I. Introduction

Predictive policing experiments have been developing in many countries in recent years. In the context of risks exacerbated by terrorist and health threats, the urban space explored in Jonathan Raban's novel Surveillance and discussed by Ventéjoux in Chapter 8 of this volume has become the privileged space for predictive policing experiments. In the United States, police forces in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and many other cities now rely on software, including the iconic PredPol discussed by Banita in Chapter 10 of this volume, in order better to deploy their forces and prevent public disorder through algorithmic ‘predictions’. According to numerous press releases, this experiment has contributed to a significant decrease in the crime rate. Although this positive outcome is questionable, some French cities, such as Nice, Marseilles, Dijon and Paris, have expressed a growing interest in them. Through the collection and analysis of a considerable amount of data – specifically, metadata – on the circumstances and modalities of past crimes and misdemeanours, police can better predict risks and combat them, especially by cross-referencing this data in real time with geolocalised data in public spaces. Such practices are highly seductive as they conjure up the utopia of a crime-free society. But the development of these techno-police experiments poses a risk for fundamental rights. It demonstrates in a familiar setting how our desire for everyday security in the towns and cities we live in can so readily be played off against the fundamental norms which, as Gligorijević argues in Chapter 5 in this volume, in fact sustain it. And it demonstrates how the very aspects that draw people to urban areas – their diversity, multiplicity, opportunity – can become the tools for a subtle and more all-encompassing surveillance.

Some cities, by promoting a ‘Smart City policy’, are committed to this perspective of technology-based safety. The idea of a Smart City is believed to have emerged out of a discussion between President Clinton and John Chambers, then President of the CISCO systems company, in the second half of the 2000s. The European Parliament provides the following definition: ‘A Smart City is a city seeking to address public issues via ICT-based solutions on the basis of a multi-stakeholder, municipally based partnership.’