Governing safety through the politics of community? A governmentality analysis of the practice of ‘safety walks’ in three Swedish cities

In Sweden, ‘safety walks’ are a well-established planning practice for improving safety. They involve citizens and local authorities evaluating public spaces in terms of Building on observations, interviews policy materials, this paper examines safety walks from governmentality perspective. Our analysis shows that, through the governing techniques employed walks, problems rendered technical, auditable governable, while becoming disconnected social political. Furthermore, participatory rationale serves to produce self-governing communities, who responsible managing their own safety, risking reinforcement boundaries inclusion exclusion within imagined ‘safe community’.