Ambassadors on City Centre Frontiers

Abstract

This chapter investigates uniformed patrols called ‘ambassadors’, who are increasingly providing security in the nooks and crannies of city centre cores across many countries. These programmes migrated from US cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia to cities in Canada, then to the UK cities, and far beyond, and are intimately connected with urban ‘revitalisation’ and mostly class-based gentrification strategies. Interviews with public police and ambassadors in three Canadian cities reveal that ambassador operations and practices are shaped and made possible by relations with police that entail exchanging knowledge for limited training and tacit tolerance. Ambassadors act as police ‘eyes and ears’ and govern ‘nuisance’, using indirect and unauthorised strategies. In these arrangements, ambassadors are not so much ‘steered’ by police as ‘anchored’, suggesting notions of ‘networked governance’.