Building situational awareness has become a central logic among contemporary security apparatuses for abating no-warning urban terrorism. Situational awareness, we contend, casts the sensory, perceptual and affective capacities of human bodies to decipher their immediate surroundings and attune to the non-representational and more-than-known of an enfolding situation, as essential to its execution. What modalities of sense-making and attunement, then, does this burgeoning security rationality demand? And what sensibilities, affectivities and subjectivities are (re)produced and legitimated across urban life? In this paper, we unpack these questions by examining the ways affective and atmospheric attunement(s) are infused within orthodox and emergent security approaches for developing and honing situational awareness. We argue that affective atmospheres in particular furnish the theoretical architecture for attending to the spatio-affective-material registers through which imminence becomes palpable. Empirically, by analysing the Public Inquiry following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, we elucidate where the Inquiry advanced discussions on (the limits of) situational awareness and its sensorial, affective and atmospheric dimensions, thereby extending situational awareness into an atmospheric agenda within urban geopolitics. Finally, we reflect on how the impending UK Protect Duty might reconfigure the legal landscape of situational awareness, city resilience, and the affective economies of (in)attention.
Over recent years, and as a result of the recent global health pandemic, resilience has become increasingly central to contemporary policy discourses in urban planning and development in both the Global North and Global South. Drawing from ongoing empirical studies of community resilience and everyday practices that have been co-designed and co-produced alongside Brazilian marginalised communities which are highly vulnerable to a range of natural hazards, this paper highlights the growing importance of dialogical stakeholder engagement methodologies in designing alternative urban visions – so-called resilience imaginaries or counter-cities - across the Global South based on social diversity, equity and spatial justice. More specifically, the dialogical participatory mapping approach outlined in this paper utilises citizen science approaches to develop local resilience imaginaries, building on the pedagogical work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and the conceptualisation of dialogue as a comprehensive and progressively unfolding methodological approach. Practically, we adopted a range of community engagement approaches that allowed local citizens to become more aware of their own risk context and embed this tacit knowledge into the operation of civil protection programmes. Our empirical results highlight the potential of such dialogical participatory approaches to capture lay knowledge from local citizens and contribute to the development of enhanced resilience approaches. The paper concludes by reflecting on the role of formerly marginalised voices in the advancement of local urban policy and on the novelty and promise of critical pedagogical approaches to co-production within existing regimes of urban governance and the imagining of radically independent counter-cities.
This paper examines the form, function and impact of previous Olympic security arrangements and their intersection with planning practice. Drawing from prior and ongoing empirical research investigating the security practices at summer Olympic Games, the paper argues that wider shifts towards 'total' security models comprising continually reproduced security motifs can be observed that are increasingly standardized, mobile, globalized and planned-in. For most Olympic organizers, preparations now necessarily include attempts to equate spectacle with safety and to 'design-out' terrorism by relying on highly militarized tactics and expensive and detailed contingency planning. Such securitizing practices have intensified in form and scale since 9/11, with such intensification set to continue at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, where a vast security infrastructure is being embedded into the large-scale and long-term master-plans for the central city. This represents a high point in spatial planning practice through embracing principles of security-by-design where Games-time security infrastructure, whilst providing effective protection, becomes a less visible but permanent, physical legacy that can also contribute to local programmes of regeneration, climate resilience and crime prevention. The paper concludes by reflecting upon what the continual evolution of security infrastructure means for the balancing of planned-in security and spectacle at future Olympiads.
This chapter interrogates the impact of security measures that have become an essential part of Olympic preparations in the host city. Drawing on historical approaches enacted after the 'Munich Massacre' in 1972 that arguably launched a new era of international terrorism and saw the security preparation intensified, and twenty-first century Olympiads where the threat to the Games from terrorism escalated alongside 'total security' approaches since the events of 9/11, 2001, the chapter charts the increasing cost and militarization of the security required. Here the International Olympic Committee (IOC) places clear responsibility on host cities to provide a safe environment for the 'Olympic Family', while ensuring that such securitization does not get in the way of the sporting activities or spirit of the Games.
PurposeDisasters continue to be most prevalent and severe for marginalised communities. To reach those furthest behind first, as the global community pledges in the 2030 Agenda, a critical assessment of equity in disaster risk governance is necessary. Yet, the understanding of factors that mediate the capacity of the governance processes to achieve equity ambitions is limited. This paper addresses this gap by proposing and testing a conceptual framework to assess equity in disaster risk governance.Design/methodology/approachThe framework analyses the extent to which institutional relationships and data in risk governance support inclusion and diversity of voice and enable the equitable engagement of communities. The study applied the framework to key risk policies across governance levels in Brazil and Colombia.FindingsThe study finds that institutional awareness of cross-sectoral and -scalar coordination clearly exists. Yet, the engagement of actors further down the governance scale is framed reactively at all scales in both countries. The analysis of the risk data practices indicates that although data integration and sharing are key policy priorities, the policies frame the relations of disaster risk data actors as hierarchical, with data needs determined from the top down.Originality/valueA key contribution of this framework is that its equity view results in a nuanced analysis, thus pointing to the differences between the two countries concerning the factors that mediate these challenges and providing specific entry points for strengthening equity in risk governance policies.
The term 'smart city' has become synonymous with a technologically cultivated utopia, where urban problems can be solved computationally. This approach to urban development has been promoted as a method of enabling city administrations to become more proactive when dealing with issues including pollution, traffic flow and congestion, public safety, energy use, and urban planning. This trend towards using technology in urban management and planning has sparked research and development initiatives across the planet. In the UK, the #PlanTech trend is a governmental initiative that aims to improve engagement between various actors in the planning system, including local authorities and central government, with tech start-ups and digital entrepreneurs who can design solutions to the problems currently experienced by planners, developers, and citizens alike. Despite the significant opportunities that technologies offer city council planning departments in terms of productivity, existing governance models can be shown to represent a significant obstacle to implementation. This paper uses case study research conducted at two English city councils - Coventry and Leeds - to examine the implications of planning reforms and digital transformation of public services on urban planning governance. Utilizing the information gained from a combination of semi-structured interviews and stakeholder engagement exercises, it examines the growing emphasis on technology in planning practice within the public sector and discusses the potential implications that it may have for current governance arrangements. Finally, it suggests what a framework for future urban planning governance within an English political context, in the era of the smart city might require. The paper overall offers a critical view of how current urban planning practice and governance procedures are being quickly subsumed by digital technologies which offer novel and effective methods for professional planners yet are undermined, or are inhibited, by current governance arrangements.
Resilience narratives have gathered increased attention in city-regional planning over the last two decades, emphasizing holistic foresight, long-term strategic visioning, cross-sectoral integration and collaborative modes of planning. Combining such resilience narratives with the established idea of socio-spatial imaginaries, we introduce the novel concept of 'resilience imaginaries' and explore its application in the city-region of Thessaloniki, Greece. This paper illustrates that resilience imaginaries can be viewed as dynamic and politically contested visions for long-term city-regional development, collectively structured by civic stakeholders, institutionally expressed through city-regional governance transformations and materially manifested through city-regional planning interventions.
Citizen generated data can play an important role in enhancing community resilience. However, the relationship between data and community resilience has only been partly addressed in existing resilience scholarship, predominantly from the perspective of data utilisation in response to unfolding crises. Yet, in this study we attempt to highlight a different pathway for data-enabled contributions to community resilience, focusing on the process of data generation and its capacity to constitute a transformative moment itself. By exploring the case of the marginalized flood-prone community of M’Boi Mirim in São Paulo, Brazil, we introduce the concept of dialogical participatory mapping, and we argue that the process of generating geospatial data can empower local communities and assist in nourishing a resilience spirit among community members.