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Wall Street Security Project by Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers

“In high profile buildings or crowded places that may be attractive targets for terrorists, the challenge for designers is to incorporate counter-terrorism measures into their buildings and public spaces whilst maintaining quality of place.” RIBA guidance on designing for counter-terrorism

In recent years, terrorist attacks in London, New York, Berlin, Barcelona and Nice have heightened concerns about the safety of living in and travelling to cities in Europe and North America. In many of these attacks, cars or trucks have been driven at high speed into crowded streets with the aim of causing the maximum number of casualties. While such attacks remain relatively rare, planning authorities are now working on methods to deter and thwart the use of vehicles as weapons in public spaces.

From buildings and infrastructure to “soft targets”

The attacks on London’s transport infrastructure in 2005 and an abortive car bomb attack at Glasgow Airport in 2007 prompted a rethink in the UK about how to protect people from acts of terrorism. As a result, protective cordons and barriers were installed at government offices, public buildings and transport hubs.

Subsequently – and perhaps as a consequence of the success of these measures – terrorists have changed tactics, focusing their attention on members of the public in crowded city centres. These so-called “soft targets” are harder to protect, partly because of the scale of defences that would be required, but mostly because city authorities want to retain the open and accessible nature of places which are most attractive to shoppers, tourists and businesses.

Approaches to protection

Guidance issued by the Home Office in 2012 explains how public authorities, communities and the private sector can mitigate terrorism risks by physical, technical and procedural measures, such as speed gates, barrier systems, closed-circuit television cameras and sufficient stand-off distance between vehicles and buildings. Similar guidance has been adopted in the United States, and most recently in Australia, which has also developed a self-assessment tool to help owners and managers of public spaces to assess their own risk.

Safer places with style

The challenges presented by terrorist attacks have prompted urban planners and architects to think again about how to protect the public without creating forbidding strongholds.

A successful example of an innovative approach can be found in New York City’s financial district. Home not only to the New York Stock Exchange, but to museums, shops and waterfront entertainment attractions, this part of the city is a vibrant area that brings together many people from different walks of life.

Wall Street Security Project by Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers

It’s this widespread appeal which makes the financial district a potential target for terrorism, and which presented Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers with the challenge of ensuring its security while retaining the positive aspects of the area.

Working with stakeholders, city agencies, and law enforcement officials, the architects came up with an innovative concept that includes sculptural barriers which play a dual role of seating and security. These “NOGO” installations quickly won over pedestrians and were widely applauded in the media. The Chicago Tribune was noted that the NOGO’s bronze surfaces:

“…echo the grand doorways of Wall Street’s temples of commerce. Pedestrians easily slip through groups of them as they make their way onto Wall Street from the area around historic Trinity Church. Cars, however, cannot pass.”

Closer to home, the National Assembly for Wales has also adopted counter-terrorism measures to protect the people who work in and visit this major public building. The architects have taken advantage of the public plaza around the building to achieve sufficient stand-off through landscaping. In addition, staircases and reinforced street furniture contribute to the protective facilities without turning the building into a fortress.

Secure and liveable public spaces

“Barbed wire and concrete barriers may be effective, but they make city dwellers feel like they are living in a war zone.”
A Green Living

Urban planners have a fine line to tread between making people feel comfortable in public spaces while ensuring their safety. Concrete barriers may be effective, but if they make residents and visitors fearful, they are more likely to drive them away. And since that is what terrorists are aiming to achieve, it’s all the more important to get the balance right.

Our thanks to Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers in New York City for supplying the information and photographs concerning the streetscapes and security project in the financial district.

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Image by AngusKirk, via Creative Commons License

By James Carson

“The green belt has been exalted as sacrosanct in a way in which almost no other policy area has been indulged, and any attempts to have a serious conversation about its development have been swiftly stifled with the same kind of force as would usually be reserved for suggestions to entirely dismantle the NHS.”

So said Andrew Carter, the Acting Chief Executive of Centre for Cities, writing on the Conservative Home website earlier this month. It’s true that green belts have long been regarded as untouchable. But there are signs that the bulletproof shield protecting them could be breaking down.

In September, the Wolfson Economics Prize went to regeneration consultancy Urbed for its proposal to create a city of 400,000 people by doubling the size of an existing town and building on the surrounding green belt. The following month, Rowan Moore, The Observer’s architecture critic, considered the arguments for and against green belts and concluded:

“…it is no longer good enough to insist that green belts must, at all costs, never change.”

Meanwhile, defenders of green belts have been voicing their concerns. “A weakening of protection for green belts would lead to urban sprawl over precious countryside and farmland,” said the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), launching its campaign for a stronger commitment from government to review the latest threats to the green belt. And after the Wolfson prize winner was announced, architect Richard Rogers spoke out against Urbed’s proposal to take a bite out of the green belt, calling it “a ridiculous concept.”

The idea of curbing urbanisation is not new. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a three-mile wide belt around London was proposed in order to stop the spread of the plague. More recently, the garden city movement’s ideas about urban and rural areas, led to the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which allowed local authorities to include green belts in their town plans.

Today, there are 14 green belts in England, 10 in Scotland, 30 in Northern Ireland and one in Wales. They exist as buffers between towns and countryside, and successive governments have ensured that they are maintained. The UK government’s latest National Planning Policy Framework sets out the green belt’s five purposes:

to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas;
to prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another;
to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment;
to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns; and
to assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.

Historically, green belts have been regarded as one of Britain’s great planning successes. But there has been growing criticism of the costs of the green belt, typified by Rowan Moore’s observation:

“It stops cities expanding, which had previously done so for centuries. It contributes to the scarcity and cost of decent homes in large parts of the country. It encourages bizarre and wasteful patterns of commuting. It often fails in its original aim of providing accessible recreational space for city dwellers. It is enforced with a rigidity that makes little sense, except as a sign of mistrust.”

Britain’s housing crisis has amplified calls for the green belt to be breached. Government projections suggest that the UK needs six million new homes in the next 30 years. Proponents of building on green land contend that existing urban and brownfield areas alone cannot cater for the housing demand, an argument underlined by Urbed in its submission to the Wolfson competition.

Centre for Cities has claimed that building on 5.2% of green belt land within and around Britain’s least affordable cities would deliver 1.4 million new homes.

Their opponents disagree. This month, the CPRE reported that a minimum of 976,000 new homes could be built on identified brownfield sites in England, and that the supply of these sites is steadily increasing. The organisation has also suggested that housebuilders are “sitting on huge areas of land with planning permission which could provide over 280,000 new homes.”

With a general election on the horizon, the main political parties have been drawing up their battle lines. The Labour Party is showing signs of greater flexibility on the green belt issue. In October, Sir Michael Lyons published the final report of his independent review of housing for the Labour Party. One of his recommendations included allowing more homes to be built on parts of the protected green belt if the land has little “environmental or amenity value”. In response, the Conservative Party has reiterated its commitment to protecting the green belt.

Perhaps most interestingly, it’s at the local level that changing policies on green belts can be most clearly seen. Councils in England are responding to the housing crisis by using localism powers granted to them by the coalition government to de-designate or swap greenbelt land in the context of making a local plan. Figures published in August by Glenigan planning and construction consultants revealed that 5,600 new homes were approved to be built on green belt land last year, a 148% increase on the 2,260 green belt homes in 2009/10.

The debate now seems to be moving towards a recognition that some infringement of green belt land is inevitable, which is perhaps why a recent commentary on the subject by an academic from the London School of Economics was not titled, “Why should we build on the green belt?” Instead, it was headlined: “Where should we build on the green belt?”.

Further reading

The Idox Information Service has a wealth of research reports, articles and case studies on planning. Items we’ve recently summarised for our database include:

Delivering change: building homes where we need them

Utopias that work: how to create tomorrow’s garden city

Removing obstacles to brownfield development: how government can work with communities to facilitate the re-use of previously developed land (Foresight paper no 2)

Uxcester garden city (second stage submission for the Wolfson Economics Prize 2014)

Greenbelt under development: special report

Green belts: a local way forward for the twenty first century

N.B. Abstracts and access to subscription journal articles are only available to members of the Idox Information Service.