In the summer of 1987, I saw two men in a subway station force a third to crouch down to wipe his spit off the platform, while other commuters cheered them on. The incident was remarkable, and has remained in my memory, for two reasons. First, it was in Calcutta, a city synonymous with squalor. Second, the two men were not officials responsible for enforcing cleanliness in public places but simply commuters, like the man they had taken to task.
Had he committed his offense on the street above the station, it would almost certainly have gone unnoticed: in much of urban India, expectorating in public places was, and remains, commonplace. But the platforms and cars of Calcutta Metro, India’s first subway system, only a few years old at the time of this incident, were spanking clean—and among commuters, this aroused a sense of pride and responsibility. Those two citizens were prepared to delay their own journey in order to keep the platform spotless.
I was reminded of that incident a couple of weeks ago, during a ride on the Dubai Metro. On a blazing-hot Sunday morning, a group of six Hindi-speaking Indians was walking ahead of me toward a station, sipping sodas and eating ice cream. One of the group, judging by the fact that she was pointing out the landmarks, was obviously a resident; the others were her guests, evidently visitors from back home. When they arrived at the station, she stopped the group and asked them to drop their bottles and cups into the garbage bin.
Why, one of her visitors asked, sardonically, “Is there a fine? As it happens, there is a fine for littering in stations, and it would have been easy enough for her to say so. But she said this: “Yeh fine ka sawal nahin, safai ka sawal hai.” (It is not a question of a fine but of cleanliness.)
As a social scientist would tell you, both these incidents demonstrate the corollary of the Broken Window Theory. The idea is usually cited in the context of criminology, but it applies more generally in urban studies. The concept is summed up nicely by Psychology Today: “visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior.”
If broken windows in a neighborhood remain unmended, it leads some members of the community to think that it is acceptable to break windows. Likewise, studies on littering show that people are much more careless with their trash in dirty places than in clean ones. The obverse of the theory is that if a city maintains clean public places, the public will take it upon itself to keep them that way.
A bet on cleanliness and soft power
The important difference between the two incidents is that whereas the Calcutta Metro stood in contrast to its surroundings, the cleanliness of the Dubai Metro is an extension of the city as a whole. The emirate is routinely ranked the world’s cleanest city by the Global Power City Index, compiled annually by the Mori Memorial Foundation.
This is all the more remarkable since the majority of Dubai’s residents come from places where filthy public spaces are the norm—countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Egypt and the Philippines. “People coming from places where civic sense is almost nonexistent land at DXB, and there’s this immediate transformation,” said Sunil Kanchan, a native of Bombay who has lived in Dubai for 30 years. “The same guys who were dropping their tissues on the floor of the plane are now looking for dustbins in the arrivals terminal.”
Do they do this out of fear of being caught and fined? Certainly, rules—and strict consequences for breaking them—are important for creating and maintaining clean spaces. Singapore, my home of two years in the early 2000s, may be the most striking example of the effectiveness of punishment.
But it is too facile to ascribe cleanliness to enforcement alone. Research shows that, over time, people stop littering even when there’s no risk of being caught and punished, because it feels wrong. That was true in Singapore, and it is true in Dubai. “Maybe for the first few weeks or months, you think about the penalties for breaking the law,” remarked Kanchan. “Then you start thinking, ‘This is my town, it’s a pretty clean town… I’d like it to stay that way.”
Dubai and a question of civility
Dubai takes its ranking in global indices very seriously, since the quality of life it offers is a major draw for investors, immigrants and tourists as well as an instrument of its soft power. So you won’t be surprised to learn that municipal authorities are testing AI cameras to supervise how people treat public space. Those found to be littering can expect stiff fines. But in addition to the stick, the emirate is also investing in carrots. Last fall, it launched the Dubai Civility Committee, with an ambitious mandate to “promote positive behaviors” among residents. “No matter how good your enforcement mechanisms are, there’s always a chance of a window breaking somewhere,” said Saeed al Nazari, secretary general of the committee. “We want the whole community to be involved in prevention—and, when necessary, in repair.”
One of the committee’s first initiatives involves honoring people who display simple acts of civility, including but not limited to keeping public spaces clean. “If a resident makes an effort to improve the quality of life for us all, that should be celebrated,” added al Nazari.
Will it work? Social experiments don’t allow for snap judgements, and it may be years before we know for certain. But it is both instructive and reassuring that Dubai isn’t content to place all its bets on technological solutions.
Back to Calcutta. Nearly four decades on, the subway system there remains cleaner than the city at large, but some of the behavior from the surface has begun to seep down into the underground. So much so that the authorities have been obliged to employ anti-littering squads to try to prevent spitting and other unclean behavior. If commuters won’t take that responsibility upon themselves, the threat and enforcement of fines will have to serve the purpose.
Dubai, which already has fines and enforcement, knows that these aren’t enough, which is why it is now supplementing those tools with some social engineering. It is an exercise that other cities ought to watch closely.