Resilient planning for sporting mega-events: designing and managing safe and secure urban places for London 2012 and beyond Planejamento resiliente para megaeventos esportivos: planejando e gerindo lugares seguros para Londres 2012 e além

Since the 1960s both regeneration and security have been prominent themes in Olympic planning. However, this paper argues that the prominence given to post event legacies in Londons bid to host the 2012 Summer Games has fomented a merger of these hitherto distinct ambitions oriented around notions of resilience. In addition to identifying this merger, based on analysis of planning for the 2012 Games the paper sets out its component features and considers a range of key implications. These include the accommodation of Olympic security amid shifting national security arrangements and, at a local level, the impact and importance of the 2011 London riots on Olympic safety and security processes. Organised over four areas of discussion the first three comprising of the coupling of spatial strategies of resilient planning and design with concerns for security; the temporal framework of such approaches; analysis of the altered physical and institutional landscape of London ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games the paper concludes by identifying and discussing the ways in which urban rejuvenation and securitisation which are increasingly being combined into resilient designs and master plans in the Olympic context and, crucially, standardised, exported and transferred to new urban hosts of similar events

Atmosphere, imminence and the Manchester Arena Inquiry: on the affective modalities of becoming situationally aware to urban terrorism

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

Critical infrastructure lifelines and the politics of anthropocentric resilience

The discourse of resilience has increasingly been utilised to advance the political prioritisation of enhanced security and to extend the performance of risk management in the Anthropocene. This has been notably advanced through integrated approaches that engage with uncertainty, complexity and volatility in order to survive and thrive in the future. Within this context, and drawing on findings from a number of EU-wide research projects tasked with operationalising critical infrastructure resilience, this paper provides a much- needed assessment of how resilience ideas are shaping how critical infrastructure providers and operators deal with complex risks to ‘lifeline’ systems and networks, whilst also illuminating the tensions elicited in the paradigm shift from protective-based risk management towards adaptive-based resilience. In doing so, we also draw attention to the implications of this transition for organisational governance and for the political ecologies of the Anthropocene that calls for more holistic, adaptable and equitable ways of assessing and working with risk across multiple systems, networks and scales

Futureproofing against shock : institutional responses to terrorist risk in London, 1990–2020

Employing an institutionalist approach to governance, and engaging with recent scholarship on organisational resilience and scalar politics, this paper focuses upon institutional reactions to terrorism in London between 1990-2020 and explores the mechanisms through which responses to disruption occurred. Empirically, this applied paper tracks specific emergency processes, governance assemblages and policy mechanisms that have been enacted in London in response to terrorism. More specifically, it tracks changes in the institutional dynamics involved in the reorganisation of traditional governance apparatus, the mobilisation of adaptive capacity, and the generation of multi-stakeholder visions for futureproofing against terrorist attack. Such institutional changes are explored through three vignettes of responses to terrorist incidents: against financial targets in the 1990s; in relation the risk of attack after 9/11 and in preparation for securing the 2012 Olympics; and in response to recent attacks against crowded places since 2012. This paper illuminates how institutional responses to terrorism have evolved from a focus upon small specialist networks that dealt just with terrorism, to much larger multi-institutional, multi-scalar and multi-hazard responses to, and preparations for, complex emergencies that cut across numerous administrative jurisdictions. The paper concludes by posing wider questions about optimal institutional form(s) required for responding to future shocks

International perspectives on urban resilience

International perspectives on urban resilienc

Planning and technological innovation : the governance challenges faced by English local authorities in adopting planning technologies

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

Catalysing governance transformations through urban resilience implementation : the case of Thessaloniki, Greece

In the twenty-first century, in response to an array of existential threats, the concept of resilience has risen to prominence in urban studies to address the amplified complexity, uncertainty and accompanying risk contemporary urban environments face, stemming from economic, environmental and socio-political volatility and rapid change (Bourgon, 2009; Chandler, 2014; Duit, Galaz, Eckerberg, & Ebbesson, 2010; McGreavy, 2016; Normandin, Therrien, Pelling, & Paterson, 2018). Under the banner of urban resilience - a concept that has emerged, as an amalgam of previously applied ‘resilience’ concepts in various scientific disciplines (Alexander, 2013) - urban planners and policy-makers have sought more holistic, integrated and communitycentred governance approaches that offer a variety of ‘qualities’ and ‘principles’ for confronting this emergent complexity and uncertainty of city life (Meerow, Newell, & Stults, 2016; Moser, Meerow, Arnott, & Jack-Scott, 2019; Normandin, Therrien, Pelling, & Paterson, 2019; Sellberg, Ryan, Borgström, Norström, & Peterson, 2018; Tobin, 1999)

Decision–Support System Portal as a tool for mainstreaming DRR into urban decision making

Recent disasters such as Super Storm Sandy, the Haitian Earthquake and extensive floods across the United Kingdom have highlighted the fragility of cities to a range of hazards and threats thus emphasizing the increasing importance of resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and the influences of such concepts upon the management of the built environment. While this makes the role of planning, design and construction stakeholders crucial in implementing the principles of DRR, tensions exist regarding the extent to which DRR measures should be implemented during planning, design and construction process; in particular who should be responsible for the implementation of such measures. This paper presents a web-based Decision-Support System Portal (DSSP) developed during a four-year European Union-funded project which is examining the design and planning of safer urban spaces. Central to the project is an integrated security and resilience (ISR) design framework that engages local stakeholders for identifying vulnerabilities and improving urban spaces with respect to ‘security threats’. The DSSP helps end-users better understand the vulnerabilities and design possibilities of the proposed site by allowing users to pursue decision-support scenarios of secure urban design and planning

Creating ‘resilience imaginaries’ for city-regional planning

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