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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• resilience
• planning
• security
• place-making
• localism

Notes

¹ Projects of particular note include the EU Framework seven security programme ‘Designing Safer Urban Space's (DESURBS, 2011–2014); the EPSRC Cross-Disciplinary Feasibility Account—resilience through innovation: critical local transport and utility infrastructure (2010–2012); the AHRC (Connected Communities programme): resilient, mutual self-help in cities of growing diversity (2011–2012); and the EPSRC/ESRC/AHRC-funded Resilient Design (RE-DESIGN) for counter-terrorism: Decision support for designing effective and acceptable resilient places (2007–2010). These projects were undertaken whilst the author was employed at the Universities of Manchester and Birmingham, UK.

² In the lexicon of disaster management, a multi-hazard schema is often referred to as integrated emergency management.

³ See footnote 1 for further details.

⁴ This approach, based on inductive reasoning, contrasted with much prior work in the field of resilience which has been largely deductive in nature (particularly that associated with the socio-ecological school which draws from the work of C.S. Holling since the 1970s—see, for example, Holling, 1973; Gunderson & Holling, 2002).

⁵ See, for example, Jeffery (1971), Newman (1972).

⁶ This Act came into force in November 2005. See also UK Resilience website within the Cabinet Office—http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ukresilience—which pre-dated the CCA.

⁷ This terminology used in this paper to describe this evolution of resilience policy draws from the national security work by the IPPR (2009).

⁸ See, for example, Building Britain's Future (Cabinet Office, 2009) and the Institute of Civil Engineers (2009) State of the Nation Report: Defending Critical Infrastructure.

⁹ Since the early 2000s, the UK had developed a long-term strategy for establishing resilience against terrorism, entitled CONTEST, whose aim was to reduce the risk of terrorism, so that people could go about their daily lives freely and with confidence. CONTEST is divided into four strands: ‘Prevent’, ‘Pursue’, ‘Protect’ and ‘Prepare’. Through the ‘Protect’ strand of CONTEST, planners have a key role to play in intervening to mitigate the effects of terrorist attack (Coaffee, 2010). The Protect stand of CONTEST involves many activities including the strengthening of infrastructure and the defence of public areas.

¹⁰ 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.

¹¹ NaCTSO is a police unit co-located within the CPNI and contributes to the UK government's counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) by supporting the Protect and Prepare strands of that strategy.

¹² In a series of coordinated attacks on London's transport network on 7/7 2005, suicide bombers killed 52 and injured 770 people.

¹³ On 29 June 2007, 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.

¹⁴ Gordon Brown, Hansard (Commons), 14 November 2007, col. 667.

¹⁵ Gordon Brown, Hansard (Commons), 14 November 2007, col. 45WS (cited in Coaffee & O'Hare, 2008)

¹⁶ In the UK, these are usually referred to as Counter-Terrorist Security Advisors (CTSAs).

¹⁷ As footnote 13.

¹⁸ Called Project Argus Professional, see http://www.nactso.gov.uk/OurServices/Argus.aspx.

¹⁹ See also CPNI's 2011 Integrated Security A Public Realm Design Guide for Hostile Vehicle Mitigation—http://www.cpni.gov.uk/documents/publications/2011/2011mar01-integrated_security_v1.0.pdf.

²⁰ There are many specific ways in which planners have tried to use the existing policy and guidance available to deliver on this agenda. A detailed discussion of this lies beyond the scope of this paper—see Coaffee and O'Hare (2008) for a detailed expose.

²¹ ‘Big Society’ is defined by the Cabinet Office (2011a) as ‘about helping people to come together to improve their own lives. It's about putting more power in people's hands—a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities’.