Resilient design for community safety and terror-resistant cities

Abstract

Resilience against an array of traditional and unconventional terrorist threats is increasingly important to the way towns and\ cities are designed and managed and how built environment professionals attempt to enhance levels of community safety. This is particularly the case with regard to crowded public places and transport systems such as light rail or trams, which are seen as particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack. This paper argues that contemporary terrorist threats and tactics mean that counter-terrorism in urban areas should increasingly seek to hybridise hard and soft engineering solutions in order to design and manage the built environment in ways that can reduce the occurrence or impact of a terrorist attack. In particular, it is argued that for counter-terrorism to be successful, inter-professional solutions are required for a wide range of public, private and community stakeholders that are (or should be) involved with the planning, design, construction, operation and management of public places.