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94Urban crime and violenceabove what might be described as the qualities of goodpublic administration in order to move in this direction?Three qualities, in particular, seem to stand out in thiscontext: political will, sustained commitment to action, andstrong and visible leadership.Some examples of the application of these qualitiesare given in the following sub-sections, which utilize twocases, in particular, where major efforts have been made orare in the process of being made to tackle very high levels ofcrime and violence. These are Diadema, a suburb in the SãoPaulo urban region of Brazil and Port Moresby in Papua NewGuinea.Diadema, São PauloDiadema is a relatively recent creation as a suburb of SãoPaulo (Brazil). Its population grew at an annual average rateof 16 per cent between 1950 and 1980, before slowing to anannual average rate of 2.2 per cent over the next twodecades. 40 These growth rates are well in excess of thoseexperienced by São Paulo. Consequently, Diadema hasbecome the second most densely developed location inBrazil. This rapid growth, much of it caused by in-migrationof some of Brazil’s poorest people, seems to haveoverwhelmed the capacity of civic institutions to cope, andone of the consequences of this was the emergence of‘frontier violence’. 41 This relates to the fact that Diadema’shigh level of violence had features in common with someperiods of pioneer settlement in the history of other parts ofthe world – precarious forms of territorial occupation,absence of government and poor local organization.By the1990s, Diadema experienced murder rateswhich were among the highest in the world – 141 per100,000 individuals in 1999. Gang violence and intenseinter-gang rivalry were widespread. This period was characterizedby anarchy and complete breakdown of law andorder. The inability of the police and legal system to tacklecrime and violence meant that a group of people called thejusticeiros dished out their own version of law and order,which included killings. All of this had a generally negativeimpact on the quality of life of the people and on the opportunitiesavailable to them. Problems of this magnitude areclearly not going to be tackled by a single initiative; but criticalto the process of turning this situation around was thedesire of some of the mayors of Diadema over a period oftime to make a difference. The progress that Diadema hasexperienced over the past decade or so is described asfollows:We easily can exaggerate the progress inDiadema. Its broad central avenues, with busterminals, supermarkets, fast food restaurantsand automobile distributorships, no longercreate the impression of a poor city… However… homicide rates are still high, despite theirreduction in recent years. The average monthlyincome of family heads in Diadema in 2000 washalf the average for the municipality of SãoPaulo. But the combined effect of its politicalstructure, of the strengthening of its publicinstitutions and the expansion of commerce hasbeen very positive, showing how much itspeople value stability. Diadema has also shownthat the problem of homicides can be reducedfairly quickly with a political effort based on acommunity consensus and more effective actionby the authorities. Four decades after the startof the migratory surge of precarious settlement,Diadema no longer is a city trapped in adownward spiral of apparently insoluble crises.Instead, it is showing the strength of democracyand is emerging on the crest of a process ofcivilization. 42One initiative that seems to have been important in thisprocess was the enactment and the enforcement of a law toclose all bars in the city after 11.00 pm. The reason for thiswas that a high proportion of the murders in the city tookplace in or near these bars between 11.00 pm and 2.00am. 43 The process of making this happen involved aprotracted period of discussion in the city council aroundthree issues, in particular. These were a recognition of theneed to confront many vested interests if such a new lawwas not going to be undermined by exceptions; 44 the needfor an intense campaign of publicity and persuasion; andthen the need to commit to a major enforcement effortwhich would have to involve partnership between severalpublic institutions that had not always worked in the past.This seems to have had an immediate effect since themonthly homicide rate in the first month of enforcedclosures fell to eight from previous figures that weretypically four or five times higher than this. 45One element in this process may well be the fact thathomicide rates in the Greater São Paulo area were fallinganyway during the early years of the 21st century, withDiadema being both a leading element in this process and abeneficiary of the general economic forces that seem to havebeen helping it. One of the particular characteristics of thisprocess is that locations that were once crime hotspots arebeing turned over to new forms of economic activity that arepushing out crimes and criminals, as the following assessmentillustrates:The public space exposed to violence is shrinking.As in the rest of Greater São Paulo, fewstreets in Diadema remain without paving andlighting. In the periphery, a spontaneousquarantine is developing that tends to isolatebandits from citizens who want to live in peaceand avoid problems. Each group recognizes andrespects the sphere of the other, but keeps itsdistance. A force reducing the space forviolence is the expansion of commerce at alllevels, from the new supermarkets to streetsellers and small neighbourhood repair shops,to women selling candy and cake out of theirhomes. At the edge of Jardim Campanario, avacant municipal lot used to be a killing ground