At street-level: bureaucrats and the spaces of regulation

The ways in which state institutions regulate society and space have significant consequences for contemporary urban life. Regulations such as building, health and liquor codes order social practices in cities according to the political objectives of government, policy makers and local elites. While regulations are drafted as being universally applicable across any territory over which they are imposed, in practice they are selectively enforced and contribute to the production of uneven regulatory geographies. This project examines the shifting geographies of regulation through an investigation of the seemingly mundane practices of street-level bureaucrats in the departments of health, liquor and property use who are responsible for the enforcement of regulations. Following Lipsky (1980), and theorists of governmentality (Rose, 1999), I argue that the way street-level bureaucrats conceive of their jobs, responsibilities and the city itself, produces space, and effectively becomes the public policy they are charged with administering.