Jon Coaffee

Security is Coming Home: Rethinking Scale and Constructing Resilience in the Global Urban Response to Terrorist Risk

This article argues that contemporary security as a concept, practice and commodity is undergoing a rescaling, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, with previously international security concerns penetrating all levels of governance. Security is becoming more civic, urban, domestic and personal: security is coming home. In the context of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), asymmetric confl ict, the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘splintering’ of cosmopolitan urban centres, policy is increasingly centred around military derived constructions of risk. This securitisation is bound up in neoliberal economic competition between cities and regions for ‘global’ status, with security emerging as a key part of the offer for potential inward investment. The result is increasing temporary and permanent fortifi cation and surveillance, often symbolic or theatrical, in which privileged transnational elites gain feelings of safety at the expense of the liberty and mobility of ordinary citizens.

Art, Gentrification and Regeneration – From Artist as Pioneer to Public Arts

ABSTRACT The role of art and the artist has played a part in both of the main long-established theories of gentrification, looking respectively at ‘culture’ and ‘capital’ as key drivers. Cultural analyses of gentrification have identified the individual artist as an important agent in the initiation of gentrification processes in old working-class neighbourhoods. Alternative theorizations have recognized a second stage where capital follows the artist into gentrified localities, commodifying its cultural assets and displacing original artists/gentrifiers. The paper will argue that more recently a third key model of gentrification can be recognized where the main driver of gentrification is ‘public policy’ which seeks to use ‘positive’ gentrification as an engine of urban renaissance. This involves the use of public art and cultural facilities as a promoter of regeneration and associated gentrification. This will be examined in relation to the arts-led regeneration strategy adopted in Gateshead in north-east England and critique whether the linking of art, regeneration and gentrification as public policy can be extended beyond the usual ‘Docklands’-style localities of urban renaissance. In particular, it will consider whether this might play a role in the transformation of unpopular and stigmatized urban neighbourhoods and the renewal of urban housing markets.

Rebordering the city for new security challenges: From counter-terrorism to community resilience

Abstract Since September 11, many cities have undergone significant changes in both morphology and management as a result of the greater perceived risk of terrorist attack. Such changes have often sought to territorialise the city through the redesign of space and the modernisation of management systems. More recently, such ‘resilience’ planning is becoming increasingly focused upon how the general public can assist this securitisation process by becoming better prepared and more responsible for their personal risk management. To illustrate these processes, a case study of Manchester, UK, between 1996 and 2006 will be used to indicate how these operational changes are having impacts on the rebordering of the city and upon broader issues of citizenship. The paper also questions how greater public acceptability can be achieved within urban security strategies.

Rescaling and responsibilising the politics of urban resilience : from National Security to local place-making

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.

The Visibility of (In)security: The Aesthetics of Planning Urban Defences Against Terrorism

Urban defences against terrorism have traditionally been based on territorial interventions that sought to seal off and surveil certain public and private spaces considered targets. Lately, though, a much wider range of crowded and public spaces have been viewed as potential targets and thus have been identified as requiring additional security. This has immense implications for the experience of the ‘everyday’ urban landscape. Drawing on contemporary notions that incorporate the study of aesthetics and emotions within critical security and terrorism studies, this article discusses the visual impact of counter-terrorism security measures. It analyses the ‘transmission’ of symbolic messages, as well as the variety of ways in which security might be ‘received’ by various stakeholders. The analysis takes place against the backdrop of concern that obtrusive security measures have the capacity to radically alter public experiences of space and in some cases lead to (intended and unintended) exclusionary practices or a range of negative emotional responses. The article concludes by outlining a ‘spectrum of visible security’ ranging between traditional obtrusive fortified approaches and approaches that embed security features seamlessly or even ‘invisibly’ into the urban fabric.

Moral panics and urban renaissance

As cities around the world are re‐shaped by urban renewal policies underpinned by a concern with enhancing quality of life, tensions inevitably arise about whose quality of life is enhanced, and at whose expense? In this piece, Rogers and Coaffee critically interrogate the effects of quality of life policies which target UK city centres. Their particular concern here is with the exclusion of young people from the spaces of the city and from the policy processes which seek to re‐shape those spaces. They explore these issues through an analysis of the ways in which the agencies promoting Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne’s urban renaissance have positioned young people’s various uses of the city centre. Their paper highlights the exclusionary consequences of single‐minded attempts to enhance quality of life which fail to give recognition to the diversity of lifestyles or urban populations, thereby displacing and dispersing some populations to the margins. Nonetheless, Rogers and Coaffee also find evidence of alternative approaches, which might go some way to fostering a more diverse urban public realm.

Achieving successful participation in the new UK spatial planning system

This article assesses how the planning reforms in the UK, focused on the creation of local development frameworks (LDFs), are being put into practice and how the changes are helping to achieve Government objectives of achieving successful participation in the planning system. The article draws on an extensive range of literature sources, both academic and policy related, from land use planning and related fields of local governance and urban regeneration, including consideration of recent Government initiatives such as local strategic partnerships and community strategies—as well as ongoing research by the authors as part of the UK Government-funded Spatial Plans in Practice investigation. This article also has a practical purpose in that it is intended to be of use to practitioners in further exploring the extent to which such concepts and practical advice can be applied to everyday practices, and with what results, within the LDF process. Following this introduction, consideration is given to why participation is needed, in terms of both the advantages of making well-informed decisions based on a thorough knowledge of stakeholder needs and expectations, and the statutory requirements set out in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (PCPA) 2004 and associated guidance. The third section asks ‘what is effective participation?’, discusses key conceptualizations of participation and explores the changing nature of community and stakeholder involvement in planning. This is followed by guidance on possible approaches to effective participation along with a discussion of the potential barriers and how to overcome them. In conclusion, the final section pulls together some of the general issues and tensions that are likely arise during the design and implementation of the participation process, drawing on the literature for ways to understand and address these.

Towards Next-Generation Urban Resilience in Planning Practice: From Securitization to Integrated Place Making

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.

Sport, culture and the modern state: emerging themes in stimulating urban regeneration in the UK

Since 1997 the relationship between sport policy and urban regeneration in the UK has expanded significantly as the transformative power of sport has been recognised and increasingly evidenced. The emergence of sport as a significant policy area, although often as part of a wider cultural block, has also been paralleled by attempts to reform its delivery in line with attempts by Government to modernise the state and ensure policy making is more effective and efficient. Within this context this paper unpacks the emergence of sports’ enhanced institutional presence in the policy process through examples drawn from a public service award programme – the Beacon Council scheme. This scheme illuminates how sport and cultural policy has changed in focus over time in relation to its use as a regeneration catalyst, and how more recently it is coming under pressure from fiscal retrenchment as a result of 2012 Olympic preparations. The paper concludes by assessing the sustainability of sport and cultural polity within UK policy making.

From Counterterrorism to Resilience

Since 9/11 the conceptualisation of terrorism and how governments should respond to the dangers it poses have undergone significant changes. This paper argues that the way in which terrorism is framed, academically and in policy terms, has significant implications for how counterterrorism strategies are developed and applied. It is asserted that the search for appropriate counterterrorism solutions has led to a new synthesis of several academic and practitioner traditions as policy makers and emergency professionals attempt to construct more holistic notions of security. It is further argued that in this effort specialists adopt a new vocabulary—centred on resilience—which is at once proactive and reactive, with an in-built adaptability to the fluid nature of the new security threats challenging states and their urban areas in “the age of terrorism.” It is widely agreed that the world has entered into a new age in which everything will be different: “the age of terror”. Undoubtedly 9/11 will hold a prominent place in the annals of terrorism, though we should think carefully about why this is the case. Anyone familiar with past and current history knows that the reason is not, regrettably, the scale of the crimes; rather the choice of innocent victims. What the consequences will depend substantially on how the rich and powerful interpret this dramatic demonstration that they are no longer immune from atrocities of the kind they routinely inflict upon others, and how they chose to react.1