Protecting vulnerable cities: The UK's resilience response to defending everyday urban infrastructure

International Affairs

Volumn 86, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 939-954

  Coaffee, Jon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 77954828802     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: 14682346     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2010.00921.x     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Jon Coaffee, 'Rings of steel, rings of concrete and rings of confidence: designing out terrorism in central London pre and post 9/11', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28: 1, 2004, pp. 201-11.
2. Jon Coaffee, Paul O'Hare and Marian Hawkesworth, 'The visibility of (in)security: the aesthetics of planning urban defences against terrorism', Security Dialogue, 40: 4/5, 2009, pp. 489-511 at p. 500.
3. Coaffee et al., 'The visibility of (in)security', p. 500.
4. See e.g. Trevor Boddy, 'Architecture emblematic: hardened sites and softened symbols', in Michael Sorkin, ed., Indefensible space (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), pp. 277-304.
5. The other option that was readily considered for embassies after 9/11 was relocation to out-of-city sites.
6. Robert Booth, 'Ambassador, you are spoiling our view of the Thames with this boring glass cube', Guardian, 24 Feb. 2010, p. 13.
7. It should be noted that security design for embassies represents the extreme end of urban fortifications, and that this article is concerned with how such principles are reapplied in areas of the city where access is not so closely restricted and where the public regularly gather.
8. Nan Ellin, ed., Architecture of fear (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).
9. Nicholas Rose, 'Government and control', British Journal of Criminology, 40: 2, 2000, pp. 321-39.
10. Coaffee et al., 'The visibility of (in)security', p. 491.
11. Jon Coaffee, Terrorism, risk and the city (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
12. See e.g. Stephen Brown, 'Central Belfast's security segment: an urban phenomenon', Area, 17: 1, 1985, pp. 1-8.
13. Large devices exploded in the city of London in April 1992 and April 1993, and in the London Docklands in 1996. A number of further attacks were thwarted. For a detailed account, see Coaffee, 'Rings of steel'.
14. See e.g. Arnon Soffer and Julian V. Minghi, 'Israel's security landscapes: the impact of military considerations on land-use', Political Geographer, 38: 1, 1986, pp. 28-41.
15. See e.g. Eve E. Hinman and David. J. Hammond, Lessons from the Oklahoma City bombing: defensive design techniques (Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1997).
16. Jon Coaffee and Paul O'Hare, 'Urban resilience and national security: the role for planning', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Urban Design and Planning, 161: DP4, 2008, pp. 173-82.
17. Martha Baer, Katrina Heron, Oliver Morton and Evan Ratliff, Safe: the race to protect ourselves in a newly dangerous world (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
18. See e.g. Stephen Graham, 'Special collection: reflections on cities. September IIth and the "war on terrorism" - one year on', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26: 3, 2002, pp. 589-90.
19. Jon Coaffee, Cerwyn Moore, David Fletcher and Lee Bosher, 'Resilient design for community safety and terror-resistant cities', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Municipal Engineer, 161: ME2, 2008, pp. 103-10.
20. See e.g. Andrew Silke, ed., Research on terrorism: trends, achievements, failures (London: Frank Cass, 2004).
21. HM Government, The United Kingdom's strategy for countering international terrorism (London: TSO, March 2009), p. 11.
22. Coaffee et al., 'Resilient design'. Moreover, others have charted this shift from 'hard' government targets towards 'soft targets' with the assertion that citizens' payment of taxes legitimizes their being targeted in the minds of terrorists: see e.g. Adam Dolink, 'Assessing the terrorist threat to Singapore's land transportation infrastructure', Journal of Homeland and Emergency Management, 4: 2, 2007, pp. 1-22.
23. Home Office, Working together to protect crowded places: a consultation document (London: Home Office, 2009), p. 11.
24. HM Government, Countering international terrorism: the United Kingdom's strategy (London: HMSO, 2006).
25. CPNI, http://www.cpni.gov.uk/About/whatWeDo.aspx, accessed 30 Nov. 2007.
26. CPNI, http://www.cpni.gov.uk/About/cpniContext.aspx, accessed 30 Nov. 2007. CPNI provides integrated security advice to the businesses and organizations which comprise the national infrastructure so as to reduce the vulnerability of this infrastructure to terrorism and other threats. It is an interdepartmental governmental organization comprising the security services and other departments with responsibility for infrastructure.
27. Coaffee, 'Rings of steel'. These security devices had been specifically designed to provide maximum protection and are intended to be used by designers, planners, architects, security managers and facilities managers within the public and private sectors. These security barriers and bollards have Publicly Available Specifications awarded by the British Standards Institution (PAS 69: 2006; PAS 68: 2007).
28. Jon Coaffee, 'Urban renaissance in the age of terrorism: revanchism, social control or the end of reflection/', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29: 2, 2005, pp. 447-54 at p. 453.
29. Boddy, for instance, in 'Architecture emblematic', refers to this as an architecture of reassurance.
30. Coaffee et al., 'The visibility of (in)security'.
31. Jon Coaffee, 'Protecting the urban: the dangers of planning for terrorism', Theory, Culture and Society, 26: 7-8, 2009, pp. 343-55.
32. BBC News, 'London terror attack inevitable', 16 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/i/hi/uk_politics/3515312.stm, accessed 20 March 2004. On 11 March 2004 commuter trains in Madrid were attacked a by series of coordinated bombings that killed 191 people and wounded 1, 800.
33. BBC online, 'City a target, police chief fears', 10 Aug. 2005, http://www.bbc.co.Uk/1/hi/business/4137068.stm, accessed 11 Aug. 2005.
34. See http://www.essrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/research/research_prog rainines/security.aspx and http://www.globaluncertainties.org.uk, both accessed 12 March 2010.
35. One such project, the research for which forms the basis of this article, was the 'Resilient design (RE-Design) for counterterrorism: decision support for designing effective and acceptable resilient places' project supported by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant (EP/F008635/1).
36. Coaffee et al., 'Resilient design', p. 108.
37. On 29 June two car bombs were left strategically outside a well-known central London nightclub. A day later Glasgow International Airport was attacked when a jeep loaded with gas canisters was driven into the doors of the airport terminal and set ablaze.
38. See 'City a target, police chief fears', 25 July 2007, http://www.numberio.gov.uk/output/Page12675.asp, accessed 4 May 2008.
39. This was undertaken by Counter Terrorist Security Advisers - security specialists trained by the National Counterterrorist Security Office and working across the UK. See http://www.nactso.gov.uk/ctsa.php, accessed 12 March 2010.
40. Jacqui Smith, Hansard (Commons), 14 Nov. 2007, col. 45WS.
41. Gordon Brown, Hansard (Commons), 14 Nov. 2007, col. 667.
42. See 'Statement on security'.
43. This focus upon crowded places was backed up by further official reports such as Her Majesty's Government, National Security Strategy: security in an interdependent world (London: Cabinet Office, 2008) and Cabinet Office, National risk register (London: Cabinet Office, 2008).
44. Home Office, Working together, p. 4.
45. Home Office, Working together, p. 5.
46. Gordon Brown, Hansard (Commons), 14 Nov. 2007, col. 45WS, quoted in Coaffee and O'Hare, 'Urban resilience and national security'.
47. Lee Bosher, Hazards and the built environment: attaining built-in resilience (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008), p. 13.
48. Jon Coaffee and Lee Bosher, 'Integrating counterterrorist resilience into sustainability', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Urban Design and Planning, 161: DP2, 2008, pp. 75-83 at p. 75.
49. Stephen Bayley, 'From car bombs to carbuncles', Observer, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2212697,00.html, accessed 18 Nov. 2007.
50. Coaffee et al., 'The visibility of (in)security', pp. 498-9.
51. See e.g. Rachel Briggs, 'Invisible security: the impact of counterterrorism on the built environment', in Rachel Briggs, ed., Joining forces: from national security to networked security (London: Demos, 2005), pp. 68-90.
52. Boddy, 'Architecture emblematic', p. 291.
53. Department for Communities and Local Government, National indicators for local authorities and local authority partnerships: handbook of definitions, draft for consultation (London: DCLG, 2007).
54. See http://www.nactso.gov.uk/argusprofessional.php, accessed 12 March 2010.
55. These are called architectural liaison officers or crime prevention design advisers.
56. HM Government, The United Kingdom's strategy for countering international terrorism (London: TSO, 2009).
57. HM Government, The United Kingdom's strategy for countering international terrorism, p. 7.
58. A senior police detective, cited in David Leppard, 'Police expect Mumbai-style attack on the City of London', The Times (online), 20 Dec. 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/nwes/uk/crime/article6962867.ece, accessed 20 Dec. 2009.
59. Coaffee, 'Protecting the urban'.
60. Home Office, The United Kingdom's strategy for countering international terrorism, p. 117.
61. These questions are being researched on an ESRC New Security Challenges grant in the project 'The built environment: mirror and mediator of radicalisation'. See http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/architecture/research/radicalisation/, accessed 1 May 2010.
62. See esp. the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/ukpga_20040036_en_1, accessed 12 March 2010.
63. Richard Little, 'Holistic strategy for urban security', Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 10: 2, 2004, pp. 52-9 at p. 57.
64. See e.g. HM Government, The United Kingdom security and counterterrorism science and innovation strategy (London: TSO, 2007)
65. HM Government, The United Kingdom's science and technology strategy for countering international terrorism (London: TSO, 2009).
66. See e.g. Peter Adey, "'May I have your attention": airport geographies of spectatorship, position, and (im) mobility', Environment and Planning D, 25: 3, 2007, pp. 515-36.
67. HM Government, Countering the terrorist threat: social and behaviour science - how academia and industry can play their part (London: HM Government, March 2010), p. 12.
68. HM Government, Countering the terrorist threat, p. 12.
69. This is potentially an important development, given the clear indication that traditional surveillance is no deterrent against the new breed of urban ('suicide') terrorist.
70. The implementation of this system followed extensive trials, which initially had little to do with terrorism and predated 9/11. The original intention was to develop a crowd flow monitoring system; it morphed into something more as its potential to spot those waiting on station platforms to commit suicide was realized.
71. For a full description, see Jon Coaffee, Terrorism, risk and the global city: towards urban resilience (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).
72. In the UK such 'risk assessments' have proved highly controversial, especially outside London, where the likelihood of terror attack is deemed by many to be low, despite the warnings from counterterror specialists that attacks targeting public places could occur anywhere and at any time. This has meant that embedding counterterror features into crowded places has remained largely restricted to London. Likewise, cost has emerged as a key barrier to implementation, especially in the current straitened financial environment.
73. HM Government, Working together to protect crowded places.
74. HM Government, Crowded places: the planning system and counterterrorism (London: TSO, 2010)
75. HM Government, Protecting crowded places: design and technical issues (London: TSO, 2010).
76. There are examples of less visible security features being embedded in UK cityscapes. However, the number of such schemes is likely to remain small, particularly outside major conurbations, where threat levels are deemed low and the cost of putting in place any additional security measures is prohibitive.
77. Coaffee and O'Hare, 'Urban resilience and national security'.
78. 'Shared scourge, different causes', Guardian, 30 March 2010, p. 30.