Terrorism and Urban Spaces

1. Terrorism and Urban Spaces Professor Jon Coaffee University of Warwick

2. Research Background • PIRA-AQ • RCUK, EU, CONTEST grants • Multidisciplinary • Co-produced with built environment and security professionals • International experiences • Training guides and events

3. Take home messages • Built environment professionals such as planners, architects and urban designers have a key role to place in securing urban public spaces • Greater collaboration between those that design, those that secure and those that use public spaces is required for better CT solutions • Opportunities exist to integrate built in CT solutions with other pressing challenges such as climate change. • Fiscal retrenchment is having a significant impact upon the form of security interventions we see in the city

4. What we know • New attack trajectories – indiscriminate, multiple and coordinated • Concerns over protecting ‘soft’ crowded places where people gather (e.g. shopping areas, transport systems, sports and conference arenas, etc) • Urban renaissance to sterile, unproductive and empty spaces • A lack of integrated thinking amongst built environment decision makers regarding design and management of CT

5. Statement on Security July 2007 • The protection and resilience of our major infrastructure and crowded places requires continuous vigilance. I can confirm that over 900 shopping centres, sports stadiums and venues where people congregate have been assessed by counter terrorism security advisers and over 10,000 premises given updated security advice.

6. Lord West Review of National CT effort • Lord West the security minister in November 2007 called for counter-terrorism measures to be embedded within the design, planning, and construction of public places

7. Approaches • What does this changing context mean in practice? • Raising awareness/training • Linking design and management of crowded spaces • Thinking about visible security and unobtrusive alternatives • Encouraging shared understanding and co-operation

8. Balancing effectiveness and acceptability • We can relatively easily determine effective solutions (incorporating the design and managerial solutions) but these will radically alter everyday urban experience • Acceptability is key - to the owners, inhabitants and users of particular places.

9. A set of key interlocking issues • Timing of adoption • Cost • Dual use/incentivisation • Aesthetics and change in public experience • Affective design and techno-fixes • Multi-stakeholder engagement

10. Timing of adoption • Input at an early stage in the design process is more cost effective and will lead to better solutions • Retro-fitting is more expensive and less effective • The issue is complicated further where multiple stakeholders are involved X

11. Cost • Incredibly difficult to cost for securing crowded places (not only for the design but management and maintenance) • Developers are not legally obliged to adopt CT in most cases • Who will pay? – Reluctance, especially in austerity

12. Dual use/incentivisation • A business case for measures that are solely associated with terrorism can be hard to build • A case that is part of a wider sustainable urbanism strategy and has other benefits for customers and staff is easier to make • Crime reduction • Environmental benefits • Branding opportunities • Insurance reductions • Corporate social responsibility

13. Aesthetics and changes in public experience (1) Things we could/should avoid... Ugly ‘fortress like’ architecture Expensive interventions Ineffective interventions Impacts on permeability/accessibility Disproportionate Fear of crowded places Poor public experience

14. Aesthetics and changes in public experience (2) Unobtrusive solutions... Unobtrusive solutions sort to blend into the cityscape in ways that don’t cause alarm But…non-contestable

15. Highlight a trajectory towards • A focus upon visible security in ‘important’ urban spaces • A related more recent move towards unobtrusive/invisible security • A trend towards behaviouralprofiling • The enhanced monitoring of ‘emotions’ • The creation of more convivial spaces • Technology and predictive practice

16. Affective design to influence behaviour • Different types of approaches to governing by design with different degrees of subtlety • Emotion/cognition monitoring • Biometric and digital traces to aid predictive analysis • Affective atmospheres or ambiences to implicitly make secured spaces feel more convivial and not threatening

17. Multi-stakeholder engagement • Better decision making required • Greater collaboration between those that design, those that secure and those that use public spaces is required for better CT solutions • People (planners, engineers, architects etc.) are keen do ‘do something’ to increase resilience to terrorism, but they don’t know where to start. • We’re developing an interactive way to help people with little knowledge of CT answer these questions: • How do I fit into the bigger picture? • Who should I be talking to about CT? • ...it depends on what stage of life the project is at – construction, operation, refurbishment, change of use, etc.

18. Resilient Design Toolkit http://www.securedbydesign.com/professionals/pdfs/resilient-design.pdf

19. Recent findings/Concerns • Lack of suitable guidance for BE professionals • General lack of awareness of CT threats • Lack of multidisciplinary involvement in CT mitigation • CT not considered in design phase – therefore costly retrofit • CT/Resilience issues are unlikely to be forced through legislative avenues (but increasingly found in guidance)

20. Ways forward • Resiliency as ‘Best practice’ route is the favoured option • Need to operate outside disciplinary and institutional silos (e.gplanners with Emergency planners and the police) • Should be proactive, not reactive and proportionate • Improve education/training within and across disciplines – CPD etc

21. Summary • The importance of a proactive and front-loaded approach – design and management issues should be dealt with at the drawing broad stage of any development. This will improve effectiveness and decrease potential cost. Attempting to add resilience as an after-thought should be avoided. • The key role of training and skills development to raise awareness of options that are available to all built environment professionals involved in the decision making process • The improved integration of and development of potential synergies between different policy streams, for example crime, environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation and counter-terrorism

22. Appropriateness in terms of balancing risk mitigation with aesthetically pleasing and acceptable design. Acceptability here is related to the appropriateness and cost of proposed intervention as well as revenue concerns about management and maintenance • The importance of a well organised disaster risk management system to manage the urban environment and to affect design modification as appropriate according to social, political and economic criteria • The growing awareness of the importance of the collective governance of risk mitigation. CT and resiliency solutions should involve a wide variety of stakeholders from the public, private and community sectors.

23. Proportionality • Lots of disagreements amongst built environment professions with regard to acceptability • The need to avoid a fortress mentality • What is the perceived threat? Generally and across the UK • How does this stack up in relation to other threats?

24. Balance is key • Fine line between managing risk and recklessness • Form follow fear but also fear follows form • National UK guidelines seeks to provide a balance between democracy and risk management responses in the new age of terrorism: • ‘We are mindful of the desire and the need of people in a vibrant democracy like ours to live normal lives without a sense of constant fear. We also know that in part because the terrorist want us to live in fear, and want to damage our economy, and the well being of our people, that they are capable of feeding false information to us in the hope that we over reactGetting the balance right is not easy’

25. Questions • For further details: J.Coaffee@warwick.ac.uk