The development of defensive strategies encompassing the fortification and privatization of the city has attracted significant attention during recent years, and has become particularly relevant in ...the aftermath of September 11th. Dealing with issues of risk, security and the spatial restructuring of contemporary western cities, this book examines how the perceived risk of terrorist attack led to changes in the physical form and institutional infrastructure of the city of London during the 1990s when the city was a prime terrorist target. The book analyses how the various formal and informal strategies adopted in the City attempted to reduce both the physical and financial risk of terrorism. This was undertaken through a series of place- specific security initiatives and risk management policies which led to increased fortification, a substantial rise in terrorism insurance premiums, and, changing institutional relations at a variety of spatial scales. It also argues that the security measures deployed were developed not in terms of an anti-terrorist effort, but in relation to the unintended by-products of these approaches such as crime reduction and enhanced traffic management capabilities.
Regulatory agencies have long adopted a three‐tier framework for risk assessment. We build on this structure to propose a tiered approach for resilience assessment that can be integrated into the ...existing regulatory processes. Comprehensive approaches to assessing resilience at appropriate and operational scales, reconciling analytical complexity as needed with stakeholder needs and resources available, and ultimately creating actionable recommendations to enhance resilience are still lacking. Our proposed framework consists of tiers by which analysts can select resilience assessment and decision support tools to inform associated management actions relative to the scope and urgency of the risk and the capacity of resource managers to improve system resilience. The resilience management framework proposed is not intended to supplant either risk management or the many existing efforts of resilience quantification method development, but instead provide a guide to selecting tools that are appropriate for the given analytic need. The goal of this tiered approach is to intentionally parallel the tiered approach used in regulatory contexts so that resilience assessment might be more easily and quickly integrated into existing structures and with existing policies.
In recent years, ideas of security and resilience have become increasingly embedded in urban planning and design practice, and in national security and energy policy, as attempts have been made to ...make the built environment and critical energy infrastructure more resistant to disruptive challenges. This has taken place with particular regard to the threat of climate change and to the security challenges faced by many cities as a result of the threat of terrorism. In this context, this paper explores the possible synergies between security and environmental issues, and policies connected to the planning, design, and engineering of the built environment. As the paper illustrates, there may be opportunities for further integration between these areas of concern.
This paper develops an institutionalist framework for analysing transformations in urban governance, focusing in particular on assessing the potential of initiatives designed to 'mainstream' citizen ...participation and 'voice' in local government processes. The framework centres on an analytical conception of levels of social formation: specific episodes of collective action; the on-going work of governance practices and discourse formation and use; and underpinning culturally embedded assumptions and habits. The central argument is that transformations in urban governance capacity need to penetrate all three levels to effect enduring changes in governance cultures. The framework is used to assess the early experience of an attempt to introduce 'area committees' by Newcastle City Council, UK, and their ability to act as a 'voice for place'. The paper examines how far the area committee initiative has the potential to achieve the objectives set for it, the qualities of the emerging governance processes in the initiative and their potential to transform the wider context of urban governance in the city.
This paper examines the form, function and impact of previous Olympic security arrangements and their intersection with planning practice. Drawing from prior and ongoing empirical research ...investigating the security practices at summer Olympic Games, the paper argues that wider shifts towards 'total' security models comprising continually reproduced security motifs can be observed that are increasingly standardized, mobile, globalized and planned-in. For most Olympic organizers, preparations now necessarily include attempts to equate spectacle with safety and to 'design-out' terrorism by relying on highly militarized tactics and expensive and detailed contingency planning. Such securitizing practices have intensified in form and scale since 9/11, with such intensification set to continue at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, where a vast security infrastructure is being embedded into the large-scale and long-term master-plans for the central city. This represents a high point in spatial planning practice through embracing principles of security-by-design where Games-time security infrastructure, whilst providing effective protection, becomes a less visible but permanent, physical legacy that can also contribute to local programmes of regeneration, climate resilience and crime prevention. The paper concludes by reflecting upon what the continual evolution of security infrastructure means for the balancing of planned-in security and spectacle at future Olympiads.
Employing an institutionalist approach to governance, and engaging with recent scholarship on organisational resilience and scalar politics, this paper focuses upon institutional reactions to ...terrorism in London between 1990 and 2020 and explores the mechanisms through which responses to disruption occurred. Empirically, this applied paper tracks specific emergency processes, governance assemblages and policy mechanisms that have been enacted in London in response to terrorism. More specifically, it tracks changes in the institutional dynamics involved in the reorganisation of traditional governance apparatus, the mobilisation of adaptive capacity, and the generation of multi-stakeholder visions for futureproofing against terrorist attack. Such institutional changes are explored through three vignettes of responses to terrorist incidents: against financial targets in the 1990s; in relation the risk of attack after 9/11 and in preparation for securing the 2012 Olympics; and in response to recent attacks against crowded places since 2012. This paper illuminates how institutional responses to terrorism have evolved from a focus upon small specialist networks that dealt just with terrorism, to much larger multi-institutional, multi-scalar and multihazard responses to, and preparations for, complex emergencies that cut across numerous administrative jurisdictions. The paper concludes by posing wider questions about optimal institutional form(s) required for responding to future shocks.
•London's institutional responses to terrorism are analysed over a 30-year period.•London's preparedness for acts of terrorism is still a work in progress.•Through strategic policies London has increasingly institutionalised resilience across municipal authorities and emergency stakeholders.•London is increasingly active in promoting learning and knowledge exchange for global counter-terrorism.•Through partnership approaches to governance, cities can become more resilient to terrorism and others disruptive shocks.
Resilience is a concept incorporating a vast range of contemporary risks and over recent years has become increasingly important to our understanding of contemporary planning policy and practice. ...This paper examines the changing nature of resilience strategies since 2000 and highlights how planners increasingly are asked to contribute to this agenda. Drawing on the emerging theories of urban resilience, this paper charts the emergence of different 'styles' of resilience over the last decade in the UK, with an emphasis on a range of policies associated with designing safer spaces. Emerging lessons are then deployed to highlight how a new generation of urban resilience practice is now emerging associated with embedding resiliency into local place-making activities. This paper concludes by reflecting upon the multiple uses of resilience in planning practice.
Drawing on, and integrating, emerging theories and practices of urban resilience, this article charts the emergence and progression of different ‘waves’ of resilience policy in the UK. Specifically, ...it argues that changing practices of resilience have emerged both as a function of time, and in relation to a range of changing socio-political and economic pressures, which have re-articulated the meaning, scale, operational role of, and responsibility for, resilience. The article seeks to critique resilience policy, raising questions about the usefulness of emerging resilience as the central organising concept for depicting how urban systems respond to contemporary and future crises.
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