Terrorism, Risk and the City: The Making of a Contemporary Urban Landscape

The continued fortification of urban areas has attracted significant attention and has become particularly relevant in counter-terrorist strategies since 9/11. This book is articulated in the light of these discussions, which focus on notions of risk, security and the spatial restructuring of contemporary cities. In particular it examines how terrorist targeting of the City of London since the early 1990s has led to changes in both physical and institutional infrastructure. The book analyses how the various formal and informal strategies adopted in the City attempted to reduce both the physical and financial risk of terrorism. This was undertaken through a series of place-specific security initiatives and risk management policies which led to increased fortification, a substantial rise in terrorism insurance premiums and changing institutional relations at a variety of spatial scales to protect London's position as a global city. It is also argued that the security measures deployed were advanced not in terms of an anti-terrorist effort, but in relation to the unintended by-products of these approaches such as crime reduction and enhanced traffic management capabilities.