Urban spatial order chiefly serves middle-class control yet all residents depend on it

Evidence

Behind the police, of course, stands the middle class. It is they who control the means to keep the spatial order intact in the face of repeated assault. It is they-however unwitting they may be of the full consequences-who perform or have performed at their direction the “dirty work” (Hughes, 1964) of sustaining predictability in a world continually threatened with unpredictability. But all urbanites, including those against whom the instruments of segregation are used, rely on this order, on this predictability, in making their way among strangers. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 530