Quiz: broken windows, poor doors ... can you identify these city euphemisms?

Broken windows on an old brick factory. Photograph: Richard Ellis/Alamy

1. What is the “broken windows” theory of urban policing?

   1. A certain level of property damage is inevitable in the course of catching offenders

   2. Low standards of neighbourhood upkeep allow serious crime to flourish

   3. Vandalism can be deterred if police pre-emptively damage property themselves

   4. Shops with broken windows are less likely to be burgled

2. Who is Inspector Sands?

   1. The first female commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Florence French, nicknamed Sands for her crime-fighting ability – akin to pouring a bucket of sand on a flammable situation

   2. A name announced over the tannoys of London transport stations in order to alert staff that a fire call point has been activated

   3. London mayor Sadiq Khan's pet cat

   4. The codename of an RBS whistleblower who revealed unlawful practices in the bank’s London offices ahead of the 2008 financial crash

3. What are so-called “mass incidents” in China's cities?

   1. Unanticipated delays on public transport

   2. An unusually high number of municipal repair requests in the space of 24 hours

   3. Unsanctioned Catholic services

   4. An impromptu gathering of 100 or more people

4. 

   In Singapore, “NEWater” is reclaimed from what substance?

   1. Low cloud

   2. House plant condensation

   3. Sewage

   4. Sweat

5. What is a Barnes Dance?

   1. A flexible job-sharing arrangement for municipal workers first trialled in Barnes, south-west London

   2. A system of bollard placement for traffic calming first trialled in Barnes City, Iowa

   3. The halting of all traffic at a busy intersection so pedestrians can cross in every direction, including diagonally, made famous by traffic engineer Henry Barnes

   4. An annual country and western disco run by Liverpool city council in honour of Anfield legend John Barnes

6. What is “whitepainting”?

   1. Marking condemned houses for demolition

   2. An early name for gentrification

   3. Deliberate misrepresentation of crime statistics

   4. Minimalist graffiti campaigns by fans of Real Madrid

7. 

   Why is Vancouver known as “Vansterdam”?

   1. Its network of canals, Canada's largest

   2. The city's thriving skateboarding culture

   3. The city’s thriving marijuana culture

   4. The Dutch etymology of the city’s name, which takes its root from the town of Coevorden in the Netherlands

8. What was the target of Sao Paolo’s Clean City Law?

   1. Uncollected refuse

   2. Discarded drug paraphernalia

   3. Swearing in public places

   4. Public advertisements

9. The controversial brainchild of Honolulu mayor Kirk Caldwell, what is a “compassionate disruption”?

   1. A deafening klaxon at 8am to reduce incidents of lateness by municipal employees

   2. A funding programme for local tech firms to develop innovative solutions to urban social problems

   3. A package of laws seeking to force homeless people into shelters by such methods as seizing their belongings

   4. A set of financial incentives for landlords to rent to recently released prisoners

10. What is a “poor door”?

    1. Separate entrances in apartment buildings for lower-paying tenants

    2. The practice among Brooklyn city public schools of applying preferential admissions criteria to lower-income students

    3. The separate entrance through which, by tradition, a New York City mayor must enter City Hall on the first day of office

    4. A Brooklyn bar that claimed to deny admission to any customer who earned more than $40,000 dollars a year

Solutions

1:B - When a broken window goes unrepaired, locals will assume their neighbourhood is not being cared for and antisocial behaviour will increase – or so argued criminologist George L Kelling and social scientist James Q Wilson in the early 1980s. Their theory led to the “zero­-tolerance” approach to crime, now widely associated with Rudolph Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York City and his hand-picked NYPD commissioner, Bill “Father of broken windows” Bratton., 2:B - The fictitious inspector is usually called to a particular location, such as a platform, to indicate where the fire alert has been registered. It is said to refer to the sand used in old-style fire buckets., 3:D - 'Internal contradictions', in the words of the Communist party, have spurred a significant increase in what others might call spontaneous protests in China. Sixty percent of these “mass incidents”, which are much more common in developed areas, are related to land disputes arising when local governments and property developers seize land from farmers. It is seen as a product of China's drive to industrialise and urbanise, with thousands of industrial parks built with land from dispossessed farmers. One particularly noteworthy “mass incident” last year saw tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets in the southwestern city of Linshui to demand high-speed rail. , 4:C - Hailed as a solution to Singapore’s long-term water shortages – the city-state imports half its water supply from Malaysia, a deal set to expire in 2061 – “NEWater” is obtained via a membrane technology that can be used to treat wastewater. It has been called “the pillar of Singapore’s water sustainability” and the city's best bid to increase water independence. , 5:C - Henry Barnes (no relation) worked as a street commissioner for cities including Denver, Baltimore and New York in the mid-20th century. Although he didn’t invent the multi-directional crossing, he popularised it to the extent that it is now used in one of the world's most famous intersections, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. Denver might have stopped using Barnes' system in 2011, but it is making a comeback in other cities, from Toronto to London. , 6:B - “Whitepainting” or “whitewalling” was an early term for gentrification in Toronto. It referred to the white trim added to houses after stripping old paint to reveal the bare brick underneath. Many cities had their own slang for the process of wealthier newcomers refurbishing run-down neighbourhoods: “homesteading” in Baltimore, “red-brick chic” in San Francisco, “brownstoning” in New York and “knocking through” in London in the 1960s. , 7:C - With Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada promising to legalise marijuana, earlier this month a weed dispensary in Vancouver, a city known for its enjoyment of cannabinoids, became one of the first in the country to receive a business licence , 8:D - In 2007, mayor Gilberto Kassab's new law labelled outdoor advertising a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs. , 9:C - Acknowledged as a failure after less than a year, Caldwell’s scheme included a “sit-lie” law – a tactic used in other US cities – that banned sitting or lying on city pavements. It also allowed the belongings of homeless people to be confiscated in a bid to force them into shelters. Critics argued that, effectively, it criminalised homelessness. , 10:A - When renters of cheaper housing units in a new 33-storey Manhattan waterfront tower learned in 2014 that they would have to use a different entrance to their richer neighbours – who had paid up to $25m for condos in the same building – this so-called poor door opened a debate over how best to incorporate affordable housing units in cities around the world.

Scores