warrant of individual safety – as it does with the isolation and fortification of one’s own homestead inside the city. The walls built once around the city now crisscross the city itself, and in a multitude of directions. Watched neighbourhoods, closely surveilled public spaces with selective admission, heavily armed guards at the gate and electronically operated doors – are all now aimed against the unwanted co-citizens, rather than foreign armies or highway robbers, marauders and other largely unknown dangers lying in ambush on the other side of the city gates.

— Globalization by Zygmunt Bauman