Condiciones del ambiente de sedimentación (litología de la roca fuente y condiciones redox)

The two chapters in Part One outline the design principles of the New Town Idea, the perceived problem of social order to which they were a response and how these principles are manifest in the physical design of Harlow. Both chapters describe an „urbanism from above‟ (de Certeau 1988) – a town planning model in which the physical design of the urban environment aims to deliver a measure of social control. In Part Two I turn to an „urbanism from below‟. Although this analytical shift will continue to address the design features of Harlow‟s urban environment the emphasis will focus more upon how people experience it and the significance it has for them. We cannot assess the success or otherwise of any urban design or town planning model as an instrument of „social order‟ unless we know how they are directly experienced. What is the actual impact of Harlow‟s design upon perceptions of crime and disorder? To what extent do people actually experience the town as an „essay in civilisation‟ compatible, perhaps, with the satisfaction of human needs, as Reith hoped? Or is it more an environment that people experience in ways that, perhaps, encourages disorder and anxiety? Answers to such questions are not readily forthcoming: people rarely deliberate upon the environments they encounter let alone consider it as a force either for or against social order. To uncover the significance of such environments requires both a methodology and methods appropriate to the task. This chapter discusses and defends those I chose in pursuing my research.

To claim that I began the research with no methodological preconceptions would be disingenuous. I knew that the choice of methods and methodology should always follow the research question and that I should always be guided by those best able to secure a valid answer to it. I began, therefore, with a pragmatic attitude and a willingness to employ any strategy if it was propitious in meeting my objectives. Nevertheless, I was also aware that all researchers in any field of research never begin wholly devoid of intellectual preferences and philosophical biases even if they are often largely unconscious of them. Such leanings, of course, will inevitably inform the questions they ask. Thus, my humanistic interest in how people experience Harlow‟s environment and the impact it has upon perceptions of crime, feelings of security or fear derives

partially and not insignificantly from my own experiences as a former resident of the town. Perhaps more importantly, however, was my own discontent with most current contributions to Environmental Criminology. As I noted in the introduction, research, in this field, is usually a version of risk analysis in which various features of an environment are correlated with incidents of crime and disorder or expressions of fear. A feature, therefore, is ascribed as „risky‟ or not – or some similar adjective - and recommendations follow suggesting its retention, modification or removal. What the environmental feature actually „means‟ to people as they directly experience it, the aesthetic value it holds for them, the memory associations it can arouse, its significance within the wider environmental context and the emotional connotations it often impliesare matters usually neglected within Environmental Criminological Research. I discuss examples of such an actuarial criminology throughout this study but some typical examples are: the consequences of street light improvement upon crime (see Painter K and Tilley N 1999), the defects of high rise towers upon crime prevention (Coleman A 1985), the capacity of street blocks to deter prostitution (Matthews R 1992) the reduction of vandalism on buses through using video cameras (Poyner B 1992) and nearly all research conducted by the Home Office‟s „Crime Reduction‟ unit.14 _{My primary motivation in adopting the} methodological strategy outlined below, in short, was to advance a „Humanistic‟ Environmental Criminology15_.

I had begun to notice the results of such risk analysis in several environments of which I was familiar. The ornate iron railings surrounding a local school, for example, were suddenly covered by a bamboo mesh to remove the risk of potential paedophiles photographing the children playing inside. That my own children attending the school might begin to consider the world hidden beyond this mesh as dangerous rather than stimulating and that they were effectively

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For full list see http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/cpindex.htm

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My focus on ‘meaning’ and ‘signification’ may also suggest that I am employing what may be termed a ‘Cultural’ Environmental Criminology. Certainly, many of the themes I discuss have a certain resonance with discussions within ‘Cultural Criminology’ and ‘Cultural Studies’ in general. However, because my over-riding concern is with how Harlow’s New Town environment either supports or undermines the attainment of human needs I prefer to regard this study as a ‘Humanistic’ Environmental Criminology.

cocooned away from the neighbourhood of which they were a part, and kept deliberately apart ftom any „public realm‟ it seems, was considered less damaging than allowing the risk – not substantiated by any known incident – to continue. Environmental Criminology, as I suggested in the Introduction, can easily contribute, I believe, to the deterioration not enhancement of our surroundings by advancing recommendations based on research of too narrow a methodological focus. When an environmental feature (or, indeed, the whole environment) becomes a variable of „risk‟ or „safety‟ then its deeper, perhaps less quantifiable, significance is easily lost. Rather than supporting „administrative‟ policies of risk reduction, therefore, I sought an alternative methodology better attuned to the nuances and complexities of actual experience.

Researching the literature on „environmental experience‟ it became apparent that the methodological strategies of „Humanistic Geography‟ were broadly compatible with my research objectives. Although this sub-field of geography has rarely addressed issues of crime and fear of crime its focus upon the „meanings‟ people apply to „place‟ corresponds to my more criminological concerns regarding perceptions of the environment as relatively safe or dangerous. Indeed, humanistic geography can help elucidate more precisely what safety or dangerousness „means‟ within given environmental contexts.

As also previously discussed in the Introduction, „Humanism‟ is a somewhat ambiguous term attached historically to what might appear to be incompatible modes of understanding (see Relph 1981). The „humanism‟ of Renaissance Europe refers to the promotion of secular, scientific knowledge in opposition to what then was a prevailing religious dogma, whereas today, humanism more often describes a critique of the narrow „scientism‟ of positivistic inquiry into human affairs. This seems to imply a contradiction in which humanists regard scientific procedure as both the problem and solution to a proper understanding of human life. No such contradiction, however, applies for humanism describes any mode of inquiry that privileges (or centres) the

uniquely distinctive characteristics of people – as people, not types or categories – in the comprehension of their thoughts and activity. When the major obstacle to gaining such comprehension was religion the humanists sought redress through scientific procedure. But today, many humanists (e.g. Tuan 1976) believe that a blind obsession with scientific procedure itself limits any valuation of human life. Thus humanism is profoundly anthropocentric rather than anti-scientific: it embraces scientific procedure whenever it can advance an understanding of human affairs and the enhancement of human experience but questions the assumption that this represents the only viable or useful methodology available.

Although many early humanistic geographers took an idealist position in their understanding of geographical knowledge, regarding it as purely a subjective matter, later contributors to the research tradition sought to overcome all dualisms between the physical space of the outside world and the mental apprehension of it. For them, geographical knowledge is a fusion of subjective spatial awareness with the physicality of the external environment in which neither takes precedence. Arguments for environmental determinism, therefore, in which the physical properties of the world directly cause behaviour are no more persuasive than idealism. People respond to the environments they encounter according to the meanings they attach to them – the physical aspects of the environment cannot compel any particular behavioural response if interpretations of it suggest alternatives. Yet, the „facticity‟ of the environment (its physical properties) is not irrelevant. Such facticity will always provide a frame for understanding that will yield certain „dominant‟ or „preferred‟ responses but never compulsion. It is the reciprocal relationship between matter and mind from which geographical knowledge – our „understanding‟ of environment – arises.

As man and environment engage each other dialectically there is no room in a humanistic perspective for a passive concept of man dutifully acquiescing to an overbearing environment. But neither is man fully free, for he inherits given structural conditions and, indeed, may be unaware of the full extent of his bondage (Ley D &

Samuels M 1978 p12).

The humanistic geographical approach strives, therefore, to understand how an environment‟s objectivity becomes subjectively meaningful in ways that influence how people respond to and behave within it. Subjective awareness of environment is always of something. But that „something‟ holds greater value than merely providing a source of sensory stimuli. Geographical Understanding is to know an environment as meaningful. A “Positivist geography looks at environment and sees space” writes Peet (1998) whereas „Humanist Geography looks at environment and sees place”. To reduce geography merely to an analysis of Euclidean Space, ignoring any appreciation of human intentionality, cognitive association, and symbolic representation is, therefore, to miss something vital about how people actual „live‟ their spaces.

The rejection of Euclidean conceptions of space rather than place, however, does not lead the humanist geographer to ignore issues of rigour in conducting research. The establishment of place identity involves the application of intersubjective meanings and schemata. Place becomes meaningful through historical and cultural processes in which a commonly understood identity emerges. Of course, to some extent the precise meaning of place will differ between people reflecting their unique biographies, memories and associations. A hill might mean something different to a farmer and a walker, a railway engineer and landscape painter following the different intentions they adopt towards it. As anthropological and historical research shows (e.g. Hope- Nicholson 1959, Tilley C 1994)16_{, some cultures regard hills with reverence} while others recoil from them as repulsive. Yet members within most groups share similar intentions and, hence, apply a common significance to the same environmental phenomenon they encounter. It becomes the task of humanistic geographical research to uncover these common meanings. To disclose such meaning, however, may necessitate a move away from traditional „scientific‟

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Hope-Nicholson provides, perhaps, the ‘classic’ account of how attitudes to one particular environmental feature, mountains, have changed historically. Through exhaustive analysis of literary documents she notes that during the Middle Ages mountains were regarded as ugly and repellent only acquiring their more positive contemporary cultural ‘image’ during the Renaissance.

methodologies and towards those more appropriate to the humanities. I shall return to the issues of rigour that attend such a move later.

Hence, humanistic geographers in their search for common experiential themes usually blend idiographic techniques of inquiry popular within the humanities with those of a more conventional social scientific character (see Tuan 1971). Just as any reading of a novel that reduces it to a word frequency count, or a description of a painting simply as a list of colours misses the unique identity of each, so too will any examination of place that regards it as no more than a series of geometrical points – or indeed variables of risk.

Humanistic research is primarily qualitative and doubts the capacity of numerical measures to fully capture the „lived realities‟ of human experience. Nevertheless, it will often refer to statistical details whenever they prove helpful – never as a primary data source but more as a means to identify key „issues‟ worth further investigation. I began my research, therefore, by constructing a „statistical profile‟ of crime in Harlow the details of which I report in the following chapter. In gathering data for this profile I referred to the most recently available „official‟17 _{crime statistics for the town representing all the} crimes known to and recorded by the police. Such statistical data is notoriously unreliable (Coleman and Moynihan 1996). The figures, after all, only refer to those crimes known to the police and do not represent all crimes that occur within Harlow. Nevertheless, as I discuss later, the figures can provide useful „pointers‟ by revealing patterns, trends and distributions of which my study must take some account. Moreover, I was able to compare Harlow‟s crime statistics with towns of similar socio-demographic profile and with other urban and non-urban areas by examining the published records of the „Safer Harlow Partnership‟ responsible for conducting a series of crime audits for the town. Similarly, I was able to use this source of data to compare crime rates between

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Although the Essex Police may have access to more precise, up-to-date but unpublished statistics my intention was to highlight the crime rate in Harlow relative to other areas to which useful comparisons might be drawn. To this purpose the published ‘official’ statistics was perfectly adequate.

different wards within Harlow. I further supplemented the statistical data by assessing the results of an unpublished fear of crime survey conducted on behalf of the Safer Harlow Partnership. The results of this survey drew my attention to an imbalance between the town‟s rates of crime and the levels of fear expressed by its residents – an „issue‟ that became a central focus of my subsequent research. Thus, statistical measures18 _{did prove useful but, alone,} were not sufficient to help me answer my research question. To disclose the significance of such data and the „issues‟ to which they drew my attention a return to qualitative methodological strategies was necessary.

The primary philosophical influence upon the methodology of Humanist Geography is phenomenology. Although my approach does adhere, broadly, to the „spirit‟ of phenomenology I hold no particular allegiance to any one of its various „schools‟ each of which often promotes specific methodological protocols. My research deliberately co-mingled different strategies but always towards the attainment of understanding the essential structures of meaning by which Harlow's urban environment is experienced directly and without conscious deliberation by its residents. As such my methodological strategy was informed primarily by Seamon's (2000) discussion of the phenomenology of place, environment and architecture and especially his advice for conducting further phenomenological investigations of these phenomena. I also gained much useful advice from van Manen's (2001) broader discussion of phenomenological method. Both acknowledge, following Spiegelberg (1982), that there are probably as many styles of phenomenological method as there are active phenomenologists. Yet, as they acknowledge, a number of core themes and research protocols are common to them all.

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I am also aware that a more thorough analysis of the relevant crime statistics, especially with reference to the more detailed abd ‘up-to-date’figures held by the Essex Police but which are not placed in the public domain, might have provided a more ‘complete’ picture. Nevertheless, the profile I provide sufficiently describes a general overview of crime in Harlow in comparison to some other areas. My intention was not to investigate the precise number of crimes that currently occur in Harlow but to understand how people relate to Harlow’s New Town environment in ways that are relevant to a humanistic and cultural Environmental Criminology.

Firstly, phenomenological method almost always employs a qualitative strategy with the goal of developing some variation of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Straus 1967). That is, phenomenological research endeavours to discover 'findings' that are closely 'grounded' in the real world of actual lived experience from which theory is inductively generated. This necessitates somehow grasping the experiential qualities of the 'lifeworld' – the “tacit context, tenor and pace of daily life to which, normally, people give no reflective attention” (Seamon ibid p8). Phenomenology, then, discloses that which people do not ordinarily make an object of their conscious thought. Although the residents of Harlow will not often deliberately consider the environment of the town, the everyday experience of it may frame feelings of security or danger. A phenomenologically oriented, humanistic approach, therefore, may usefully 'disclose' such pre-reflective consciousness – the meanings and significance of that which usually remains implicit.

Seamon describes the method for uncovering aspects of the taken-for-granted lifeworld as a 'radical empiricism' (ibid p13). By this he refers to “...a way of study whereby the researcher seeks to be open to the phenomena and to allow it to show itself in it fullness and complexity through her own direct involvement (ibid p13). Such radical empiricism, he suggests, demands an act of „phenomenological intuition‟.

Through intuiting, the phenomenologist hopes to experience a moment of insight in which she sees the phenomenon in a clearer light. I call this moment of greater clarity the phenomenological disclosure, though it might also be described by such phrases as „the „aha! experience‟ „revelatory seeing‟ or „pristine encounter‟. Through phenomenological disclosure, the student hopes to see the thing in its own terms and to feel confident that his or her seeing is reasonably correct (ibid 2000 p14).

Nevertheless, Seamon continues to point out that there is little advice that can be given to achieve such intuitive disclosure other than that it takes „discipline, patience, effort and care‟. Yet, by approaching the phenomenon with due

openness, he suggests, analysis can yield „patterns‟, relationships and subtleties of which people are not usually aware.

To facilitate phenomenological disclosure, research must, firstly, involve direct contact, even immersion, with the phenomenon. The researcher, in short, strives to maintain direct contact with the phenomenon under scrutiny. Secondly, the researcher must begin by assuming „…she does not know the phenomenon but wishes to” (ibid p16). Adopting such an approach necessarily involves the famous phenomenological epoche in which the researcher brackets all prior assumptions, expectations or predispositions regarding the phenomenon. Finally, the research must portray experience in terms that are rich, unstructured and multidimensional.

My own empirical research strategy was framed by these basic phenomenological protocols. In accordance with them I began gathering 'meaning accounts' (van Manen 2001) which describe how people directly experience Harlow's built environment and physical form. These refer to accounts that describe the significance of Harlow's environment and how it is understood by those who directly encounter it. I drew upon a variety of such meaning accounts, partially for purposes of „triangulation‟ (Denzin 1989) in which the importance of a theme is shown by its recurrence within several different sources, but also because it enabled me to describe more fully how Harlow‟s design invokes certain experiences. My sources for obtaining experiential material included the following: -

1. Personal Experiences

This study is imbued with personal memories, anecdotes and experiential description. Indeed, I dedicate a whole chapter to a personal narrative describing my own history living as a resident within Harlow and my evolving attitude towards the town since leaving it. The tone of such writing avoids

analytical distance or what some might regard as scientific objectivity. This may, understandably, arouse considerable doubt. What possible value might such reminiscence provide in helping me address my primary research objectives? Does it not betray a subjective bias that can only undermine the credibility of the remaining discussion and analysis? The inclusion of such