______________ ___________________

Revenge and Injustice in the

Neoliberal City: Uncovering
Masculinist Agendas
Phil Hubbard
Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK;
p.j.hubbard@lboro.ac.uk

The literature on the Western city as a site of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism’’ has done much to
expose the injustices wrought by new modes of urban governance. In particular, this literature has
highlighted the increasing exclusion of minority groups from the spaces of the central city. To
date, however, there has been little sustained exploration of the gendered dimensions of this
process. In this paper I offer such a gendered reading, suggesting that neoliberal policy serves to
recentre masculinity in the cityscape at the same time that it encourages capital accumulation. I
demonstrate this by noting some of the forms of revenge currently being exacted on prostitute
women in Western cities, reading such actions as symptomatic of urban policies that serve both
capital and the phallus. In conclusion, I suggest that the conceptual framework of neoliberalism is
useful for making sense of contemporary urban restructuring, but only if we recognise that the
resulting city can be mapped along axes other than those fixated on capital and class.

Introduction
As the dominant political ideology in late modern societies, neoliber-
alism is implicated in the making of social and spatial orders at a
variety of scales. Consequently, there is now a sizeable literature
documenting how neoliberal policies of deregulation support pro-
cesses of globalisation, the ‘‘hollowing-out’’ of the nation-state and
the restructuring of regional governance (eg Herod 2000; Larner and
Walters 2000; Peck and Tickell 1995). Yet it is urban neoliberalism
that preoccupies many geographers, with an emerging body of work
exploring how ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism’’ is transforming the
cityscape (see especially the Antipode 2002 themed issue on the
‘‘Urbanisation of neoliberalism’’). Such work has begun to offer an
incisive critique of neoliberal urban policy, suggesting it represents an
attempt to regulate uneven capitalist development by encouraging
some forms of capital accumulation (but not others) in some spaces
(but not others) (Brenner and Theodore 2002). Simultaneously, it
has demonstrated that neoliberalism is creating new forms of
urban inequality, striating society and space along visible fault
lines—not least those separating valued consumers from those who

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Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
666 Antipode

fail to live up to the eligibility criteria of the consumer society (Clarke

2003).
Hence, there is abundant evidence that neoliberal urban policy is
implicated in the making of iniquitous and contradictory urban land-
scapes. This is particularly true in North America, where the neolib-
eral agenda is most entrenched, yet such tendencies have also been
evident in Western Europe as urban politicians abandon Keynesian,
welfare-based government in favour of policies that empower the
private sector. Fighting the centrifugal attraction of edge cities and
suburban sprawl, such policies include those that offer direct subsidy
to developers prepared to invest in (often long-neglected) inner city
districts. One significant consequence is a new wave of corporate-led
residential gentrification (Hackworth and Smith 2001). Another is the
reinvention of city centres as corporate landscapes of leisure, with the
re-aestheticisation of the city centre accompanied by the development
of consumerist ‘‘playscapes’’ catering to the affluent (MacLeod and
Ward 2002). Yet the flipside of such policies is the institutional
displacement of marginal groups from these newly remade spaces,
with the poor, ethnic minorities, the homeless, teenagers and other
groups who do not conform to what Sibley (1995:xi) terms the ‘‘middle-
class family ambience associated with international consumption
style’’ finding their presence in the central city increasingly untenable.
In this paper, I want to prise open these debates on the neoliberal
city by highlighting the gendered injustices wrought by neoliberal
policy. I do this to demonstrate that such policies are not just about
the re-centralisation and accumulation of corporate capital, but are
also about the re-inscription of patriarchal relations in the urban
landscape. Indeed, I want to argue that the neoliberal city serves the
interests of both capital and the phallus, with neoliberal policy reliant
on the cultivation of a political economy that is, at one and the same
time, a sexual economy. I develop this argument by focusing on one of
the groups whose presence in the city streets has apparently been
sacrificed in the name of neoliberal urban policy: female sex workers.
Thus far, the literature on prostitution (particularly street pro-
stitution) has examined geographies of sex work through the lens of
either criminology (where it is viewed as the outcome of strategic
policing policies) or sub-cultural ‘‘deviance’’ studies (which regard
geographies of sex work as the result of prostitutes’ tactical
behaviours) (cf Lowman 1992; Riccio 1992). Attempts by geographers
to bring these perspectives together by exploring the interplay of
tactics and strategies offer a useful counterpoint to these literatures
(eg Hart 1995; Hubbard and Sanders 2003), yet singularly fail to
acknowledge how these ‘‘turf wars’’ are played out in the context of
urban, political and economic restructuring. Accordingly, in this
paper I explore why ‘‘Zero Tolerance’’ policies designed to remove

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 667

vice from public view (and associated moves by sex workers away
from the city centre) are characteristic of the neoliberal city. In so
doing, I highlight a serious lacuna in the literature on neoliberalism:
namely, its failure to note the inherent masculinity of neoliberal
policy. Before I develop this argument, however, it is useful to explore
the more widespread contention that neoliberalism represents a
process of capital centralisation, an argument most forcibly developed
in Neil Smith’s account of the revanchist (literally, revenging) city.

Neoliberal Urbanism: The Reassertion of Capital?

In the past two decades, geographers have devoted considerable
attention to exploring how urban governors have sought to revitalise
cities in the face of de-industrialisation and the flight of high-income
earners from the central city. Perhaps the most common strategy here
has been the adoption of place-marketing, designed to improve the
city’s prospects of attracting inward investment. In the 1980s, such
techniques typically centred on the development of flagship projects
intended to (re)position the city and promote its potential for inter-
national investment (examples include London’s Docklands, New
York’s Battery Park, Barcelona’s Olympic Marina and so on). At
the same time, industrial eyesores were demolished, obsolete water-
fronts scrubbed clean and public spaces enhanced with suitably boost-
erist public art (MacLeod and Ward 2002). The result was an
assuredly post-industrial city where a string of aestheticised zones
and scenographic enclaves surrounded a revitalised downtown that
was host to the work of star architects. In most cases, this was a
landscape that was attractive to global corporations and their work-
forces—albeit that considerable public subsidy was necessary before
corporate developers would invest in city centres. The emergence of
public–private partnerships acting on behalf of the city was thus a key
characteristic of a new ‘‘entrepreneurial’’ mode of governance (Hall
and Hubbard 1996).
While ‘‘urban entrepreneurialism’’ unquestionably improved the
aesthetic appearance of downtown districts, when viewed through
the lens of political economy, this deliberate re-imaging of urban
space was not an end in itself, but the means to an end, namely, the
accumulation of capital (Harvey 1989). Implicated in processes of
uneven geographical development, many commentators found it
difficult to be sanguine about the impacts of entrepreneurial policies.
For example, Leitner and Sheppard (1998) assembled damning
empirical evidence to suggest that entrepreneurialism merely
deepened existing socio-economic polarities. As they detail, while
growth promotion created images of prosperity in such declining
cities as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Glasgow, it did not redress
problems such as a shrinking number of employment opportunities,

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668 Antipode

neighbourhood decay, and fiscal squeeze. Indeed, in some cases it

exacerbated them. Leitner and Sheppard hold up Pittsburgh as
emblematic: widely heralded as a success story of urban entrepre-
neurialism because of its revitalised downtown, they point out it
nevertheless had the second highest black poverty rate among the
twenty largest metropolitan areas (36.2%) in 1990, and the sixth
highest male unemployment rate (12.1%). For them, this underlines
the more general argument that urban pro-growth agendas inevitably
intensify social and territorial inequalities within cities.
Notwithstanding these criticisms of urban entrepreneurialism, neo-
liberalism thrives on a similar recipe for ‘‘urban renaissance’’ by
promoting investment in previously neglected inner city districts.
What is distinctive about neoliberalism is that here the state takes a
back seat, allowing the private sector to orchestrate urban develop-
ment unfettered by governmental constraints (hence, talk of ‘‘roll-
back’’ neoliberalism). Accompanied by a discourse that suggests
excessive regulation stifles urban creativity, the local state has conse-
quently shifted from a hesitant pro-business stance to offering whole-
hearted support (and often subsidy) to real-estate developers. For
Neil Smith (2002), neoliberalism is thus intimately connected to
‘‘third-wave’’ gentrification, with the state providing the infrastructure
that serves up the central and inner city real-estate markets as unmiss-
able opportunities for productive capital investment (Hackworth and
Smith 2001). The arguments here are well rehearsed, having first
been set out in Smith’s (1979) celebrated Antipode paper: taking
advantage of the rent gap between actual and potential land value,
developers are able to profit by investing in districts ravaged by
deindustrialisation and the retreat of the urban affluent. As distinct
from first and second-wave gentrification, however, neoliberal gentri-
fication involves corporate rather than ‘‘small-scale’’ capital. For
Smith, this globalised gentrification is a consummate expression of
neoliberalism, demonstrating that state-sponsored ‘‘urban regener-
ation’’ actually serves to mobilise exploitative real-estate development.
In turn, he argues this gentrification does not diversify the class mix of
the central city, but merely allows the (upper) middle classes to retake
control of the ‘‘political and cultural economies’’ of the largest cities
(Smith 2002:445). In Smith’s (1996) account of gentrification in New
York, developers’ scripting of the central city as the ‘‘new urban
frontier’’ is thus crucial, attracting a ‘‘new’’ middle class that imagines
itself more streetwise than the ‘‘old’’ middle class (see Lees 2000).
Given such middle-class gentrifiers are prepared to pay a premium
to participate in a putative ‘‘urban renaissance’’, the rolling-out of the
gentrification frontier has been interpreted as a particularly effective
strategy for enhancing the value of the central city. For gentrification
to succeed, however, it is necessary for the state to remove ‘‘Other’’

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 669

groups from the re-valued spaces of the city centre. Smith (2002) thus
details how squatters, squeegee merchants and ‘‘street people’’ in
areas of Manhattan earmarked for ‘‘improvement’’ were ruthlessly
dealt with following the election of Mayor Rudolph Guiliani and
appointment of Police Commissioner William Bratton. Espousing a
rhetoric of Zero Tolerance for miscreants, these figures were pivotal
in labelling the urban disadvantaged as a disorderly population (Fyfe
forthcoming). This urge to tame urban disorder triggered notorious
police brutality against minorities, justified with reference to improved
quality of life, but actually intended, Smith argues, to make the city safe
for corporate gentrification. Concurring, Herbert (2001) suggests Zero
Tolerance policing was most loudly touted in areas like Times Square
and Washington Park, where corporate developers were especially
determined to attract well-heeled gentrifiers. Despite talk of urban
renaissance, Smith thus portrays the central city as a combat zone in
which capital, embodied by middle-class gentrifiers and supported by
punitive policing, battles it out, block by block, to retake the city.
Given New York’s authorities pursued an extreme form of Zero
Tolerance—memorably described by Herbert (2001:459) as ‘‘policing
on steroids’’—we should be wary about labelling other cities as revan-
chist (MacLeod 2002). Nonetheless, Smith’s notion of revanchism has
been widely adopted as a heuristic device for exploring the impacts of
neoliberalism throughout the urban West. This is particularly evident
in the ‘‘radical’’ urban writing that stresses that Western city centres,
traditionally conceived as spaces of diversity and difference, are giving
way to single-minded spaces of consumption (for an overview, see
MacLeod and Ward 2002). Of course, the means by which non-
consuming groups are excluded varies widely, taking in a range of
surveillant technologies and interdictory architectures (Flusty 2001).
Simultaneously, there is a logic of self-exclusion evident, with mar-
ginal populations feeling ‘‘out of place’’ in spaces devoted to affluent
consumption: in many cases they simply cannot afford to participate
in leisure rituals that revolve around designer shopping and the
consumption of caffè latte.
Seemingly nostalgic for the urban cultures that are effaced by urban
restructuring (see Merrifield 2000), several geographers have
accordingly written the obituary of urban public space, lamenting
the decline of a mode of metropolitan streetlife that was unpredict-
able and sometimes dangerous, but open to non-capitalist relations:

In the punitive city, the post-modern city, the revanchist city, diver-
sity is no longer maintained by protecting and struggling to expand
the rights of the most disadvantaged, but by pushing the disadvan-
taged out, making it clear that as broken windows rather than
people, they simply have no right to the city. (Mitchell 2001:71)

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670 Antipode

Accounts such as Mitchell’s lend considerable weight to such argu-

ments, documenting how security forces, supported by surveillance
technologies, enforce by-laws designed to remove the homeless from
public spaces, seemingly for no other crime than ‘‘being’’ in these
spaces. When simply ‘‘hanging out’’ becomes a legitimate basis for
excluding individuals (presumably on the basis they have no intention
of participating in rituals of conspicuous consumption), the new-
found exclusivity of the neoliberal city is brought into sharp focus.
Yet attempts to regulate the visibility of disorderly bodies in city
centres make perfect sense in the context of policies designed to
encourage consumer-oriented reinvestment: as Smith (1998) high-
lights, it is those who are Other to real-estate developers and their
target markets who are subject to such exclusionary urges, depicted as
perpetrators of ‘‘quality of life’’ crimes that threaten the ‘‘urban
renaissance’’. Further, Flusty (2001) argues that exclusionary tactics
are now taken for granted, with the consuming majority rarely stop-
ping to question why non-consumption should be a legitimate basis
for removing people from public space. In many ways, this routine
acceptance of exclusion underlines Smith’s argument that revanchist
policing, when coupled with the rolling forward of the gentrification
frontier, amounts to a successful—and distinctly neoliberal—recipe
for capital accumulation.

Displacing Vice in the Neoliberal City

The idea that neoliberal urbanism encourages the reinvention of
city centre as a ‘‘purified arena for capitalist growth’’ is one that has
found much favour in geographical circles (Brenner and Theodore
2002:374). Nonetheless, it is important to stress urban public space
has always been riddled with inequalities, with many of the groups
currently targeted by neoliberal policies having been subject to a long
history of persecution and socio-spatial marginalisation. As O’Neill
(2000) details, sex workers constitute one such group. Often repre-
sented as dirty and deviant, and hence beyond respectability, the
presence of prostitutes in the public realm has long been subject to
contestation. Consequently, sex workers have routinely faced removal
from spaces associated with more respectable populations, with the
history of urban prostitution characterised by episodes when prosti-
tutes have been displaced from whiter, wealthier districts and pushed
towards ‘‘twilight’’ areas (characteristically, the inner city).
Given this history of stigmatisation, sex work researchers have
failed to comment on how spaces of prostitution are shifting in
accordance with the imperatives of neoliberal policy. Indeed, in so
far that writers have identified the emergence of punitive policies
designed to exclude sex workers from gentrifying city centres (Kerkin
2003; Pitman 2002), they have done so in ways suggesting these

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 671

are merely the latest in a long line of strategies of containment

designed to regulate the visibility of commercial sexuality in metro-
politan centres. For example, Pitman (2002) draws parallels between
the recent disappearance of sex workers in central Vancouver and the
nineteenth century ‘‘ripper’’ murders in Whitechapel.1 Posing inter-
esting questions about the boundaries between socially acceptable
and unacceptable forms of displacement, Pitman nonetheless ignores
how recent attempts to exclude vice from public urban spaces are
shaped by the imperatives of neoliberal policy. In contrast, Papayanis’
(2000) fascinating account of Guiliani’s attempt to enhance ‘‘quality
of life’’ in Manhattan makes explicit reference to anti-vice legislation.
At Giuliani’s request, New York City Council approved amendments
to their Zoning Resolution in 1995 designed to ‘‘encourage the devel-
opment of desirable residential, commercial and manufacturing areas
with appropriate groupings of compatible and related uses and thus
to promote and to protect public health, safety and general welfare’’
(cited in New York Times 23 February 1998). In effect, this resolution
forced the closure of non-compatible land uses, including any busi-
nesses having a ‘‘substantial portion of its stock-in-trade’’ in ‘‘materials
which are characterised by an emphasis upon the depiction or
description of specified sexual activities or specified anatomical
areas’’. Depicting such ‘‘adult establishments’’ as ‘‘objectionable non-
conforming uses detrimental to the character of the districts in which
(they) are located’’, this zoning resolution dictated adult establish-
ments should ‘‘be located at least 500 feet from a church, a school (or)
a Residence District’’.
Tracing the origins of these zoning amendments, Papayanis inter-
prets New York’s ‘‘anti-porn’’ resolution as a blatant attempt to dis-
place commercial sex from areas where it potentially acted as an
obstacle to consumer-fuelled gentrification. When coupled with the
stringent enforcement of laws prohibiting on-street soliciting, the net
result was a dramatic reduction in the visibility of vice in Manhattan.
Nowhere was this more evident than Times Square, a space long
notorious as a marketplace for commercial and illicit sexuality.
As Merrifield (2000) relates, the purchase of the New Amsterdam
theatre by Disney corporation in 1992 precipitated the formation of
the 42nd Street Development Corporation and Times Square Busi-
ness Improvement District, with Disney joined by other corporate
giants including Marriott, HBO, Madame Tussauds and MTV. Insti-
gating an anti-pornography crusade, sidewalk patrols aimed at remov-
ing sex workers and a graffiti-removal programme, the net result has
been the creation of a sanitised theme park where traces of burlesque
and risqué Broadway life are now hard to find (Riecl 1996). Hence,
Papayanis (2000:351) contrasts the contemporary consumer land-
scape of Times Square with the memory of a district that was ‘‘the

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672 Antipode

antithesis of productive social space … shunned by developers, the

middle-classes and mainstream retailers’’.
In Papayanis’ account, the way clandestine expressions of desire in
Times Square gave way to ‘‘Disneyland’’ emphasises the power of the
state to displace vice in the interests of cultivating an ambience of
gentrified consumption. Here we should again remain mindful of
MacLeod’s (2002) warning that New York’s war against ‘‘quality-of-
life’’ offences potentially bears little relation to the policies pursued in
other Western cities. Nonetheless, given Zero Tolerance policing is
cited as an effective solution to the ills of urban life by politicians
throughout the urban West (Fyfe forthcoming), we should not be
surprised to find echoes of New York’s approach to policing sex
work elsewhere. For example, in the context of a move towards
‘‘order-maintenance policing’’ in Paris, new Agents of Security funded
by the Mayor’s Office have likewise taken a tough line with sex
workers as part of their mission to tackle ‘‘quality-of-life’’ offences
(a mission that has also witnessed Paris’ reconstituted police force
rounding up stray dogs, tackling drunkenness and removing peripat-
etic portrait painters from the streets—see Body-Gendrot 2002). In
recent decades, street prostitution has generally been tolerated in
non-residential areas of central Paris as long as soliciting is not active,
with Article 225–10 stipulating sexual exhibitionism and active solicit-
ing is punishable, but passive soliciting is not. However, supported by
a media increasingly preoccupied with urban disorder, the Parisian
authorities have instigated a series of initiatives designed to reduce
the visibility of sex work in the city, with regular police sweeps of areas
notorious for prostitution (eg the Bois de Boulogne and around the
maraichaux ring road). Simultaneously, there have been allegations of
police violence and harassment: remarkably, it seems that possession
of condoms has been used as evidence of ‘‘active soliciting’’.2
Though Parisians have evidently not accepted the logic of Zero
Tolerance in all respects, there appears to be much support for
attempts to reduce the visibility of prostitution (and other ‘‘street
crimes’’). In this context, the groundswell of support for Nicholas
Sarkozy’s Interior Security Act (adopted in January 2003) is unsurprising.
This Act has resulted in over 75 major changes to the Code Pénal,
including new powers of imprisonment for aggressive begging (a maximum
of six months), fines for swearing at police, and up to two months’
imprisonment for those who repeatedly loiter in stairwells of flats.
Significantly, the new Act also makes passive soliciting an offence, with
up to two months in jail for ‘‘soliciting by any means, including dress,
position or attitude.’’3 Equally controversial, once arrested for prostitution,
foreign nationals may have their Temporary Residence Permit withdrawn,
with a Provisional Authorisation of Stay granted only if the prostitute
denounces their ‘‘procurer or pimp’’ and agrees to move to protected

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 673

lodgings. Given that as many as 70% of Paris’ street workers are East
European or West African, Sarkozy’s reforms present many with a stark
choice: return home to an uncertain fate or incur the wrath of potentially
dangerous pimps.
Coupled with changes to Articles regulating the operation of sex
shops (with window displays strictly monitored and a new super-tax
introduced on X-rated videos), these laws provide an effective series
of mechanisms for police seeking to remove sex work from French
city centres. Likewise, a series of initiatives in Britain have sought to
remove vice from public space, particularly in areas earmarked for
redevelopment. For instance, Westminster City Council has been
instrumental in seeking to displace prostitution from central London,
focusing on Soho, an area long notorious for offering an ‘‘apocryphal
and irregular version of metropolitan life’’ (Mort 1998:893). Seeking
to ‘‘clean up’’ the West End, with a view to creating ‘‘a happy family
atmosphere’’,4 Westminster City Council inserted clauses in its
Unitary Development Plan (1999) insisting that planning permission
for ‘‘sex-related’’ uses would not be granted except in exceptional
circumstances. Further, the council has suggested sex-related
establishments are ‘‘generally incompatible with certain other uses,
particularly those used by families and children such as schools, youth
clubs, community and sports centres and places of worship.’’5 This
means applicants have to demonstrate that any sex-related business
(eg striptease club, sex cinema or sex shop) will have no adverse effects
on residential amenity, community facilities or the ‘‘function of the
area’’. Yet even if planning permission is granted, the council imposes
stringent conditions relating to opening hours and window displays
‘‘to protect the amenity of residents and the general environment’’. In
the words of the Chairman of the Planning and Licensing Committee,
these measures amount to a campaign ‘‘against the West End sex
barons … a war we will win.’’6
Such measures have indeed reduced the number of licensed shops
and clubs in the area from over 100 in the early 1990s to just to 16 in
2002, with Westminster City Council stipulating no additional licences
will be granted in the future. Simultaneously, Westminster City
Council has pressed the government for effective powers to deal with
‘‘sex advertising’’ in the form of the calling cards that littered public
telephone boxes. Following such lobbying, Sections 46 and 47 of the
Criminal Justice and Police Act came into force in September 2001,
making it an offence to place advertisements relating to prostitution
in, or in the immediate vicinity of, a public telephone box (Hubbard
2002). Justifying this legislation, the Home Office suggested ‘‘the
primary intention of the measure is to deal with the nuisance and
distress when prostitutes ply their trade in the streets and to penalise
those who seek to encourage, control or exploit the prostitution of

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674 Antipode

others.’’7 The consequence is the police can arrest anyone displaying

advertisements alluding to sexual services (an offence punishable by a
fine or six months’ imprisonment). In addition, police have used cards
to identify premises being used for prostitution, passing on the
information to landlords, who, if they refuse to evict tenants, risk
having their house compulsory purchased (at least six properties
having been purchased in this manner8).
Again, the imprint of New York-style Zero Tolerance Policing is
obvious here, with Fyfe (forthcoming) suggesting many of these poli-
cies were introduced as a direct result of visits by British politicians to
New York. Following one of these visits, Tony Blair (then shadow
leader) threw his weight behind ‘‘Operation Zero Tolerance’’, a high-
profile policing initiative in 1997 that involved 25 officers removing
the homeless, squeegee-merchants and prostitutes from King’s Cross
(a district Blair described as ‘‘frightening’’). Given the initiative was
acclaimed a success, with a ‘‘dramatic fall in anti-social behaviour in
the area’’, similar campaigns were enacted by the police in tandem
with London Boroughs. For instance, in an eight-week programme
in 2000, Westminster City Council and the Metropolitan Police
co-operated to tackle a series of ‘‘nuisances’’ including prostitution,
unlicensed trading and ‘‘bogus’’ portrait artists. In 2002, the City
Guardian scheme consolidated these efforts, with 40 uniformed street
wardens deployed in the West End to ‘‘prevent the badly behaved few
from affecting the quality of life for the majority.’’9 Identifying
sex workers (but not clients) as detrimental to quality of life, such
strategies deploy the logic of Zero Tolerance to reinforce fears of
difference and to effectively criminalise street prostitution.

Sexing the Neoliberal City?

This brief resumé of revanchist urban policing in New York, Paris and
London demonstrates sex work is being increasingly excluded from
the spaces of gentrifying city centres. Yet the expulsion of sex work
from central cities is by no means limited to ‘‘global’’ cities, being
widespread throughout the urban West. For example, it is possible to
document a variety of measures intended to displace prostitution and
commercial sex in other British cities. For instance, police have
pioneered the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders in Birmingham,
Middlesborough and Coventry, as well as London’s King’s Cross, to
prevent women from soliciting in named areas.10 More widely, police
are working with retail and business groups to reduce the visibility of
commercial sex through ‘‘business watch’’ and CCTV schemes. For
example, in Reading, efforts to regenerate the Oxford Road district
have been accompanied by a Thames Valley Police operation to shut
down two brothels and penalise kerb-crawlers, while the local council
has shut three sex shops in the area.11 Remarkably, the authorities

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 675

in Liverpool—pronounced European Capital for Culture 2008—are

taking advice from the Dutch authorities in a bid to set up ‘‘green-light’’
areas for sex work in peripheral industrial estates, simultaneously
designating the city centre a prostitution-free zone (Humphries 2003).
In this sense, it is possible to add sex workers to the list of
‘‘undesirables’’ finding their occupation of central cities challenged
by neoliberal policies intended to encourage consumer-oriented gen-
trification and urban renaissance. As depicted in numerous accounts
of the neoliberal city, this displacement can be read as an inevitable
outcome of the process by which a flourishing yuppie class of highly
paid producer–service workers conquers the central city, casting out
the underclass to the marginal interstices that pockmark the outer
city. Neither producing or consuming effectively, this underclass exists
outside the target markets of the corporations who profit from urban
development. For Papayanis (2000:348), attempts to displace sex
work from the central city are clearly connected to the pursuit of
urban profitability: as the lowest of ‘‘all imaginable cultural products’’,
commercial sex is associated with the lowest end of the social spec-
trum and a sure sign of disinvestment. Indeed, one finds exclusionary
metaphors regularly deployed by the forces of law and order as they
‘‘reclaim’’ inner cities from the ‘‘cultural detritus’’ of pornography and
vice. For example, prostitution is routinely depicted as part of ‘‘a tide
of litter, graffiti, yobs and muggers’’ that ‘‘blights streets and public
buildings’’.12 Likewise, prostitution is frequently blamed for ‘‘blight-
ing’’ many ‘‘pleasant residential areas’’ through ‘‘the noise and
disturbance’’ it creates.13 For Sibley (2001:246), such exclusionary
metaphors characterise the making of the boundary ‘‘between the
acceptable family, based on a heterosexual relationship … and other
families and sexualities’’—a crucial strategy given ‘‘it is the security of
the acceptable family which is the principal object of concern for the
state and capital’’.
Making an important equation between the class politics of sexu-
ality and gentrification, Papayanis (2000:347) thus depicts the actions
of city authorities in sweeping away sex shops, brothels and massage
parlours as a necessary precondition for the resurgence of central city
real-estate markets. For Papayanis, the zoning-out of sex-related
businesses is thus entirely compatible with Smith’s capitalocentric
explanation of neoliberal urbanism. Similarly, Michael Brown
(2000:83) insists the production of sexual space needs to be under-
stood with reference to the ‘‘crisis-resolution function of spatial fixes
and their flexibility in the context of post-Fordism’’ as well as ‘‘the
prevailing structures of heterosexuality’’. Bringing political economy
into dialogue with theories of sexuality (via Lefebvre), Brown claims
the body (‘‘especially the female body’’) is shattered into fragments
that are displayed as commodities in spaces that are not simply

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676 Antipode

reserved for the stimulation/satisfaction of desire, but the creation of

profit. Through this manipulation of space, he argues, a market for
female sexuality, and sex more generally, is created. Brown thus refers
to the constantly shifting placement of non-normative sexuality in the
cityscape as ‘‘a kind of spatial fix where sexual relations are commodified’’
(Brown 2000:85; see also Knopp 1995). Brown is thus able to show there
is no necessary contradiction in a high-value transaction (sex work)
being located in a marginal site. This suggests the displacement of sex
work from the city centre under the aegis of neoliberal policy is
entirely in keeping with the logics of capital accumulation: corpor-
ations are able to maximise profits by developing socially exclusive
consumer spaces, while the displacement of sex work serves to bring it
within the ambit of a restricted economy that hoards desire to capitalist
ends (Bataille 1993). Hence, Brown implies the segregation of family
spaces from spaces of sex work valorises not just the family (as an
idealised socio-sexual relation), but also commercial sex (an illicit but
sought-after socio-sexual relation characterised by high risks and
rewards).
While Brown (2000) and Papayanis (2000) add a significant dimen-
sion to Smith’s (1996; 2002) de-sexed account of corporate gentrifica-
tion, by beginning from the assumption that neoliberalism represents
a straightforward reworking of class differences in the name of
corporate profit, they fail to open up the gendered dimensions of
these processes. In part, this may be because both women and men
are involved in corporate gentrification as developers and consumers
(as they were in first and second-wave gentrification). Likewise, it is
clear the displacements wrought by state-sponsored gentrification are
felt by both men and women: for example, it is clear both male and
female prostitutes, as well as women and men involved in the manage-
ment of the sex industry, are finding their place in the central city
under threat. Yet, as Bondi’s (1991; 1998) work on gentrification
convincingly demonstrates, questions of gender can never be
expunged from discussions of sexuality: the spatial regulation of
sexuality is, after all, a crucial means by which (unequal) gender
relations are reproduced. Hence, while the connection between
gender and sexual identities is far from straightforward, examining
the way specific understandings of feminine and masculine sexuality
are invoked in (neoliberal) anti-vice campaigns reveals a host of
gendered assumptions and inequalities.
In this respect, it is apparent the burden of displacement has fallen
unequally on those involved with commercial sex, with prostitute
women being most affected by revanchist policing. For example,
prostitute groups in Paris suggest the swingeing changes ushered in
by Sarkozy condemn all prostitute women to work in clandestine (and
inevitably precarious) conditions. Though Sarkozy’s reforms are

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 677

outwardly designed to penalise pimps and procurers, opponents stress

there are existing laws that could be used to deal with pimps and
traffickers, and that new legislation will merely worsen women’s work-
ing conditions. According to a spokeswoman for the prostitute rights’
group Cabiria, ‘‘independent sex workers will go underground, in dark
corners where nobody can come to their rescue if they are attacked.
They are going to have to turn tricks in a rush. As they are in hurry,
they will be not be able to check their clients or insist on the use of
condoms.’’14 Likewise, banning sex advertising from the streets of
central London has removed one of the few methods by which
independent prostitutes were able to solicit publicly. As a con-
sequence, (male) pimps and managers have actually profited
from spatial displacement, with street workers increasingly seeking
employment in escort agencies or off-centre massage parlours rather
than risking working independently. A related phenomenon here is
the movement of street workers into high-class ‘‘lap-dancing’’ bars,
which, unlike the sex shops and brothels they replaced, are seemingly
acceptable to corporate gentrifiers (eg California-based Spearmint
Rhino has opened several ‘‘Upscale Gentleman’s Clubs’’ in central
London, confidently announcing plans to open a further 100 across
Britain in the next five years15).
Given this movement from informal street work to capitalist forms
of sex work, it appears the negative effects of revanchist policing on
prostitute women might be adequately explained with reference to a
‘‘class-rooted process’’ of gentrification that is ‘‘imbued with gender
from the start’’ (Smith 1996:101). Indeed, female sex workers are
often conceptualised as part of an underclass because they seemingly
transgress one of the key roles allocated to women under capitalism
(ie fulfilling the reproductive functions of the heterosexual house-
hold). In common with those other women who challenge assump-
tions that sexuality should only be expressed in the confines of the
nuclear family (with mothering and fathering deemed the appropriate
representational mode for sexual activity as well as the ultimate goal
of the sexual relation), prostitutes are thus considered violated,
contaminated and criminal (O’Neill 2000). Of course, this disgust is
tempered with (masculine) desire, so that the prostitute is both
repudiated and desired. According to many radical and Marxist
feminists, it is this economy of desire/disgust that ensures the non-
capitalist work that women perform in the domestic sphere is trans-
formed into productive labour in the marketplace: the surplus labour
that goes unpaid in the household (slave) relationship being
harnessed within the formal (capitalist) economy (Rubin 1989).
Yet there are significant dangers in suggesting that the gender rela-
tions reproduced by neoliberal policies are simply part of the relations
of capitalism: while excluding class from analyses of neoliberalism will

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678 Antipode

no doubt obscure the capitalist class processes it entails, to view

gender relations as always—and inevitably—subordinate to capitalist
restructuring is to render invisible a significant dimension of injustice.
As van der Veen (2000) insists (following Gibson-Graham 1996), sex
work in fact comprises many class processes: for example, some women
may be involved in processes of capitalist class relations by working
in the capitalist sex industry, while others may be self-employed,
determining the terms of the prostitute/client relation. Yet others
may be held in a feudal-type class relation with a pimp, or work
collectively through a communal process of producing, appropriating
and distributing surplus labour (van der Veen 2000:134–137). Hence,
while it is possible to accommodate explanations of the displacement of
prostitution within the plenary geography of capitalism, it is only when
we consider the configuration of the sexual economy that we can begin
to identify the gendered consequences of neoliberalism.

Mapping the Masculine Landscapes of Neoliberalism

Disentangling the class and gender inequalities that pervade the neo-
liberal city is no easy task, particularly when most accounts begin
by asserting that neoliberalism is, above all else, a re-centralisation
of capital. Working from that assumption, neoliberalism is seen to
create class-specific gender effects, in so much that the differential
freedoms granted to men and women in the neoliberal city are
determined by their class position as gentrifiers or victims (Bondi
1991). From this perspective, the exclusion of female sex workers
from the city centre is symptomatic of the wider process by which
those in low-status occupations are marginalised by gentrification (an
impression reinforced if we compare the centrifugal dispersal of
independent ‘‘low-class’’ sex work with the increased number of
high-status ‘‘gentleman’s clubs’’ in many city centres). In contrast,
I wish to argue that policies designed to remove street-level sex work
are no mere side-effect of the reassertion of capital, but are funda-
mental in the re-centring of masculinity and the forging of new
patriarchal arrangements in Western post-industrial societies.
Here, Nast’s (2002) wonderfully polemic Antipode paper on queer
patriarchies is particularly enlightening. Stressing the relationship
between the Oedipal family and Western capitalism is not what it
was in the industrial era, Nast notes the seeming victories emerging
for women in an era of surrogate parenthood, new reproductive
technologies and revised gender expectations (with men taking on
more of the roles associated with domesticity, and many gay male
couples adopting children). Related to such phenomena, perhaps, is
women’s increasing visibility in the formal economy, and, in many
households, women taking on a breadwinner role. Yet Nast is keen to
foreclose any possible theorisation of a post-patriarchal society, where

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 679

a consumer-focused economy values men and women equally: instead

she identifies the ways that market virility is revaluing fatherhood and
socio-spatially sidelining motherhood.16 To illustrate her argument,
she refers to a range of ways that gay male spaces and images are
valued in contemporary consumer society, contrasting this with the
exploitative treatment of other (non-Oedipal) sexualities and sexual
contracts.
Given the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism has been widely
associated with anxieties about gender identities (Nayek 2003), Nast’s
argument that consumer-led gentrification is one means by which a
new patriarchal gender order is being established, refined and con-
tested is a persuasive one. Following Nast, it is possible to re-read
spaces of neoliberal gentrification as landscapes that revalue (and
capitalise) masculinity through distinctive commodity forms and aes-
thetics. As Mort suggests in his account of the reinvention of Soho as
a space of leisured consumption, these often evoke neotraditional
senses of place:
Much of the new Soho has raided Parisian and Italianate models of
urban behaviour in order to create a stylish ambience … The evocation
of cafe-bar and brasserie culture, with its assorted modes of urban
spectatorship, have been skilfully marketed to the new populations.
The recent abolition of local Westminster by-laws restricting the
development of pavement seating outside cafes and restaurants has
also favoured experiments in continental living. Soho’s consumer
spaces have been endowed with a recognisable aura of glamour and
fashionability. (Mort 1998:897)
Mort accordingly outlines the emergence of conspicuous modes of
consumption that locate Soho within a diaspora of style-led, gentri-
fied consumption spaces (which he claims also include Le Marais in
Paris, New York’s Lower East Side and Sydney’s Oxford Street).
Significantly, these are all spaces associated with gay (male) gentrifi-
cation, each implicated in the scripting of a version of homosexual life
that revolves around conspicuous consumption. While such ‘‘gay spaces’’
often remain distinct from the heterosexually coded spaces of the
city,17 the fact that urban gentrification is occurring in areas asso-
ciated with gay male entrepreneurship highlights some gendered
inequalities evident in the neoliberal city. Simply put, it is difficult
to find examples of where Zero Tolerance policing, zoning regula-
tions or planning policies are marginalising gay men: to the contrary,
many city councils are actively promoting gay gentrification through
strategies of place-marketing targeting gay tourists and incomers. No
longer represented as sleazy, gay consumer spaces are regarded as
respectable and encouraged as part of the ‘‘urban renaissance’’
(Binnie 2001).

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680 Antipode

Such observations cast doubt on Neil Smith’s (1996:44) throwaway

assertion that neoliberal urban policy is exacting revenge on a range
of targets that includes ‘‘minorities, the working class, women … gays
and lesbians, immigrants’’: in contrast to female sex workers, gay men
are rarely depicted as ‘‘out of place’’ in the neoliberal city.18 This is
despite the fact that gay male spaces clearly challenge traditional
notions of heteronormality and family life (even if the sex shops,
clubs and cafes found in areas of gay gentrification offer an eviscer-
ated version of gay desire; see Binnie 2001). Increasingly prominent
in the corporations that enact urban redevelopment, gay entrepre-
neurs are implicated in processes of gentrification transforming city
centre spaces into single-minded consumer spaces. As Knopp (1995)
confirms, no matter how ‘‘progressive’’ gay capital is, it may still
perpetuate other structures of oppression, including patriarchy.
The idea that gay gentrification is complicit in neoliberal policies
that marginalise female sex workers supports Nast’s (2002) argument
that gay capital mobilises the same identity and operates through a
similar set of assumptions as heterosexual capital. In her estimation,
whether coded as gay or straight, capital remains male in the post-
industrial era: homosociality thus bequeaths patriarchy. It is therefore
tempting to conclude that the ‘‘phallic fortification’’ of the ‘‘Boy’s
Town’’ area of north Chicago—described by Nast—is being repli-
cated throughout the urban West under the aegis of neoliberalism.
Reinvented as spaces of gentrified consumption, neoliberal city centres
feign to be safe and seductive spaces for both women and men, yet, as
Mort (1998) argues, these animated public spaces represent a drama-
tised setting for flânerie (the process by which urban space is
consumed as a visual spectacle by voyeuristic and self-assured male
observers). Though some commentators have suggested flânerie was
a short-lived phenomenon of the nineteenth century, the figure of the
flâneur remains crucial in understanding the gendering of urban space
because the flâneur’s right to look gratuitously now irradiates the
spaces of the consumer society (not least the gentrified spaces of
the city centre) (Clarke 2003). Yet while flânerie may be performed
by women (see Munt 1995 on the lesbian flâneur), it remains
profoundly gendered. For the man of the streets—whether straight or
gay—women are to be looked at, becoming part of the urban spec-
tacle; being looked-at is passive and female, whereas looking (and
returning the gaze) is deemed active and male. Hence, while (both
straight and gay) men may take narcissistic pleasure in being gazed
upon by other men, and displaying their body to both men and
women, if they are looked upon by women as an object of desire,
this triggers attempts to reassert gendered order, and put women in
‘‘their place’’ (with the lesbian flâneur likewise condemned for under-
mining male supremacy). The consequences of this are sharply felt by

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 681

sex workers: soliciting the attention of men through their dress,

gesture and gaze, prostitutes have often been written of as the female
equivalent of the flâneur: a transgressive identity that must, from the
flâneur’s perspective, remain invisible (Wolff 1985).
Though undoubtedly overused as a metaphor for the gendering of
the city, the relationship of the male flâneur and female prostitute
crystallises the gendered inequalities that characterise the neoliberal
city, a city where men display their activities of exchange and con-
sumption for others to look at in public space. To paraphrase Nast
(2002:896–897), it seems that all the systems of exchange characteris-
ing the post-industrial city—including the modalities of consump-
tion—remain men’s business. Contemporary flânerie, central to the
playful forms of consumption played out in the gentrified city, accord-
ingly marginalises those women who challenge men’s mastery
of public space. This gendering of space is, however, obscured by
policy-makers’ references to the ‘‘public good’’, with legislation designed
to curtail the visibility of feminine sexuality on the streets claimed to
be necessary to protect ‘‘quality of life’’ (Papayanis 2000). Unfortu-
nately, this gendering is also obscured in accounts of the neoliberal
city, which argue that neoliberalism involves a colonisation of urban
space by (global) capital without pointing out this continues to value
male virility in ways that create patriarchal advantages for men.
Hence, although geographers are becoming increasingly attentive to
the ‘‘concrete’’ manifestations of neoliberalism evident in different
temporal, institutional and spatial contexts (see Larner and Walters
2000), there remains a pressing need to expose the mutually consti-
tutive relationship of capitalism and patriarchy that is being fostered
by neoliberal urban policy.

Conclusion
While making the argument that neoliberal urban policy creates and
reinforces a series of gendered inequalities, this paper has not sought
to undermine the basic thesis of revanchism as promoted by Smith
(1996). Neoliberal policies are indeed about capital accumulation, as
Smith argues, with gentrification and the re-aestheticisation of the
central city a key means by which city governors and private devel-
opers seek to capture ‘‘global’’ capital. The promotion of conspicuous
consumption, leisure and tourism in revitalised downtowns is thus a
key strategy in the global battle for ‘‘jobs and dollars’’ that pits city
against city (Leitner and Sheppard 1998). At the intra-urban scale,
such policies necessarily trigger the kind of class conflict Smith (1996)
graphically describes in the context of New York—albeit these ‘‘turf
wars’’ may be played out very differently in different spatial contexts
(after all, neoliberalism is not a coherent and orchestrated political
agenda, more a series of localised experiments in governance—see

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682 Antipode

Larner and Walters 2000). Irrespective of this, it is only when consider-

ing the analogous relations of patriarchy and capitalism that we can
begin to see neoliberal policies are also about asserting the primacy of
virile masculinity. Accordingly, neoliberalism urbanism is not just about
the re-centralisation of capital: it is also about the re-assertion of the
authority of the father-figure in Western consumer society.
Caught up in pernicious processes of spatial cleansing and
‘‘improvement’’ initiated by ‘‘city fathers’’, female sex workers are
thus finding their occupation of public space increasingly curtailed,
and are being displaced to some of the marginal interstices that exist
outside revitalised downtowns. Despite the formation of prostitute
groups that seek to challenge these processes, in the face of dis-
courses that heighten fears of difference, it is difficult for sex workers
to question the logic of the Zero Tolerance policies depicting them as
perpetrators, rather than victims, of urban malaise. The consequence
is that the spatiality and visibility of sex work in Western neoliberal
cities is markedly different from that evident in the industrial era,
when prostitution and commercial sexuality was typically located in
notorious red-light districts contiguous with areas of lower-class occu-
pation in inner cities. Though the processes of displacement vary from
city to city, the purification of the central city is thus having profound
impacts on the spatiality of sex work, bequeathing an economy of
desire and disgust that serves to valorise the central city (as a space of
profitable family-oriented consumption) while forcing prostitutes to
work in the less visible (but highly profitable) spaces of the capitalist
sex industry. Hence, while the consequences of this form of displace-
ment are not damaging for those men who dominate the sex work
industry, they are often highly negative for prostitute women, particu-
larly those who occupied the spaces of the central city on their own
terms as independent sex workers.
This analysis of prostitution in the neoliberal city has accordingly
confirmed that the ‘‘place’’ of sex workers can only be understood in
relation to policies that serve both capital and the phallus. Conse-
quently, rather than challenging geographers’ existing takes on neo-
liberal urban policy, the aim of this paper has been to alert the reader
to the gendered modalities of neoliberal policies. In this sense, it has
echoed Bondi’s (1991:194) critique of Smith’s ‘‘capital-centred’’ gen-
trification research, which, she suggested, served ‘‘as a foil against
opening up questions of gender practises’’. In much the same way,
I have argued accounts highlighting the pivotal role of neoliberal policy
in promoting the ‘‘production of surplus value’’ (Smith 2002:446)
seriously overlook the gendered nature of contemporary urban policy.
In so much that neoliberal policy promotes politically and economic-
ally conservative processes of capital accumulation, it has been argued
here it is also about the reinscription of a virile masculinity, the

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Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City 683

authority of which was seriously undermined in the economic crises of

the 1970s and 1980s (with the disappearance of a once familiar
division of labour organised around the labouring male body and a
procreative female body). This demands closer examination of how
masculinity is invoked and deployed in neoliberal urban policy, and a
heightened sensitivity to transitions in the nature of patriarchy. In
particular, given gay patriarchies appear to conspire with hetero-
normative patriarchies in neoliberal policy (Nast 2002), it appears
imperative that urban researchers devote more attention to the ways
new constructions of masculinity are being played out and embed-
ded in the landscapes of the neoliberal city. It is only in the context
of such gendered readings that we might ultimately be able to
develop ‘‘progressive, geographically-informed urban political praxis’’
(MacLeod 2002:619).

Acknowledgments
The research on which this paper is based (‘‘Regulating sex work: The
impacts of zero tolerance policing in London and Paris’’) was funded
by the British Academy. I also wish to thank Heidi Nast, Loretta Lees,
and Lewis Holloway for their helpful comments on a previous draft of
the paper.

Endnotes
1
A further parallel might be drawn with the disappearance of over 200 young female
maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez in recent years, a ritualised male purification of
public space that Wright (2001) argues is symbolic of disposable labour power.
2
Cabiria’s Journal de répression, de violence et de non-respect des droits. http://www.
cabiria.asso.fr/.
3
Amendment to Article 225–10, Loi Pour Sécurité Intéreure (2003). http://ameli.
senat.fr/publication_pl/2002–2003/30.html (author’s translation).
4
Westminster City Council press release, ‘‘Leicester Square—a premiere family location’’.
http://www.westminster.gov.uk/news/pr 524.ctm (posted 14 February 2002).
5
City of Westminster Pre-Inquiry Unitary Development Plan as agreed by Cabinet on
29 August 2002.6 Westminster City Council press release, ‘‘Council wages war on porn
barons’’. http://www.westminster.gov.uk/cex/wccnews/fa00234.htm (posted September 1999).
7
Downing Street newsroom press release, ‘‘New powers for crime fighters to tackle public
disorder’’. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news.asp/newsID=2495 (posted 31 August 2002).
8
‘‘Prostitutes fight council evictions’’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2746855.stm
(posted 11 February 2003).
9
See http://www.westminster.gov.uk/citygovernment/civicrenewal/cityguardian.cfm.
10
See, for example, ‘‘Cleaning up King’s Cross’’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/
2550709.stm (posted 12 December 2002).
11
‘‘Saving the streetwalkers’’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/2972595.stm
(posted 24 April 2003).
12
Ray Mallon, mayor of Middlesborough, cited in ‘‘Robocop says we’ve had enough’’.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/2311957.stm (posted 9 October 2002). Mallon was
credited with importing US-style Zero Tolerance to Britain when head of Cleveland CID.
13
Lynn Jones MP, in UK parliamentary debate on kerb-crawling (Hansard 11 May 1994,
column 192).

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684 Antipode

14
Cabiria press release, Cabiria web site. http://www.cabiria.asso.fr/ (posted 29 July 2002).
15
Promoting itself as a club ‘‘for sophisticated customers, employees and entertainers alike
around the globe’’, the club charges workers up to £80 a night to work and pockets at least
35% of the dancers’ tips. With a worldwide workforce of 27,000, including 7000 dancers,
Spearmint Rhino can be seen as a significant force in corporate gentrification, albeit that it
brings female sex work within the ambit of a highly regulated capitalist enterprise. See
http://www.spearmintrhino.com/about2.htm.
16
In such ways, Nast’s work represents an important bridging point between the Marxist
feminism that explored the importance of patriarchy in (industrial) capitalism, and the
more recent post-structural geographies that explore the role of desire and subjectivity in
the making of gender inequalities (see also Gibson-Graham 1996).
17
This underlines that gay and straight spaces remain distinguishable, with gay men
remaining subject to homophobic abuse (Namaste 1996). Nonetheless, this does not under-
mine the argument that neoliberal policies reinforce the authority of patriarchal (father)
figures—whether these are homosexual or heterosexual.
18
It is significant that the phenomenon of gay male prostitution is not mentioned in any of
the policy documents or media reports referred to in this paper.

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