Disability, Terror and Safety in the City: Charting Individuals’ Spatio-temporal Encounters with Counter-terrorism Measures in Birmingham, UK

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to recent calls for further work on vulnerable people’s experiences of official planned attempts to create safe cities that are based on ableist assumptions. Go-along interviews elicited from people with cognitive, physical or motor impairments, together with interviews taken from built environment professionals are used to highlight the diverse ways in which differently disabled individuals encounter official efforts to create safe, secure urban spaces and suppress terrorist threats in one UK city centre (Birmingham). Focusing on individuals’ embodied spatio-temporal experiences provide wider lessons for planners and urban stakeholders about the decision-making processes people adopt during urban crises.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• urban planning
• terror
• safety
• go alongs

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all interviewees who agreed to take part in this project. Thanks, too, go to the helpful advice and guidance of the referees in helping improve this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louisa Ward

Louisa Ward was a postgraduate student in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Birmingham. She now works for the consultancy, Avison Young.