Security, Resilience and Planning: Planning's Role in Countering Terrorism

Editor

Preface and Acknowledgements

Public safety has always been a material consideration in planning processes and a fundamental premise of successful public spaces, but despite this, security and counter-terrorism are not normally considered the preserve of planners. These are tasks that have conventionally been left almost exclusively to the police or military, despite the vast body of planning-related research that has highlighted how the configuration of the built environment can influence criminal behaviour, as well as how increasingly collaborative forms of decision-making can lead to better planning outcomes. In this wider context, it is perplexing that until recently, planners have been largely excluded from how defensive features have been implemented in our cities, which have often failed to fulfil the basic tenets of good planning.

For the majority of planners, the world of security appears to be secretive and sensitive, with specialist language used, and complex methodologies deployed that are difficult to comprehend. Yet, over recent decades, planners are increasingly being given responsibility for security and counter-terrorism issues whether they like it or not, posing a set of questions about how planners better engage with security professionals and how they might up-skill to be able to adequately carry out this new and pressing task. Therefore, in many ways this book is also a text about the changing roles and responsibilities of planners. This shifting nature of planning is not just about countering the threat of terrorism, but has progressed, in more general terms, alongside the endless list of complex challenges that planners are tasked with in order to create better places. Whether it is about securing the public realm, reducing obesity or adapting to climate change, planning is now very different to its traditional function of land use development. It is now about forging new relationships with different stakeholders, thinking holistically about problems and solutions, balancing social, economic and environmental concerns in place-making, and improving quality of life.

Specifically, this book offers key concepts and practical guidance about the planner’s role in countering terrorist risk. It seeks to demystify the subject of planning’s role in security and counter-terrorism and in so doing encourage practising planners, planning researchers and planning students to engage seriously with the issue. The book sets out a chronology by which the planner’s expected role in such endeavours has evolved from a preoccupation with crime prevention in the 1960s and 1970s, through to early attempts to work with the police and military to counter terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. This story continues through the 1990s when planners in specific locations became more involved with counter-terrorism agendas and engaged with security professionals, but where their role was more focused on consultation than action. All of this changed in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), after which the role that planners could play in implementing security solutions that were effective, acceptable and proportionate to the perceived risk came into focus. Here, in many countries, attempts to make the homeland more resilient become a national priority. Over time, such requirements have subsequently become a more mainstream issue for planners to consider in their everyday practice. Security needs have also been written into planning guidance and legislation in a variety of ways, and bespoke training courses have been devised to improve planners’ knowledge and awareness of available security solutions.

In more recent years, terror attacks in Berlin, Nice, Stockholm, London, Melbourne, Barcelona, New York and elsewhere, using fast-moving vehicles in crowded places, has led to a further re-evaluation of security in many public locations. In these uncertain times, planners are increasingly being seen as key stakeholders in national security and counter-terrorism endeavours where the spatial configuration and aesthetic design of protective security interventions will have a crucial impact upon the vibrancy, resilience and safety of urban centres, both now and in the future.

This book is informed by 25 years of research by the author into how security, resilience and counter-terrorism have intersected with the practice of planning and the formal planning system. This work has involved hundreds of conversations with planners and security professionals and has been conducted in many countries with a range of government agencies and professional planning associations. It has involved action-research where advice and guidance have been given and promoted, and training for both security professionals and planners regarding their co-operative roles in security and counter-terrorism has been developed and delivered. The work has been facilitated by a host of research grants from UK research councils, the European Union and a range of private consultancies. It has also been conducted alongside many people in academia and I would particularly like to thank John Gold, Steve Graham, Paul O’Hare, Lee Bosher, Billy Hynes, Jonathan Clarke and Rob Rowlands for their help, encouragement and support over many years.

Chapter 1

Planning’s Role in Counter-Terrorism

Introduction

In February 2010, amid some controversy, proposed plans were unveiled for the design of a new US Embassy building on a vacant site in Wandsworth, south-west London. Planning permission was granted and building work began in 2013 at an estimated cost of over $1 billion.¹ The requirement for a new embassy was deemed vital for ‘security purposes’, with the existing embassy site seen as vulnerable to terrorist attack, and difficult and costly to protect, given its constrained location. The previous embassy site in Grosvenor Square, central London, had, since the events of 9/11, become a virtual citadel surrounded by residential and commercial premises, and had provoked much public protest regarding the high fences, concrete barriers, crash-rated steel road blockers and armed guards that came to encircle the site to protect it from vehicle bombing.² As a result the previous embassy – dubbed ‘the fortress in the square’ – was said to have offended the ‘aesthetic sensibilities’ of local residents, some of whom apparently moved away rather than live near a perceived terrorist target.³ The 2010 design for the new embassy, and the rationale for relocation from the current site, incorporated a number of the characteristics of planning-led attempts to design-out terrorism that were in line with many national security strategies released in the wake of 9/11.

Figure 1

The fortified US Embassy site, Grosvenor Square, London

In an international context, it can be argued that many states, notably the US and UK, have visually exaggerated interests of national security through the architectures of overseas embassies that have been subjected to acute target-hardening, with resultant impacts upon the surrounding urban areas. Over recent decades, the aim of ensuring an impregnable, sealed site had become key modus operandi for designers of many embassies, and other high-risk locations worldwide, as security professionals reacted swiftly to the growing threat of terrorist attack. However, more recently, attention has begun to turn away from the ‘fortress’ emblem design of many embassies that was intensified immediately following 9/11. Today, there is increased emphasis given to the aesthetics of architectural design, the role of planning in the process of ensuring embassy security, and the impact such defensive structures can have upon surrounding areas and communities.

With these key principles in mind, the plans for the new US Embassy in south-west London sought to incorporate a number of innovative and largely ‘stealthy’ counter-terrorism design features. Many of these features were also reminiscent of medieval times, notably the blueprint for a stronghold: a protected castle keep surrounded by moats or ditches, which could be crossed using ramparts. The lead architect, from Pennsylvania firm KieranTimberlake, noted at the time of the original plans that his designs had been stimulated by European castle architecture and that, in addition to the use of a blast-proof glass facade, he had sought to use landscape features imaginatively as security devices. This, he argued, was to minimise the use of fences and walls to avoid giving a ‘fortress feel’ to the site. Ponds and multi-level gardens were also suggested as security features, in part to provide a 30-metre protective ‘blast zone’ around the site. Referring to his largely glass-based design, the lead architect further noted in The Guardian newspaper that ‘we hope the message everyone will see is that it is open and welcoming’ and that ‘it is a beacon of democracy – light filled and light emitting’.⁴

Figure 2

Initial plans for the new US Embassy in London

As it finally opened to the public, on time, in December 2017, the designers reiterated that security was a major part of the contract to design the most expensive US building ever constructed beyond its shores, with at least half the $1 billion budget being spent on meeting and exceeding security needs and making the new embassy arguably the safest building in London. Although widely condemned by some on architectural grounds, the design and construction of the embassy illuminates a number of key features of contemporary counter-terrorism philosophy as applied to the protection of urban areas. These include the need to integrate effective protective security into the design of sites that are directly related to the risks involved; the increased importance of built environment professionals such as planners, architects and urban designers in security planning; and the need to consider the visible impact of security measures and, where appropriate, make these as unobtrusive as possible. How these key principles of proportionality, collective responsibility and visibility of protective security – now often dubbed resilience – emerged as key material considerations for planners and the extent to which they have been embedded within contemporary planning processes will be explored in this book.

In examining how the changing nature of terrorism has affected the practice of planning, three key themes are also pertinent. First, the need to consider the physical, or material, changes brought about through counter-terrorism measures being embedded in the urban landscape and how they serve to codify particular spaces in relation to levels of perceived risk. Second, a requirement to chart the changing routines and relationships of those responsible for maintaining and enhancing the built environment. Here the implementation of protective security has a number of implications for the everyday working practices of planners and other built environment professionals who have been asked to assist with broader national security agendas. Notably, the drawing in, or co-opting, of planners into counter-terrorism priorities challenges traditional security studies orthodoxy, which sees security as the exclusive responsibility of the state’s policing and military personnel. This also raises ethical concerns about the willingness of planners to engage in programmes of work explicitly connected with national security. Third, a need to consider the social and cultural impacts of security on the public spaces of the city, and to question if such interventions are in the public interest. For example, how does the need for protective security trade-off against the need for access to public space? How does fortified security change the look and feel of certain locations? In addition, perhaps most importantly, how does the public feel about the imposition of security schemes that planners are partially responsible for?

Fundamentally, the expectation that planners have a part to play in enhancing national security and embedding resilience into urban areas also relates to the changing roles and responsibilities of planners. Urban planning is increasingly seen as a universal remedy to an ever-increasing array of socio-economic problems, policy priorities and risks and threats facing contemporary society. We are told that the role and remit of the planning professions now includes, for example, dealing with climate change, devising strategies to cope with economic austerity, tackling obesity and improving health and wellbeing. This is in addition to its formative role in balancing the social, economic and environmental impacts of development in all its guises, all of which will add to the workload of an already overburdened planning system. Therefore, it is not surprising that planners have been implicated in counter-terrorism agendas and been offered training towards such endeavours. In the context of security planning, this means that new relationships between planners, criminologists, the police and other security professionals need to be forged and operationalised. As this book will demonstrate, this is not strictly a new role for planning, rather one that has been reinvigorated, having laid relatively dormant for many years.

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