Reducing Boundaries: Understanding Exclusion Through Security Defensive Systems in Wealthy Urban Areas

The book gives account of the results of a four-year international project funded by the European Research Agency. Reducing Boundaries considers the way in which the upper-middle classes configure as a goal the preservation of their own security and the ensuing strategies they put in action in order to achieve it. It describes the frameworks involved in the discourse on security, the stakeholders, policies and the tools that are employed and reveals site-specific consequences both on the urban fabric as well as on the lifestyle of different social groups. Porto Alegre (Brazil) is the main case study, but observations and studies have also been conducted in Brussels and in the metropolitan area of Venice.