Generally, personal attitudes toward CCTV were dependent on a variety of variables and contexts. Although having a small overall range of mobility, the respondents from the selected neighborhoods provided different views of the city regarding feelings of safety and views of crime rates. These views reflected their conceptions of the social and political characteristics of various neighborhoods of the city (Hamburg, Germany). Without personal experiences of what was happening in various areas of the city, they relied on secondary information, rumors, and general images of certain places and localities. Their differing perceptions of various areas of the city regarding safety and crime rates also were seen in their attitudes toward CCTV surveillance. People who viewed their own neighborhoods as safe while viewing other areas of the city as unsafe, tended to view CCTV as acceptable in perceived high-crime areas while perceiving it as an invasion of privacy in their own neighborhoods. For those who viewed the city as a whole as being generally safe, CCTV was viewed as inherently an invasion of privacy. The study selected two neighborhoods in Hamburg, one in the inner city and one in the suburbs. There were no police-controlled CCTV systems in place in the city at the time of the study. A combination of two methods was used. The first part (the mapping part) included a variety of maps, which were used to obtain information from residents on perceptions of the city regarding their characteristics. The second part of the interview was a structured qualitative interview on perceptions of the city, spatial aspects of safety, and assessment of CCTV. 3 tables, 8 figures, and 31 references